Books like 'The Romantics'
Readers who enjoyed The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 (Revised, Corrected, and Expanded Edition) by E.E. Cummings
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAt the time of his death in 1962, E. E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression...Categorized as:
friendship literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction -
Gilded Girl by Pamela M. Kelley
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA rags-to-riches saga set in the Gilded Age.When Eliza Chapman, a London ladies maid, learns that her real father is one of the richest men in New York City her whole world changes. He has sent a one-way ticket for her to join him, his mother and his two daughters at his palatial Manhattan mansion. Eliza suddenly has her own ladies maid and learns that she is expected to find a husband... -
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe story of a train filled with toys and gifts for little boys and girls that breaks down before reaching the children. After asking several passing trains for help over the hill, a little blue train agrees to help the stranded toys. Even though she is small, the blue train tries her best to bring the toys to the children on the other side of the hill...Categorized as:
family friendship literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals book children -
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, Lydia Davis
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin...Categorized as:
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Under a Greek Moon by Carol Kirkwood
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe escapist Sunday Times bestselling debut from the nation’s best loved TV presenter, Carol Kirkwood.‘Loved it! It sizzles with secrets and passion... -
Rose by Li-Young Lee, Gerald Stern
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this outstanding first book of poems, Lee is unafraid to show emotion, especially when writing about his father or his wife. "But there is wisdom/ in the hour in which a boy/ sits in his room listening," says the first poem, and Lee's silent willingness to step outside himself imbues Rose with a rare sensitivity... -
Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right... -
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe best of Bukowski's novels, stories, and poems, this collection reads like an autobiography, relating the extraordinary story of his life and offering a sometimes harrowing, invariably exhilarating reading experience. A must for this counterculture idol's legion of fans...Categorized as:
female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction -
Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHer captivating bestseller of loss and the healing power of love now re-issued with a stunning new jacket look. Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in the pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog Horace and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence... -
The Wishing Well by Anna Jacobs
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen her unfaithful husband, Craig, dies in a car accident, shortly after moving out of the family home, Laura Wells decides to leave Australia and go back to her native Lancashire to help nurse her ailing mother. After all, Laura’s two children, Ryan and Deb, are grown up now, and Deb has made it plain that she holder her mother responsible for her father’s desertion and death... -
Family Connections by Anna Jacobs
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFAMILY CONNECTIONS While sorting through her father’s papers after his death, Australian Gina Porter discovers a secret in his past. Does she have family in the UK she doen’t know about? She’s longed for an extended family all her life. Though her two daughters make many demands of her, expecting her to babysit at a moment’s notice, she decides to travel to England to investigate... -
Fool for Love and Other Plays by Sam Shepard
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHere are eight of Pulitzer-prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays. This brilliant American dramatist creates what The New Yorker dubbed "Shepard Country"--a landscape of the imagination, a unique theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciouness, our fears and fantasies... -
Island: The Complete Stories by Alistair MacLeod
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years.A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction -
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsRichard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York—and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years... -
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The Selected Stories Of Mavis Gallant by Mavis Gallant
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA collection of fifty-two short stories, written between 1953 and 1995, by Mavis Gallant...Categorized as:
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Angels and Men by Catherine Fox
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsParson’s daughter Mara Johns arrives as a postgraduate student at a great northern cathedral city. Antagonistic to the church and fiercely independent, she repels all friendly overtures and seeks spiritual answers in her theological research. But when her past involvement in an extreme sect resurfaces, she finds her quest won’t stay academic... -
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction family female-mc romance contemporary historical-fiction fiction war -
A Secret In The Family by Lyn Andrews
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen best friends Dee Campbell and Jean Williams leave school in 1959, it feels like every opportunity awaits them. Their families haven't long moved from a rundown part of the city to leafy Kirkby when Jean???s father wins the Irish sweepstake and soon Jean's set up her own hairdressing salon, while both girls have fallen for good-looking lads with prospects... -
The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems by Michael Ondaatje
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMichael Ondaatje’s new selected poems, The Cinnamon Peeler, brings together poems written between 1963 and 1990, including work from his most recent collection, Secular Love. These poems bear witness to the extraordinary gifts that have won high praise for this truly original poet and novelist...Categorized as:
