Books like 'The Lost Child'
Readers who enjoyed The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary action / adventure historical-fiction industrial-era retellings literary-fiction victorian realistic journey gothic
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Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsLiving by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture... -
The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRecalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction war contemporary audiobook 21st-century -
The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi, سعود السنعوسي
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsDaring and bold, The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the universal struggles of identity, race, and class as they intersect between two disparate societies: Kuwait and the Philippines. Josephine comes to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, a spoiled but kind-hearted only son...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction realistic 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
ساق البامبو by سعود السنعوسي, Saud Alsanousi
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsلماذا كان جلوسي تحت الشجرة يزعج أمي؟ أتراها كانت تخشى أن تنبت لي جذور تضرب في عمق الأرض ما يجعل عودتي إلى بلاد أبي أمراً مستحيلاً؟..ربما، ولكن، حتى الجذور لا تعني شيئاً أحياناً. لو كنت مثل نبتة البامبو.. لا انتماء لها.. نقتطع جزءاً من ساقها.. نغرسه، بلا جذور، في أي أرض.. لا يلبث الساق طويلاً حتى تنبت له جذور جديدة.. تنمو من جديد.. في أرض جديدة.. بلا ماض.. بلا ذاكرة.Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction realistic 21st-century action-adventure adult asia -
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The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsPublished in Indonesia in 2005, "The Rainbow Troops," Andrea Hirata's closely autobiographical debut novel, sold more than five million copies, shattering records. Now it promises to captivate audiences around the globe.Ikal is a student at the poorest village school on the Indonesian island of Belitong, where graduating from sixth grade is considered a remarkable achievement... -
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman, Carlotta Brentan
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratings13 hours, 15 minutesA trio of second-born daughters set out to break the family curse that says they’ll never find love on a whirlwind journey through the lush Italian countryside by New York Times bestseller Lori Nelson Spielman, author of The Life List... -
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...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics -
The Black Stallion Returns by Walter Farley
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn this, the second book in the series, the heart-stopping adventures of the Black Stallion continue as Alec discovers that two men are after the Black. One claims to be the Black’s rightful owner and one is trying to kill the beautiful steed. An Arab chieftain proves his ownership of the Black and takes him away, but Alec is determined to find his horse again... -
The Havoc of Choice by Wanjiru Koinange
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings2007, KenyaLong held captive by her father’s shadow of corruption, Kavata has spent her life suffocated by political machinations. When her husband decides to run in the next election, these shadows threaten to consume her home. Unable to bear this darkness,Kavata plots to escape. As her family falls apart, so too does her country...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction fiction politics contemporary corruption family -
Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsONE SUMMER...ONE LIFE CHANGING JOURNEYSeth and his little brother Henry haven't had the most stable of upbringings. Their father has been in and out of jail; their mother took off years ago and hasn't been seen since. Life is constantly uncertain - but a twist of fate could be just what they need.August stopped drinking the day his son died...Categorized as:
coming-of-age journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure audiobook book contemporary -
East of the West by Miroslav Penkov
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA brilliant debut from a rising talent praised by Salman Rushdie, among others.A grandson tries to buy the corpse of Lenin on eBay for his Communist grandfather. A failed wunderkind steals a golden cross from an orthodox church. A boy meets his cousin (the love of his life) once every five years in the waters of the river that divides their village into East and West... -
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsFrom the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers... -
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA young man leaves behind more than he realizes to follow his passions in this major, luminous novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return.The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey coming-of-age africa northern-africa libya fiction -
From Afar by Frank Scozzari
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor centuries, poets have argued that unrequited love is love in its strongest form. From Afar is a timeless tale of Morgan Stanfield’s search for love in the far northern city of Saint Petersburg, Russia...Categorized as:
coming-of-age journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult book contemporary fiction -
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Two Like Me and You by Chad Alan Gibbs
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEdwin Green's ex-girlfriend is famous. We're talking cover-of-every-tabloid-in-the-grocery-store-line famous. She dumped Edwin one year ago on what he refers to as Black Saturday, and in hopes of winning her back, he's spent the last twelve months trying to become famous himself. It hasn't gone well...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction realistic action-adventure book contemporary fiction humor -
Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings49-year-old safety inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeich, wants little more than to help his bees collect their pollen in peace.But Sergey lives in Ukraine, where a lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda has been dragging on for years... -
The Disoriented by Amin Maalouf
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter 25 years in exile, Adam travels from France to his homeland in the Middle East to bid farewell to his dying childhood friend.One night, a phone rings in Paris. Adam learns that Mourad, once his closest friend, is dying. He quickly throws some clothes in a suitcase and takes the first flight out, to the homeland he fled twenty-five years ago...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult book contemporary drama -
