Books like 'The Weekend'
Readers who enjoyed The Weekend by Bernhard Schlink also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsIn the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying... -
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she..Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction politics war 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Smiley's People. by John le Carré
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsJohn le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim.Rounding off his astonishing vision of a clandestine world, master storyteller le Carre perfects his art in Smiley's People... -
Point Of Impact by Stephen Hunter, Beau Bridges
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHe was one the best Marine snipers in Vietnam. Today, twenty years later, disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged... -
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The Inhabited Island by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsWhen Maxim, a space explorer from Earth, accidentally discovers a planet inhabited by humanoids who destroy his spaceship, he thinks of himself as a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. But after his experiences in the planet's nightmarish military and mental health facilities, he begins to realize that his sojourn on this radioactive and war-scarred world will not be a walk in the park... -
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth...Categorized as:
classics communism literary-fiction politics university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsNine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor". (Nine Stories is the U.S. title; the book is published in many other countries as For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories... -
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 82 ratingsThe new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place thirty-five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there has been no new housing since 1950 and where the city-wide slums are called Victory Mansions...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction politics university war 20th-century alternate-history -
Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRussian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age... -
Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratings'Promise at Dawn' begins as the story of a mother's sacrifice. Alone and poor, she fights fiercely to give her son the very best. Gary chronicles his childhood with her in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera. And he recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in the Second World War... -
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSimply written, but powerful and unforgettable, The Man Who Planted Trees is a parable for modern times. In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work... -
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsLouis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism... -
Collected Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings“A Bear Hunt,” “A Rose for Emily,” “Two Soldiers,” “Victory,” “The Brooch,” “Beyond”—these are among the forty-two stories that make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction... -
Without Remorse by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 53 ratingsJohn Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again... -
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The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England... -
Hourglass by Danilo Kiš
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDanilo Kiš was one of the most artful and eloquent writers of postwar Europe. Of all his books, Hourglass, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is considered to be his masterpiece... -
The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsStep into the powerhouse life of Bull Meecham. He's all Marine --- fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife -- beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man... -
Patriot Games by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 69 ratingsTom Clancy's Patriot Games is filled with the exceptional realism and authenticity that distinguished the author's two previous bestsellers, Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising. Patriot Games puts us on the cutting edge of another type of war — the international battle of terrorism. It is fall... -
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsEmil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amidst what is described as a Scheinwelt, a play on words that means "world of light" as well as "world of illusion". Emil's entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth... -
Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsColombian drug lords, bored with Uncle Sam's hectoring, assassinate the head of the FBI. The message is clear: Bug off!At what point do these druggies threaten national security? When can a nation act against its enemies? These are questions Jack Ryan must answer because someone has quietly stepped over the line... -
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsOften likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe... -
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 101 ratingsWinston Smith is a low-rung member of the Party, the ruling government of Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth, the Party's propoganda arm, where he is in charge of revising history. He is but a small brick in the pyramid that is the Party, at the head of which stands Big Brother. Big Brother the infallible. Big Brother the all-powerful...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction politics university war 20th-century alternate-history -
Command Authority by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsDecades ago, when he was a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan, Sr. was sent on what was supposed to be a simple support mission to investigate the death of an operative who had been looking into suspicious banking activities at a Swiss bank. Ryan's dogged tenacity uncovered not only financial deceit, but also the existence of a KGB assassin, code-named Zenith... -
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 75 ratingsIn The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover... -
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsMany thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K... -
The Corsican Woman by Madge Swindells
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSybilia turned as if sleepwalking and, trance-like, walked down the stone steps to the living room. She shuddered as she took the rifle from the peg on the wall, but after only a moment's hesitation, she loaded it and went outside. Sybilia Rocca is beautiful, gentle and intelligent... -
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsHere is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy's phenomenal career. A military thriller so gripping in its action and so convincing in its accuracy that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: the greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: the chase for a top secret Russian missile sub. Lauded by the Washington Post as "breathlessly exciting...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction politics realistic war 20th-century action-adventure -