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The Forgotten Recipe by Amy Clipston
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAfter losing her fiancé in a tragic accident, Veronica Fisher finds solace in the old recipes stored in her mother’s hope chest—and in a special visitor who comes to her bake stand to purchase her old-fashioned raspberry pies. Veronica Fisher knows how lucky she is to be marrying her best friend. Seth Lapp is kind, hardworking, and handsome—but most importantly, he loves Veronica... -
The Dilemma by Julia Roberts
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMy child means everything to me. But saving his life means destroying my best friend’s family…I didn’t plan to fall pregnant, but when I found out, I was overjoyed. Even though I’d be going it alone, I swore I’d give my baby everything they needed.But I didn’t know who the man I met on that sweltering summer night, the father of my child, really was...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction female-mc friendship audiobook fiction thriller psychological -
A Borrowed Path by Imogen Clark
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHome is where the heartache is.Eve has always had a tricky relationship with her mother, Agatha, and returning to Fox House, the family home, hasn’t made it any easier. When Eve’s daughter, Lyra, and granddaughter, Skye, unexpectedly turn up, it becomes clear that four generations of women under one roof is a recipe for trouble. Not least because Lyra clearly needs help but refuses to say why...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction female-mc friendship audiobook fiction suspense season-summer -
In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAmong the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the...Categorized as:
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The Room on the Roof by Ruskin Bond
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe Room on the Roof is a timeless coming-of-age novel that will resonate with a whole new generation of readers. Written by renowned author Ruskin Bond when he was just seventeen, it is the story of Rusty, a teenage Anglo-Indian boy who is orphaned and has to live with his English guardian in the stifling European quarter of Dehra Dun...Categorized as:
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The Unseen World by Liz Moore
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAda Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question...Categorized as:
bildungsroman family female-mc friendship literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century ai -
The Butterfly Garden by Rachel Burton
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA gripping and beautiful tale of love, loss and secrets. 1963: When Clara Samuels buys Butterfly Cottage, she knows the scandal she’ll cause. A single woman buying property is not the ‘done thing’, especially not in a village like Carybrook. But Clara has been in love with Butterfly Cottage, and its garden, since she used to play there before the War... -
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsTalk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change...Categorized as:
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Spring, Summer, Autumn, Us by Fiona Collins
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFour decades. Four seasons. Four chance encounters with the same man. Spring 1986, Oxford. Rachel has landed on her engaged to handsome author Jonny, soon to be stepmother to his young daughter Teddy, and with a dream to open her own art gallery. It’s everything she wished for during her unsettled childhood...Categorized as:
literary-fiction female-mc family romance fiction contemporary audiobook womens-fiction -
Blue Plate Special by Michelle D. Kwasney
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDoomed loves, failed families, nixed dreamssomeone else's leftovers are heaped on our plates the day we come into this world. Big Macs and pop tunes mask the emptiness as Madeline watches her mom drink away their welfare checks. Until the day Tad, a quirky McDonald's counter boy, asks Madeline out for a date, and she gets her first taste of normal... -
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWritten as a letter from a Zimbabwean mother to her daughter, a student at Harvard, J. Nozipo Maraire evokes the moving story of a mother reaching out to her daughter to share the lessons life has taught her and bring the two closer than ever before...Categorized as:
literary-fiction family fiction historical-fiction contemporary epistolary 20th-century book -
Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe bestselling tale-powerful, compassionate, humorous-of the three Lovejoy sisters reunited in their hometown of Mulberry, Georgia, on the occasion of their mother’s death. As the emotionally scarred Lovejoys prepare for their mother’s funeral, the spirit of the selfish and manipulative Mudear hovers above them, complaining about her daughters’ “ugly ways” in death as she did in life... -
Medea and Her Children by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Ludmila Ulitskaya
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMedea Georgievna Sinoply Mendez is an iconic figure in her Crimean village, the last remaining pure-blooded Greek in a family that has lived on that coast for centuries. Childless Medea is the touchstone of a large family, which gathers each spring and summer at her home...Categorized as:
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The Wine of Youth by John Fante
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsContains the stories in Dago Red, first published in 1940, together with seven new stories, including "A Nun No More" and "My Father’s God...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction -
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2013A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents... -
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I'll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe New York Times bestselling author revisits the characters from her beloved novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in this captivating, beautifully written drama involving family, friendship, secrets, sacrifice, courage, and true love for fans of Jojo Moyes, Elin Hilderbrand, and Nancy ThayerOn the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron... -
