Books like 'Perfect Example'
Readers who enjoyed Perfect Example by John Porcellino also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century coming-of-age male-mc literary-fiction
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The Girls in Blue by Fenella J. Miller
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJane Hadley has nothing to lose when she runs away to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Whatever faces her in war-torn London can't be any worse than staying at home with her abusive father...The city is nothing like she could have imagined, but she's soon on the move, travelling from base to base for her top-secret training...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction romance historical-fiction historical fiction ww2 war -
![Surviving the Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander]()
Surviving the Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSpanning thirteen years from 1940 to 1953 and set against the epic panorama of WWII, SURVIVING THE FATHERLAND is a sweeping saga of family, love, and betrayal that illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the children's war...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book family fiction historical -
![Body and Soul by Frank Conroy]()
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name... -
![Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams]()
Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPorter Osborne Jr. is a precocious, sensitive, and rambunctious boy trying to make it through adolescence during the depression years. On a red-clay farm in Georgia he learns all there is to know about cotton chopping, hog killing, watermelon thumping, and mule handling. School provides a quick course in practical joking, schoolboy crushes, athletic glory, and clandestine sex...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century animals anthologies classics comedy family -
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![The Maid's Secret by Shari J. Ryan]()
The Maid's Secret by Shari J. Ryan
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCzechoslovakia, 1942: “Please don’t take him,” I plead to the Nazis.“I love you, Mila,” Ben says, hoarsely. “So much. Forever.”“Ben!” I shout as the soldiers pull him away, my heart thudding. “I love you. Please, come back.” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs as the world turns black around me.In the mountains of Bohemia, Mila, a Romani, works as a maid for an aristocratic Jewish family...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction europe western-central-europe historical-fiction war historical ww2 -
![The Wall by John Hersey]()
The Wall by John Hersey
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRiveting & compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men & women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution & as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation & cruelty--a gripping, visceral story, impossible to put down... -
![So Long: Stories 1987-1992 by Lucia Berlin]()
So Long: Stories 1987-1992 by Lucia Berlin
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwenty-three stories from a widely recognized master. Each will resonate, as questions of the human condition always do, in the heart of the reader. Lucia Berlin is widely recognized as a master of the short story... -
![Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson]()
Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFinalist 2019 Canadian Book Club AwardsShortlisted for the 2017 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction2017 IPPY Silver Medal WinnerSet in 1906 along the unspoiled shores of Lake Manitoba, Be Still the Water brings us into the fold of the Gudmundsson Family—immigrants determined to begin life anew in the Icelandic farming and fishing community of Siglunes...Categorized as:
literary-fiction coming-of-age fiction historical-fiction historical outdoors family survival -
![The Girl in the Photo by Catherine Hokin]()
The Girl in the Photo by Catherine Hokin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTheresienstadt Concentration Camp, 1944. ‘I have to go away, my darling. Please, be brave, stay alive, for me.’ Mama’s voice breaks. The little girl tries to stop the forbidden tears from falling, as the train takes her mother, and she is left alone…Berlin, six years later. Hanni Winter glows with pride as she shows her new husband around her first solo photography exhibition... -
![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... -
![Madame by Antoni Libera]()
Madame by Antoni Libera
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher. Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth... -
![Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig]()
Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe central volume in Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair is an authentic saga of the American experience at the turn of this century and a passionate, portrayal of the immigrants who dared to try new lives in the imposing Rocky Mountains... -
![Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe]()
Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"This is book club fiction at its finest!" —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author From New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe comes her highly anticipated Where the Rivers Merge, the first of two epic and triumphant novels celebrating one intrepid woman's life across multiple generations in the American South...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction historical-fiction fiction audiobook historical family friendship -
![Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco]()
Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis landmark novella—one of the central texts of Mexican literature, is eerily relevant to our current dark times—offers a child’s-eye view of a society beset by dictators, disease, and natural disasters, set in “the year of polio, foot-and-mouth disease, floods...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction romance fiction classics historical-fiction 20th-century drama -
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![Those I Have Lost by Sharon Maas]()
Those I Have Lost by Sharon Maas
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA secret love affair on a faraway island. Seas crawling with Japanese spies. A terrible war creeping ever closer…India, 1940. and Rosie is devastated by the sudden death of her beloved mother. The parties, smiles and games disappear, and although Rosie is desperate to stay in her home, her father cannot look after her...Categorized as:
literary-fiction coming-of-age historical-fiction historical womens-fiction ww2 war fiction -
![As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories by Alistair MacLeod]()
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories by Alistair MacLeod
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island... -
![The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman]()