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsTold with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet... -
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Курт Воннегут
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsWelcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision... -
The Assignment by Liza M. Wiemer
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the vein of the classic The Wave and inspired by a real-life incident, this riveting novel explores discrimination and antisemitism and reveals their dangerous impact.SENIOR YEAR...Categorized as:
realistic war friendship young-adult fiction contemporary social-commentary audiobook -
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsA modern classic in which John le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart. It is now beyond a doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction politics realistic war 20th-century action-adventure -
The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsHow do you save the United States President from himself? What if the President is incompetent to deal with the greatest crisis of all? Jack Ryan never thought he would have to ask those questions as, the world order changing, he prepares the ground for the Middle Eastern peace plan that, at last, might be the one to work.But too many groups have invested too much blood... -
Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsRazio Yamata is one of Japan's most influential industrialists, and part of a relatively small group of authority who wield tremendous authority in the Pacific Rim's economic powerhouse.He has devised a plan to cripple the American greatness, humble the US military, and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage... -
Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy, David Dukes
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsOver the course of nine novels, Tom Clancy’s “genius for big, compelling plots” and his “natural narrative gift” (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized hundreds of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six, however, goes beyond anything he has done before... -
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The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEd Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace--their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail... -
The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsThe world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.At a small-town carnival two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, known also as the Jackal, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist... -
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsAlternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereWho is Jason Bourne? Is he an assassin, a terrorist, a thief? Why has he got four million dollars in a Swiss bank account? Why has someone tried to murder him?...Jason Bourne does not know the answer to any of these questions. Suffering from amnesia, he does not even know that he is Jason Bourne... -
The Dead of Night by John Marsden
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsA few months after the first fighter jets landed in their own backyard, Ellie and her five terrified but defiant friends struggle to survive amid a baffling conflict. Their families are unreachable; the mountains are now their home. When two of them fall behind enemy lines, Ellie knows what must happen next: a rescue mission... -
Executive Orders by Tom Clancy
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsThe President is dead—and the weight, literally, of the world falls on Jack Ryan's shoulders, in Tom Clancy's newest and most extraordinary novel. I don't know what to do... -
If You Were the Only Girl by Anne Bennett
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA moving family drama of one young woman’s fight to survive, to find her long-lost relatives and to find a place to call home Bridgette has been hurt many times in her life. Her early years were blighted by her spoilt brother; her marriage ruined by World War Two. Now her mother is dying. And then comes a deathbed revelation – somewhere Bridgette has another family and a father... -
Spring Magic by D.E. Stevenson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTwenty-five year old Frances Field wanted desperately to get away from her guardians' dull London townhouse. Unforeseen circumstances finally gave her the chance to escape. She decided for the first time in her life to go off on her own, to a quiet fishing village in Scotland... -
War & War by László Krasznahorkai
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWar & War, László Krasznahorkai’s second novel in English from New Directions, begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked by thuggish teenagers and robbed; and from here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk... -
Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMalina invites the reader on a linguistic journey into a world stretched to the very limits of language with Wittgensteinian zeal and Joycean inventiveness, where Ingeborg Bachmann ventriloquizes—and in the process demolishes— Proust, Musil, and Balzac, while filtering everything through her own utterly singular idiom... -
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Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9781439182840.In the luminous and beautiful title story, winner of a 2010 National Magazine Award, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life... -
The Man Outside by Wolfgang Borchert, Kay Boyle
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWolfgang Borchert died in 1947––the twenty-six-year-old victim of a malaria-like fever contracted during World War II. This was just one day after the premier of his play, The Man Outside, which caused an immediate furor throughout his native Germany with its youthful, indeed revolutionary, vision against war and the dehumanizing effects of the police state... -
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRussia faces famine. The Soviets are forced to pin their hopes for survival on the U.S. But as the KGB and the CIA watch in horror, the rescue of a Ukrainian freedom fighter from the Black Sea unleashes savagery that endangers peace--and plunges leaders from Washington to Moscow into a web of overwhelming intrigue, terror, and suspense. Only two lovers can save the world from nuclear destruction... -
Swan Song by John Galsworthy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1928. English novelist, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, Galsworthy became known for his portrayal of the British upper middle class and for his social satire. To readers of Galsworthy there is a special significance in this novel for it marks the passing of Soames Forsyte and brings the annals of the Forsyte family to an end... -
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 88 ratingsA man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever... -
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsBroad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn...
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