In a Single Moment by Imogen Clark
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom million-copy bestselling author Imogen Clark comes a story of two families, two babies and one maddeningly hot day that will change their lives forever.It’s the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave and there’s not a breath of fresh air in the labour ward at Lincoln County Hospital. Michelle is having her fourth child, a girl, while beloved husband Dean is sipping a cold pint in the pub...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction female-mc friendship fiction historical-fiction audiobook contemporary -
The Book Of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGalway Kinnell's poetry has always been marked by richness of language, devotion to the things and creatures of the world, and an effort to transform every understanding into the universality of art... -
The Promise by Danielle Steel
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsYoung architect Micheal Hillyard and artist Nancy McAllister are determined to get married despite his wealthy mother's disapproval. Then minutes before their wedding, a terrifying accident and a cruel deception separate Micheal and Nancy--perhaps forever. Each pursues a new life--Nancy in California, Micheal in New York... -
The Apple Orchard by Susan Wiggs
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Susan Wiggs"...sweet, crisp and juicy."--Elin Hilderbrand"A powerful story of love, loss, hope and redemption."-- Kirkus , Starred ReviewTess Delaney makes a living restoring stolen treasures to their owners. People like Annelise Winther, who has just been reunited with her mother's long gone necklace, worth a sum that could change her life... -
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe story of friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale": waiting for that man who will take their breath away... -
Full of Life by John Fante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe narrator is an Italian-American writer living in Los Angeles with his pregnant wife, Joyce. As the novel follows the course of Joyce's pregnancy, John deals with Joyce's shifting emotional moods, her growing interest in Roman Catholicism (from which John himself has fallen away), and termite infestation in the house... -
The Lover by A.B. Yehoshua, Philip Simpson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“Elusive, haunting.”— New York Times Book Review A husband’s search for his wife’s lover, lost amid the turbulence of the Yom Kippur War, is the heart of this dreamlike novel. Through five different perspectives, Yehoshua explores the realities and consequences of the affair and the search, laying bare deep-rooted tensions within family, between generations, between Jews and Arabs...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction historical-fiction -
THE PARTING GLASS by Emilie Richards
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsUSA Today bestselling author Emilie Richards continues the journey begun in her beloved novel Whiskey Island with this unforgettable tale of star-crossed lovers, murder and three sisters who discover a hidden legacy that will lead them home at last to Ireland. Megan, who is feeling hopelessly unprepared in her new marriage, has no idea how to fix the problems already facing her relationship... -
The Family Ship by Sonja Yoerg
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of True Places comes a disarming and emotional novel about a family in distress and a daughter’s mission to keep it from going under.Chesapeake Bay, 1980. Eighteen-year-old Verity Vergennes is the captain of the USS Nepenthe, and her seven younger siblings are her crew... -
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The Lockhart Women by Mary Camarillo
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBrenda Lockhart’s family has been living well beyond their means for too long when Brenda’s husband leaves them—for an older and less attractive woman than Brenda, no less. Brenda’s never worked outside the home, and the family’s economic situation quickly declines...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction female-mc fiction historical-fiction womens-fiction audiobook contemporary -
Mona in Three Acts by Griet Op de Beeck, Michele Hutchison
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn this international bestseller, a woman comes of age in a poignant novel about forgiveness, pain, and self-discovery.Mona’s demanding mother ruled their home until a car crash took her life and changed their family forever. Left to tend to a distant father and a needy younger brother, Mona finds her new role almost too much to bear...Categorized as:
family female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century audiobook book coming-of-age -
Fine Things by Danielle Steel
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSmart, likable, Bernie Fine was the wonder boy of Wolff's, New York's most glamorous department store. A senior VP moving up, he arrives in San Fransisco to open a West Coast store. His career is skyrocketing, but his life is lacking a center... -
The Snapper by Roddy Doyle
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, the follow up to his acclaimed debut novel The CommitmentsWatch for Roddy Doyle's new novel, Smile, coming in October of 2017Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. She's also unmarried, living at home, working in a grocery store, and keeping the father's identity a secret. Her own father, Jimmy Sr., is shocked by the news... -
Septuagenarian Stew by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSeptuagenarian Stew is a combination of poetry and stories written by Charles Bukowski that delve into the lives of different people on the backstreets of Los Angeles...Categorized as:
female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary death -
Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAt the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence—an abyss that pulls everyone to its brink—created by a family’s only son, Michele, who has fled from Italy to England to escape the dangers and threats of his radical political ties...
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