Books like 'The Dilemma'
Readers who enjoyed The Dilemma by Julia Roberts also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary psychological 20th century family thriller literary-fiction ww2 children friendship female-mc
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Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe perennially popular tale of Alexander's worst day is a storybook that belongs on every child's bookshelf.Alexander knew it was going to be a terrible day when he woke up with gum in this hair.And it got worse...His best friend deserted him. There was no dessert in his lunch bag...Categorized as:
children family friendship 20th-century action-adventure book children-books classics -
![Oscar And The Lady In Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt]()
Oscar And The Lady In Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratings"First published in France as Oscar et la dame rose by Editions Albin Michel, S.A., 2002"--T.p. verso...Categorized as:
children family friendship literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century audiobook book -
![The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck]()
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Grapes of Wrath / The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and... -
![Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó]()
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... -
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![Self-Help by Lorrie Moore]()
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe publication of "Self-Help" introduced readers to Lorrie Moore's refined blend of humor and insight, and made her one of the best-loved writers of her generation. These stories, told in a voice that is at once witty, melancholy, and bravely honest, paint a tableau of lovers and family, of loss and pleasure, desire and memory... -
![Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher]()
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... -
![Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane]()
Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratings“Chilling, completely credible….[An] absolutely gripping story.” —Chicago TribuneNew York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island) vividly captures the complex beauty and darkness of working-class Boston in this gripping, deeply evocative thriller... -
![The Secret of Villa Alba by Louise Douglas]()
The Secret of Villa Alba by Louise Douglas
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratings1968, Sicily. Just months after a terrible earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba del Ciliegio, on roads overlooked by the eerie backdrop of the flattened ghost town. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene... -
![The Knot of Vipers by François Mauriac, David Lodge]()
The Knot of Vipers by François Mauriac, David Lodge
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe masterpiece of one of the greatest modern Catholic writersthe divine grace that remains available to each of us until the very moment of our deaths. It is the unforgettable tale of the battle for one man's soul... -
![The Progress of Love by Alice Munro]()
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... -
![Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: 13 Stories by Alice Munro]()
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: 13 Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the thirteen stories in her remarkable second collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique that led no less a critic than John Updike to compare her to Chekhov...Categorized as:
female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
![Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro]()
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics contemporary -
![Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante]()
Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMy first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the east by Los Angeles Street, on the south by Pershing Square, and on the north by Civic Center... -
![Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai]()
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century book classics contemporary drama existentialism -
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![Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark]()
Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsNancy Harmon long ago fled the heartbreak of her first marriage, the macabre deaths of her two little children, and the shocking charges against her. She changed her name, dyed her hair, and left California for the windswept peace of Cape Cod... -
![House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk]()
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller Winner of the Gunter Grass PrizeNowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story...Categorized as:
literary-fiction ww2 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
![There's A Boy In The Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar]()
There's A Boy In The Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWith the new school counselor's help, Bradley begins to see himself as less of a monster and more of an individual capable of believing in himself... -
![The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing]()
The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDorris Lessing's classic series of autobiographical novels is the fictional counterpart to Under My Skin. In these five novels, first published in the 1950's and 60s, Doris Lessing transformed her fascinating life into fiction, creating her most complex and compelling character, Martha Quest... -
![A Suitable Vengeance by Elizabeth George]()
A Suitable Vengeance by Elizabeth George
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings'Award-winning author Elizabeth George gives us an early glimpse into the lives of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James, and Lady Helen Clyde in a superlative mystery that is also a fascinating inquiry into the crimes of the heart. Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton, has brought to Howenstow, his family home, the young woman he has asked to be his bride... -
![The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin]()
The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn an evening in late summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of fishing in a place that has brought him solace for thirty years, and an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him... -
![Birdy by William Wharton]()
Birdy by William Wharton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness... -
![The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore]()
The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings'The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne' launched Brian Moore's distinguished literary career and also – because of his sensitive portrayal of her – enshrined Judith Hearne in the gallery of literature's unforgettable women. A penetrating, comic, tragic tale of a plain woman, it is a novel that occasionally sings with the lilt of the Irish greats... -
![In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass]()
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIN THIS SUITE of five short pieces -- one of the unqualified literary masterpieces of the American 1960s -- William Gass finds five beautiful forms in which to explore the signature theme of his fiction: the solitary soul’s poignant, conflicted, and doomed pursuit of love and community...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction -
![Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver]()
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMavis Gallant is an undisputed master of the short story whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequaled skill. This new collection of 15 of Gallant's stories, edited by best-selling author Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived...Categorized as:
female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook british-isles classics -
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![Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes]()
Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsMeet Rachel Walsh. She has a pair of size 8 feet and such a fondness for recreational drugs that her family has forked out the cash for a spell in Cloisters – Dublin’s answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She’s only agreed to her incarceration because she’s heard that rehab is wall-to-wall jacuzzis, gymnasiums and rock stars going tepid turkey – and it’s about time she had a holiday... -
![Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson]()
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 83 ratingsMelinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe... -
![Another You by Jane Cable]()
Another You by Jane Cable
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA book that will stay with you long after the story ends! Perfect for fans of Diane Chamberlain, Nora Roberts, Lorna Cook and Victoria Connelly. Sometimes the hardest person to save is yourself… Marie Johnson fell in love with The Smugglers pub when she first moved to Dorset with her husband, Stephen... -
