Books like 'Black Bottom Saints'
Readers who enjoyed Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of his best-known works, Hughes wrote The Ways of White Folks while living in Carmel, California. In it, he shares acrid and poignant stories of blacks colliding--sometimes humorously, but often tragically--with whites throughout the 1920s and 1930s... -
![The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes]()
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLangston Hughes's first book of poetry, including the following classic, poignant and moving Proem, The Weary Blues, Jazzonia, Negro Dancers, The Cat And The Saxophone (2 A.M... -
![If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin]()
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsIn this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary urban 20th-century -
![A Royal Visit to Victory Street by Pam Howes]()
A Royal Visit to Victory Street by Pam Howes
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom Amazon charts bestseller Pam Howes comes an emotional and uplifting saga about the power of family and a community trying to rebuild their lives after the terrible war that nearly destroyed everything…1956, Liverpool. With the shadow of the war looming over them and bomb craters littering the surrounding streets, hope feels far away for the residents of Victory Street... -
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![The Darkest Canyon: Book Two in A Holocaust Story Series by Roberta Kagan]()
The Darkest Canyon: Book Two in A Holocaust Story Series by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNazi Germany. Gretchen Schmidt has a secret life. She is in love with a married Jewish man. She is hiding him while his wife is posing as an Aryan woman. Her best friend Hilde, who unbeknownst to Gretchen is a sociopath, is working as a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp... -
![The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee]()
The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.Dan Freeman, the spook who sat by the door, is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary urban 20th-century adult -
![Selected Poems by Langston Hughes]()
Selected Poems by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWith the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night...Categorized as:
black-mc lgbtq literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary 20th-century anthologies classics -
![Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin]()
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings“The civil rights struggle,” said The New York Times Book Review, “found eloquent expression in [Baldwin’s] novels. His historical importance is indisputable.” Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin’s reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence... -
![Midnight by Beverly Jenkins]()
Midnight by Beverly Jenkins
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn a time of peril, she fears nothing—except the forbidden passions of her heart. In Boston, revolution is in the wind—yet none would ever suspect Faith Kingston of treason. But under cover of darkness, the beautiful daughter of a Tory tavern owner becomes the notorious spy “Lady Midnight,” passing valuable secrets to the rebels...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook colonization -
![Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton]()
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars... -
![Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone]()
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiane McKinney-Whetstone's lyrical first novel, Tumbling, vividly captures a tightly knit African-American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the forties and fifties. Its central characters, Herbie and Noon, are a loving but unconventional couple whose marriage remains unconsummated for many years as Noon struggles to repossess her sexuality after a brutal attack in her past...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Garden of the Departed Cats by Bilge Karasu]()
The Garden of the Departed Cats by Bilge Karasu
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn an ancient Mediterranean city, a tradition is maintained: every ten years an archaic game of human chess is staged, the players (visitors versus locals) bearing weapons. This archaic game, the central event of The Garden of the Departed Cats, may prove as fatal as the deadly attraction our narrator feels for the local man who is the Vizier, or Captain, of the home team...Categorized as:
historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
![The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman]()
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan... -
![Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes]()
Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn a poor town in Kansas, an African American family struggles. At its centre sits Sandy Rodgers - a young boy attempting to find purpose amid the chaos, meagreness and music of his surroundings...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary 20th-century arkansas -
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![The Street by Ann Petry]()
The Street by Ann Petry
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsThe Street tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary urban 20th-century adult -
![Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah]()
Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTrans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as "predators," "destroyers," and "zombies"...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book colonization -
![Fathers and Crows by William T. Vollmann]()
Fathers and Crows by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWith the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he brought to The Ice-Shirt, William T. Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Indians and Europeans in the New World...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult book early-modern fiction -
![The Cake Tree in the Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka]()
The Cake Tree in the Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIntensely moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult anthologies asian-mc fiction -
![This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey]()
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“In a time when religious liberty is on trial, This Is How It Begins is an extraordinarily pertinent novel dripping in suspense and powerful scenes of political discourse . . . a must read . . .” —Foreword (starred review)A woman bearing a thorny secret. A man fighting for religious freedom. A battle neither saw coming. Massachusetts, 2009. Ludka Zeilonka is relishing her emeritus status... -
![An Instant in the Wind by André P. Brink]()
An Instant in the Wind by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas's final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master's vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother's funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book colonization -
![The Lost Sister of Fifth Avenue by Ella Carey]()
The Lost Sister of Fifth Avenue by Ella Carey
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNew York, 1938: Martha pulled the door of her Fifth Avenue apartment closed, her heart thumping, re-reading the telegram she’d been dreading. Her beloved sister Charlotte needed her help. She was alone in Paris, and the threat of Nazi invasion grew ever stronger. The time had come for Martha to make the bravest decision of her life. She needed to bring Charlotte home...Categorized as:
historical-fiction urban literary-fiction ww2 family female-mc friendship historical -
![Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Nellie Y. McKay]()
Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Nellie Y. McKay
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis modern classic is “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem—with a foreword by James Baldwin ( Publishers Weekly ). Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction social-commentary poc-mc urban black-mc fiction classics -
![Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson]()
Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“No one except perhaps Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker“A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material... -
![The Book of Devices by İhsan Oktay Anar]()
The Book of Devices by İhsan Oktay Anar
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"He had sought to be the agent of all forces and actions on the Earth, and thus, just as he had transformed iron ingot into a music box, so had he strived to transform the Earth and all it contained into a machine." Ihsan Oktay Anar's 1996 novella, "The Book of Devices," is a skeleton key to the ever-inventive author's fictional world set in the Ottoman times...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical fantasy -
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![Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright]()
Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSet in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the postslavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy... -