The Lost Girls of Ireland by Susanne O'Leary
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA heart-warming story about family secrets and one woman’s escape to dreamy Sandy Cove on the stunning west coast of Ireland.The picturesque beach of Wild Rose Bay is the last place Lydia Butler thought she’d be. But having just lost everything, the run-down cottage she inherited from her Great Aunt Nellie is the only place she can take her daughter, Sunny...Categorized as:
journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe first of his family to go to college, Anil Patel, the golden son, carries the weight of tradition and his family’s expectations when he leaves his tiny Indian village to begin a medical residency in Dallas, Texas, at one of the busiest and most competitive hospitals in America...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult audiobook book -
An Unlasting Home: A Novel by Mai Al-Nakib
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"So fresh and unsettling that it will enchant you from the first page and linger for days after reading...Its epic family saga style echoes that of Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and The Arsonists’ City , Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies , and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction contemporary family audiobook poc-mc -
Cent millions d'années et un jour by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings‘On the mountain, the only monsters are the ones you take with you.’Summer 1954. Stan has been hunting for fossils since the age of six. Now, having made a career out of studying the remains of tiny lifeforms, he hears a story he cannot forget: the skeleton of a huge creature, a veritable dragon, lies deep in an Alpine glacier. And he is determined to find it...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction drama action-adventure contemporary fantasy book -
The Bone Fire by György Dragomán
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom an award-winning European writer, a Gothic page-turner with all the menace and promise of a fairy tale In the aftermath of a revolution that has plunged her country into chaos, thirteen-year-old Emma’s small corner of the world is shattered after her dissident parents' death in a car crash...Categorized as:
coming-of-age gothic historical-fiction journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult book -
I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. “Only a Russian could do that," says Aleksandr Ivanovich. “Only a Russian could make the whole world go mad...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey realistic europe east-europe ukraine fiction -
How Not to Disappear by Clare Furniss
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOur memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody.Hattie's summer isn't going as planned. Her two best friends have abandoned her: Reuben has run off to Europe to 'find himself" and Kat is in Edinburgh with her new girlfriend...Categorized as:
coming-of-age journey realistic historical-fiction romance young-adult contemporary fiction -
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Taking Flight by Adrian R. Magnuson
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJeremy Walsh’s parents assume he’s been abducted by the elderly man he met on a cross-country flight, but it’s the other way around...Categorized as:
coming-of-age journey literary-fiction action-adventure book contemporary drama fiction -
Yugoslavia, My Fatherland by Goran Vojnović
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Vladan Borojević googles the name of his father Nedelko, a former officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army, supposedly killed in the civil war after the decay of Yugoslavia, he unexpectedly discovers a dark family secret...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey realistic fiction contemporary audiobook war -
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl by Nanda Reddy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layer upon layer of secrets, until one morning years later when she is forced to reckon with her past."This debut is a beautiful, if sometimes harrowing, exploration of one woman’s journey. . . to a life built by her own grit and determination." -Library Journal, Starred Review... -
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsSomer's life is everything she imagined it would be — she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco — until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children.The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away... -
Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWillow Creek, Montana. With bold strokes on a large canvas, Stanley West has drawn an entire village of curious and outlandish characters who have been cast so vividly that one can see them, hear them, laugh with them, feel with them - people as real as relatives...Categorized as:
historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction realistic action-adventure adult audiobook book -
Greyhound by Steffan Piper
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings12-year-old Sebastien Ranes is taking a trip. He doesn't exactly understand why, but he accepts it. His mother often seems too emotionally detached to care for him. Her latest boyfriend Dick takes cruel pleasure in mimicking the boy’s stuttering, and wants to live his life without "somebody else's kid" getting in the way. So it's no surprise when they pack his bags to send him away... -
Our Italian Summer by Jennifer Probst
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThree generations of women in the Ferrari family must heal the broken pieces of their lives on a trip of a lifetime through picturesque Italy from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of her life except one: family...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction realistic action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
Right Kind of Wrong by Chelsea Fine
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPraise for Best Kind of Broken:"By turns humorous and heartbreaking, Best Kind Of Broken has become one of my favorites!" ---Cora Carmack, New York Times bestselling author "You'll fall for Pixie and Levi, just like I did!" ---Jennifer L. Armentrout (J...Categorized as:
coming-of-age journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure audiobook book contemporary -
Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCobb, a devoted teacher and nature-lover, takes a sabbatical from his New England boys prep school seeking to experience what Henry David Thoreau and the transcendentalists did in the early nineteenth century. Kayaking to the last known spot where the American writer and philosopher camped four years before he died, he encounters the beautiful free-spirited Mary...Categorized as:
journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure audiobook book -
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Nobody's Girl by Sarra Manning
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBea thinks she's the most boring seventeen-year-old in the world. She's not pretty or popular or funny, unlike her mother who had Bea when she was 17. The only glamorous thing about Bea is the French father who left before she was born and lives in Paris. She yearns for la vie Parisienne every moment of her dull existence...Categorized as:
coming-of-age realistic action-adventure book contemporary fiction womens-fiction young-adult -
The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsHow does memory become myth? How do lies become family lore? How do we escape the trauma of the past when the truth has been forgotten? Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey retellings fiction lgbtq audiobook contemporary -
Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGeorge Gastin is a Bay Area tow-truck operator who wrecks cars as part of an insurance scam. One of the cars he is hired to demolish is a snow-white Cadillac that was supposed to be a present for the Big Bopper, who died in the Iowa plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Gastin has a change of heart and takes off in the car, heading for Texas where the Bopper is buried...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction realistic action-adventure adult book contemporary -
Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA high-born Nigerian goddess, who has been beaten down and unappreciated by her gregarious lover, longs to be truly seen.A young businesswoman attempts a great leap in her company, and an even greater one in her love life.A powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman is forced to decide whether she should uphold her family’s politics or be true to her heart... -
The Means That Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHome is where your people are. But who are your people?Adelaide has lived her whole life in rural Ethiopia, where she and her family are the only white people she knows. Then her family moves to South Carolina, in 1964.Adelaide promises she'll return to Ethiopia and become part of the village for good...Categorized as:
historical-fiction coming-of-age journey fiction young-adult christian contemporary poc-mc -
All the Walls of Belfast by Sarah Carlson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFiona and Danny were born in the same hospital. Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood... -
Undercover Billionaire: A forbidden Cinderella cruise ship romance by Amy Andrews
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA forbidden Cinderella cruise ship romanceNobody can discover the truth about this sexy, forbidden fling. Brooding billionaire Ari Callisthenes, heir to a Greek shipping line, goes undercover as a regular Joe passenger on one of his own cruise ships to find out why it's underperforming...Categorized as:
retellings journey literary-fiction contemporary billionaire fiction action-adventure book -
Leaves of the Banyan Tree by Albert Wendt
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction 20th-century classics male-author family -
The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, a novel about a lost girl and her horse, the enduring strength of friendship, and how even the smallest choices can change everythingWhen Sarah's grandfather gives her a beautiful horse named Boo--hoping that one day she'll follow in his footsteps to join an elite French riding school, away from their gritty London... -
Hao: Stories by Ye Chun
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn extraordinary debut collection of short stories by a three-time Pushcart Prize winner following Chinese women in both China and the United States who turn to signs and languages as they cross the alien landscapes of migration and motherhood. The most common word in Chinese, perhaps, a ubiquitous syllable people utter and hear all the time, which is supposed to mean good...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic journey fiction contemporary anthologies parenthood -
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The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA composer, fleeing an empty existence in New York City, takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization-the upper reaches of a great South American river. The Lost Steps describes his search, his adventures, and the remarkable decision he makes in a village that appears to be truly outside history...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics -
Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt's every parrothead's dream: to leave behind the rat race of the workaday world and start life all over again amidst the cool breezes, sun-drenched colors, and rum-laced drinks of a tropical paradise.It's the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotel keeper...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
Poachers: Stories by Tom Franklin
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen...Categorized as:
gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult anthologies contemporary crime -
Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCabrera Infante's masterpiece, Three Trapped Tigers is one of the most playful books to reach the U.S. from Cuba. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography--such as the section entitled "Some Revelations," which consists of several blank pages--this novel has been praised as a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics -
Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWinner of the American Book Award, Across a Hundred Mountains is a stunning and poignant novel about a young girl who leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his family to find work in America—a story of migration, loss, and discovery.After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves in search of her father, who left them two years earlier... -
The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn extraordinary chronicle of war and an occult story of love between a father and his son from one of Iraq’s most celebrated contemporary writers“Whenever he told lies, the birds would fly away. It had been that way since he was a child. Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction magical-realism war fantasy contemporary
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