The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 7 ratings“Funny, sad, and tender… Mimi Herman has written a novel that possesses a true and hard won understanding of the South.” —David Sedaris, author of Happy-Go-Lucky Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T... -
![To Risks Unknown: an all-action tale of naval warfare set at the height of WW2 from the master storyteller of the sea by Douglas Reeman]()
To Risks Unknown: an all-action tale of naval warfare set at the height of WW2 from the master storyteller of the sea by Douglas Reeman
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMulti-million copy bestselling author Douglas Reeman is the master of naval fiction and this action-packed, high-octane WW2 historical adventure is no exception. Jam-packed with tension, drama and all-guns-blazing warfare, it's perfect for fans of Clive Cussler, Bernard Cornwell and Wilbur Smith...Categorized as:
literary-fiction male-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction historical -
![Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash]()
Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“Spence-Ash has written the novel in eight points of view, but each character is utterly three-dimensional and distinct. This debut novel captivated me from start to finish... -
![The Spirit Level: Poems by Seamus Heaney]()
The Spirit Level: Poems by Seamus Heaney
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Spirit Level was the first book of poems Heaney published after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Reviewing this book in The New York Times Book Review, Richard Tillinghast noted that Heaney "has been and is here for good . . . [His poems] will last. Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing... -
![My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan]()
My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWilliam Saroyan's most celebrated work of short fiction- a boy's view of the American Dream. Aram Garoghlanian was a Californian, born in Fresno on the other side of the Southern Pacific tracks. But he was also part of a large, sprawling family of immigrant Armenians--a whole tribe of eccentric uncles, brawling cousins, and gentle women...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies children children-books classics fiction -
![Ancient Tillage by Raduan Nassar]()
Ancient Tillage by Raduan Nassar
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of “the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table, and our family.” He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father, who preaches from the head of the table as if from a pulpit, and loathes himself as he begins to harbor shameful feelings for his sister Ana... -
![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... -
![The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds]()
The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA captivating novel of love, art, food, desire and thwarted ambition, which builds propulsively over one scorching French summer in 1920s Provence.During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him... -
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![Finding a Girl in America by Andre Dubus]()
Finding a Girl in America by Andre Dubus
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAndre Dubus's third book of stories (now included in his Collected Short Stories & Novellas ) includes the novella, Finding a Girl in America which continues the life of Hank Allison, a man haunted by his failures as a husband, his concern for his daughter, and his need for a new marriage that can survive his obsessive writer's absorption with himself... -
![My Lvov: Holocaust Memoir of a twelve-year-old Girl by Janina Hescheles, Yaroslav Hrytsak]()
My Lvov: Holocaust Memoir of a twelve-year-old Girl by Janina Hescheles, Yaroslav Hrytsak
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhile still twelve years old, Janina Hescheles wrote this harrowing report from her hiding place in Cracow. The notebook, filled with clear childlike writing, was fortunately preserved. She tells about the German occupation of Lvov, the loss of her parents, about the Ghetto and mass murder in the notorious forced-labor camp Janowska in Lvov...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical historical-fiction -
![Details of a Sunset and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov]()
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDetails of a sunset --Bad day --Orache --Return of Chorb --Passenger --Letter that never reached Russia --Guide to Berlin --Doorbell --Thunderstorm --Reunion --Slice of life --Christmas --Busy man... -
![The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler]()
The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.‘We’re waiting. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up... -
![Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon]()
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPersonal narratives of a British officer on the Western front during World War I... -
![Velva Jean Learns to Fly by Jennifer Niven]()
Velva Jean Learns to Fly by Jennifer Niven
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the author of the New York Times bestselling All the Bright Places, after Pearl Harbor Velva Jean signs up for service and gets her wings, risking her life-and her heart. Velva Jean Hart, the fiercely independent heroine of Jennifer Niven's (Becoming Clementine) spectacular debut novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive, returns in a captivating adventure that literally sends her soaring...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book feminism fiction historical -
![Dark Spring by Unica Zürn]()
Dark Spring by Unica Zürn
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDark Spring is an autobiographical coming-of-age novel that reads more like an exorcism than a memoir. In it author Unica Zurn traces the roots of her obsessions: The exotic father she idealized, the "impure" mother she detested, the masochistic fantasies and onanistic rituals which she said described "the erotic life of a little girl based on my own childhood...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult book classics female-author fiction -
![Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony]()
Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA novel about a boy on the edge of adult responsibilities, this is the story of Shell - a Trinidadian boy wtho moves to a new village and meets two girls...Categorized as:
literary-fiction coming-of-age fiction young-adult high-school classics poc-author bildungsroman -
![The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey]()
The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom an award-winning novelist, a stunning portrait of late Raj India—a sweeping saga and a love story set against a background of huge political and cultural upheaval.YOU ASK FOR MY NAME, THE REAL ONE, AND I CANNOT TELL. IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF EFFORT. In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl... -
![The New Confessions by William Boyd]()
The New Confessions by William Boyd