![Las huellas imborrables by Camilla Läckberg]()
Las huellas imborrables by Camilla Läckberg
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe SandMan Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition"So the spirit of the universe will cease to think, and everything will cease to exist." "That is not something I care about, glory. The stars burn and fall. People live and die. Someday, even "eternity" will come to an end. I am responsible for it all the time. "" Did not you care, the king of dreams? Maybe. It may not be your responsibility... -
![Rabbit at Rest by John Updike]()
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWinner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son and daughter-in-law are acting erratically, his wife Janice wants to work, and Rabbit is searching his soul, looking for reasons to live... -
![The Women's Room by Marilyn French]()
The Women's Room by Marilyn French
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men, The Women's Room follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives... -
![Light Years by James Salter]()
Light Years by James Salter
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach... -
![Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban]()
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe turtles in London Zoo become the mutual obsession of two lonely strangers who dream of setting free the turtles and themselves. Detail by detail their diaries record a world in which thought leads to action and action brings William G. and Neaera H. to their own open sea... -
![A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch, Peter Reed]()
A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch, Peter Reed
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties... -
![Look At Me by Anita Brookner]()
Look At Me by Anita Brookner
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratings'Once a thing is known it can never be unknown.' By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, by night she haunts the room of a West London mansion flat. Everything changes, however, when she is adopted by charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix. They draw her into their tight circle of friends. Suddenly, Frances' life is full and ripe with new engagements... -
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![The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant]()
The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNorman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan... -
![The High Flyer by Susan Howatch]()
The High Flyer by Susan Howatch
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSuccessful London lawyer Carter Graham has power, sex appeal, and a well-ordered life. Everything has gone according to plan, including her recent marriage to Kim Betz, an investment banker with the right combination of looks and position. On the surface it appears to be a match made in heaven. The only problem is Kim’s ex-wife...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book christian contemporary -
![Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder]()
Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsA page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print...Categorized as:
children female-mc literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book classics -
![Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike]()
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWinner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award The hero of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, ten years after the events of Rabbit Redux, has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as the chief sales representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania... -
![LOVE AND MONEY by Ruth Harris]()
LOVE AND MONEY by Ruth Harris
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA SECRET BABY. A FORTUNE AT STAKE. A BROKEN FAMILY HEALED.Beautiful, pampered Park Avenue heiress, Deedee Dahlen, and Lana Bantry, abused child from the wrong side of the tracks, live in different worlds. They share a father but not an inheritance, a lover but not a commitment. They are sisters—and strangers...Categorized as:
family female-mc literary-fiction romance fiction contemporary historical-fiction womens-fiction -
![The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble]()
The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Gates of Ivory is a vibrant, mesmerizing novel that juxtaposes the cynical, sophisticated realm of London against the dreaded world of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In London, psychiatrist Liz Headleand receives an unexpected package, containing, among other things, a laundry bill from a hotel in Bangkok, old newspaper clippings, and two human finger bones...Categorized as:
female-mc friendship literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
![Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys]()
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very much like the another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde... -
![The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant]()
The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFor most of us, remembering the Holocaust requires effort; we listen to stories, watch films, read histories. But the people who came to be called “survivors” could not avoid their memories. Sol Nazerman, protagonist of Edward Lewis Wallant’s The Pawnbroker, is one such sufferer.At 45, Nazerman, who survived Bergen-Belsen although his wife and children did not, runs a Harlem pawnshop...Categorized as:
literary-fiction ww2 fiction 20th-century historical-fiction religion psychological war -
![The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata]()
The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLibrarian's note: An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Ogata Shingo is growing old, and his memory is failing him. At night he hears only the sound of death in the distant rumble from the mountain. The relationships which have previously defined his life - with his son, his wife, and his attractive daughter-in-law - are dissolving, and Shingo is caught between love and destruction... -
![The Vanishing Princess: Stories by Jenny Diski]()
The Vanishing Princess: Stories by Jenny Diski
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe only story collection from the beloved Jenny Diski—darkly funny, subversive, sexy, and eccentric tales from one of the most original and intelligent voices of our timeJenny Diski’s prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous... -
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![House of Incest by Anaïs Nin, Val Telberg]()
House of Incest by Anaïs Nin, Val Telberg
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWith an introduction by Allison Pease, this new edition of House of Incest is a lyrical journey into the subconscious mind of one of the most celebrated feminist writers of the twentieth-century.Originally published in 1936, House of Incest is Anaïs Nin’s first work of fiction... -
![Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood]()
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsControversial painter Elaine Risley returns from Vancouver for a retrospective of her work. Here, in Toronto, the city of her youth, she confronts the submerged layers of her past – her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous Mrs. Smeath, and the two men Elaine later came to love in diverse and sometimes disastrous ways...Categorized as:
family female-mc friendship literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman book -
![Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker]()
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding... -
![By the Light of My Father's Smile by Alice Walker]()
By the Light of My Father's Smile by Alice Walker
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAll your life you have the necessary illusion that you know all there is to know about heartbreak. I hate to be the one to tell you about the heartbreak you will experience after you die...A family goes to the remote sierras of Mexico - the writer-to--be Susannah; her sister Magdalena; their father and mother... -
![The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell]()
The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMopsa, driven by a past scarred by madness and violence. Benet, stricken by the most grievous loss any woman can bear. Carol, trapped in a life of crushing drabness no lover can change. Three mothers joined by a single thread of terror, whirled into a spiral of kidnapping, murder, and a final, reckless affirmation of love... -
![I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green, Joanne Greenberg]()
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green, Joanne Greenberg
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsI Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity...
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