![A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique]()
A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJulius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome. Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather’s ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult book classics coming-of-age -
![The Short Stories by Langston Hughes]()
The Short Stories by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963--the most comprehensive available--showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected...Categorized as:
literary-fiction black-mc poc-mc fiction classics anthologies 20th-century historical -
![News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso]()
News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOne of the acknowledged masterpieces of Mexican literature, Fernando del Paso's News from the Empire is a powerful and encyclopedic novel of the tragic lives of Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, the short-lived Emperor and Empress of Mexico...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction historical 20th-century politics book adult -
![Buddies by Ethan Mordden]()
Buddies by Ethan Mordden
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on character in Ethan Mordden's Buddies. This need for friendship, for nonerotic affection, for buddies, shines forth as an American obsession from Moby-Dick through Of Mice and Men to The Sting... -
![A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein]()
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics -
![Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet]()
Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsStarting in 1970, Jean Genet—petty thief, prostitute, modernist master—spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring... -
![The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor]()
The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsO'Connor's 1956 account of big-city politics, inspired by the career of longtime Boston Mayor James M. Curley, portrays its Irish-American political boss as a demagogue and a rogue who nonetheless deeply understands his constituents. The book was later made into a John Ford film staring Spencer Tracy... -
![I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight]()
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBeginning in the late 1950s, this novel tells the story of Marietta Cook, a tall girl growing up in Pine Gardens, a Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina. When Marietta's mother dies, she heads to Charleston in search of her uncle - only to find a lover and return pregnant with twins two years later... -
![A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson]()
A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn airline captain crafts a riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the remarkable true life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads... -
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![The Collected Stories by Colette]()
The Collected Stories by Colette
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Collected Stories of Colette beings together in one volume for the first time in any language the comprehensive collection of short stories by the novelist known worldwide as Colette, and now acknowledged, with Proust, as the most original French narrative writer of the first half of our century...Categorized as:
historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics female-author -
![Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet]()
Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis is the third of Genet's prose works to be published in the United States, following Our Lady of the Flowers (1963) and The Thief's Journal (1964). It is, however, Genet's second novel, having been written in La Santé and Tourelles prisons in 1943, directly after Our Lady of the Flowers...Categorized as:
historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics fiction -
![All We Left Behind by Danielle R. Graham]()
All We Left Behind by Danielle R. Graham
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz‘Heart-wrenching. Emotional. A powerful story of wartime love and devotion’ Glynis Peters, author of The Secret OrphanA powerful and incredibly moving historical novel inspired by an untold story of the Second World War.Vancouver 1941As the war rages around the world, Hitler’s fury is yet to be felt on the peaceful shores of Mayne Island...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century book family fiction historical -
![Lightning Men by Thomas Mullen]()
Lightning Men by Thomas Mullen
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the acclaimed author of The Last Town on Earth comes the gripping follow-up to Darktown, a “combustible procedural that will knock the wind out of you” (The New York Times).Officer Denny Rakestraw, “Negro Officers” Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith, and Sergeant McInnis have their hands full in an overcrowded and rapidly changing Atlanta...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, Mary Helen Washington]()
Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, Mary Helen Washington
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA vivid and bittersweet classic coming-of-age tale, set in immigrant Brooklyn. Remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control. --The New Yorker An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears... -
![The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden]()
The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Book of Harlan opens with the courtship of Harlan's parents and his 1917 birth in Macon, Georgia. After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he eventually becomes a professional musician... -
![Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair]()
Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet on Chicago's Southside in the mid-to-late 60s, Coffee Will Make You Black is the moving and entertaining tale of Jean "Stevie" Stevenson, a young black woman growing up through the Civil Rights and Black Power movements...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction lgbtq literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary urban 20th-century -
![The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker]()
The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA visionary cast of characters weave together their past and present in a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales.It is the story of the dispossessed and displaced, of peoples whose history is ancient and whose future is yet to come... -
![The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller]()
The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTwo sisters. One unassuming haven. Endless opportunities for grace.During Jim Crow America, there was only one place Black Americans could safely refuel their vehicles along what would eventually become iconic Route 66. But more than just a place to refuel, it was a place to fill up the soul, build community, and find strength...Categorized as:
historical-fiction poc-mc social-commentary black-mc audiobook christian fiction historical -
![Zayni Barakat by Gamal al-Ghitani, جمال الغيطاني]()
Zayni Barakat by Gamal al-Ghitani, جمال الغيطاني
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical politics -
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![Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden]()
Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi--a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc social-commentary 20th-century adult audiobook -
![The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright]()
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel from the 1940s by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy. Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction social-commentary black-mc urban poc-mc fiction classics -
![Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes, Milan Kundera]()
Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes, Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsPerhaps the most ambitious novel from one of Mexico's greatest writers, the narrative covers 20 centuries of European and American culture, and prominently features the construction of El Escorial by Philip II. The title is Latin for "Our earth"... -
![Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah]()
Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigrationIt’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have fled Lebanon and moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories.. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc fiction audiobook historical family 20th-century -
![The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose]()
The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![Like People in History by Felice Picano]()
Like People in History by Felice Picano
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTraces forty years in the life of two gay men who share a madcap but enduring relationship and a passion for a handsome Vietnam veteran, against the backdrop of gay urban culture from the fifties up to the present...
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