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies comedy fiction historical -
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![The Outcast Girls by Shirley Dickson]()
The Outcast Girls by Shirley Dickson
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn utterly heartbreaking tale of two young girls, worlds apart, who are thrown together when they have lost everything. Fans of Wives of War, Before We Were Yours and Diney Costeloe will absolutely love this poignant and moving World War Two novel. England, 1937: After a devastating childhood at Blakely Hall Orphanage, fifteen-year-old Sandra is released... -
![Whisper of the Moon Moth by Lindsay Jayne Ashford]()
Whisper of the Moon Moth by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the author of The Color of Secrets and The Woman on the Orient Express comes a poignant novel inspired by the Hollywood legend—and the secrets of—actress Merle Oberon, famous for playing Cathy to Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in the film Wuthering Heights. For nineteen-year-old Estelle Thompson, going to the cinema is more than a way to pass the time…it’s a way out...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction romance historical-fiction historical fiction audiobook mystery -
![Tandia by Bryce Courtenay]()
Tandia by Bryce Courtenay
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTandia sat waiting anxiously for the fight to begin between the man she loved the most in the world and the man she hated the most in the world.Tandia is a child of Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only sixteen when she is first brutalised by the police. Her fear of the white man leads her to join the black resistance movement, where she trains as a terrorist...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
![The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn]()
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA transporting, irresistible debut novel that takes its heroine, Cristabel Seagrave, from a theatre in the gargantuan cavity of a beached whale into undercover operations during World War II—a story of love, family, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation. “The Whalebone Theatre is absolute aces…Quinn’s imagination and adventuresome spirit are a pleasure to behold...Categorized as:
literary-fiction coming-of-age historical-fiction fiction historical audiobook ww2 war -
![No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod]()
No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAlistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it.Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life... -
![Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante]()
Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea there lives a boy as innocent as a seabird. Arturo's mother is dead; his father away. Black-clad women care for him, give him the freedom to come and go as he likes. Then the father returns with a new wife, Nunziata, a girl barely older than Arturo. At first hatred and contempt are all the boy feels for his stepmother...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman book classics female-author -
![Restoration by Rose Tremain]()
Restoration by Rose Tremain
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRobert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age... -
![The Trees by Conrad Richter]()
The Trees by Conrad Richter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Trees is a moving novel of the beginning of the American trek to the west. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book classics family fiction -
![The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas]()
The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBeautiful and mysterious, this debut novel follows a priceless violin across five decades-from WWII to Stalinist Russia to the gilded international concert halls of today-and reveals the loss, love, and secrets of the families who owned it.A priceless violin. A family torn apart. A decision that could change everything.Berlin, 1939. Fourteen year old Simon Horowitz is awash in a world of music... -
![Sacred Country by Rose Tremain]()
Sacred Country by Rose Tremain
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAt the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world... -
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![Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw]()
Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor eighteen-year-old Shannon Lightley, life's been an endless parade across Europe, following either her actress mother or her renowned journalist father. Paris, Milan, London--Shannon has been everywhere, but somewhere along the way, she realizes she's really...nowhere...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century book classics female-author fiction historical -
![Net of Jewels by Ellen Gilchrist]()
Net of Jewels by Ellen Gilchrist
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsRhoda Manning is home for the summer in Dunleith, Alabama. In an age of conformity and innocence, the 19-year-old is tired of conventional virtue. Resisting her easy life, she yearns for meaning and beauty, profundity and mystery. Impulsive and adventurous, she attends a midnight meeting of the Klan, and then repelled, hurls herself into the civil rights movement...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book female-author fiction -
![Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder, Christopher Buckley]()
Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder, Christopher Buckley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe last of Thornton Wilder’s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventures of Wilder’s twin brother who died at birth. This edition features an updated afterword from Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the novelist, story and setting...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book classics fiction historical -
![The Vivisector by Patrick White]()
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him - all are used as fodder for his art... -
![Cold Sunflowers by Mark Sippings]()
Cold Sunflowers by Mark Sippings
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratings‘Everything happens for a reason.’ It’s 1972. Raymond Mann is seventeen. He is fearful of life and can’t get off buses. He says his prayers every night and spends too much time in his room. He meets Ernest Gardiner, a gentleman in his seventies who’s become tired of living and misses the days of chivalry and honour... -
![The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree by India Hayford]()
The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree by India Hayford
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDisguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, an unconventional young woman returns to her childhood home in rural 1967 Arkansas in this hauntingly visceral Southern tale of desperate choices, found family, folk magic and noisy ghosts. Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes...
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