Books like 'Vanishing Maps'
Readers who enjoyed Vanishing Maps by Cristina García also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Girl and the Goddess: Stories and Poems of Divine Wisdom by Nikita Gill
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBestselling poet, writer, and Instagram sensation Nikita Gill returns with a collection of poetry and prose exploring Hindu mythology and legend.Let her be a little less human, a little more divineGive her heart armor so it doesn't break as easily as mineMeet Paro. A girl with a strong will, a full heart, and much to learn...Categorized as:
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Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 25 ratings"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity...Categorized as:
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End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems...Categorized as:
latinx-mc literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Silver Threads by Bette Lee Crosby
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOn the day Jennifer Green was born a pile of stones was placed alongside her scale of life. A few were the dark gray of sorrow, but most were a pale blush color. The largest stone was the rose hue of a sunrise. That one would be placed on the scale the day she married Drew Bishop. Even more brilliant but a wee bit smaller was the pink stone glistening with specs of silver... -
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Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest.A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos...Categorized as:
historical-fiction latinx-mc literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc adult book contemporary -
Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCollected here are twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most brilliant and enchanting short stories, presented in the chronological order of their publication in Spanish from three volumes: Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother...Categorized as:
latinx-mc literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc 20th-century adult anthologies classics -
Your Absence is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA spellbinding saga about the inhabitants and inheritors of one rural community, by one of Iceland's most beloved novelists. A man comes to awareness in a church in rural Iceland, not knowing why he’s there or how he arrived... -
The Shiver by Jakub Małecki
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsONLY ONE CHAPTER - 1938-1969 One of the most renowned books of 2015.Polish bestseller.The book compared to the works of Johnatan Carroll, Fiodor Dostojewski, Andy Weir and Jurij Andruchowycz.The novel has been recommended by the best Polish Wiesław Myśliwski, Jacek Dukaj, Szczepan Twardoch, Wit Szostak.Masterly prose wrapped in magical realism...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism historical-fiction family fiction contemporary audiobook fantasy -
Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake. The Starlings live in Everton, an ordinary enough New Hampshire town...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism adult animals book contemporary -
Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire OshetskyMargaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.No one blames Margaret...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction lgbtq historical-fiction family fiction contemporary fantasy -
What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThrough nine emotionally vivid stories, all narrated from animal perspectives, Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s debut collection explores themes of environmentalism, conservation, identity, belonging, loss, and family with resounding heart and deep tenderness. In Kolluri’s pages, a faithful hound mourns the loss of the endangered rhino he swore to protect...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc magical-realism fiction fantasy animals outdoors anthologies -
Throwback by Maurene Goo
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBack to the Future meets The Joy Luck Club in this YA contemporary romance about a Korean American girl sent back to the ’90s to (reluctantly) help her teenage mom win Homecoming Queen.Being a first-generation Asian American immigrant is hard. You know what’s harder? Being the daughter of one...Categorized as:
historical-fiction family magical-realism poc-mc romance young-adult contemporary time-travel -
Once Upon a Book by Grace Lin, Kate Messner
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom Caldecott and Newbery Honoree Grace Lin and bestselling author Kate Messner comes a modern folktale about the joy of reading.Once upon a time, there was a girl. She went to a place alive with colors, where even the morning dew was warm. Alice loves to imagine herself in the magical pages of her favorite book...Categorized as:
family poc-mc magical-realism fantasy children-books action-adventure fiction children -
In a Thousand Different Ways by Cecelia Ahern
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFinding your way is never a simple journey…Alice sees the best in people.She also sees the worst.She sees a thousand different emotions and knows exactly what everyone around her is feeling.Every. Single. Day.But it’s the dark thoughts.The sadness. The rage.These are the things she can’t get out of her head. The things that overwhelm her...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction magical-realism fiction contemporary fantasy audiobook drama -
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The Axeman's Carnival by Catherine Chidgey
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEverywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now.Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism family historical-fiction fiction fantasy animals contemporary -
Oração para Desaparecer by Socorro Acioli
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPrimeiro romance de Socorro Acioli após A cabeça do santo, Oração para Desaparecer conta a história de uma mulher que, sem lembrança nenhuma de seu passado, precisa reconstruir a vida em um lugar completamente desconhecido, apenas com a língua portuguesa como porto seguro.Cida, uma mulher sem identidade nem memória, reconstrói pouco a pouco uma nova vida em um lugar completamente desconhecido...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction romance fiction fantasy contemporary audiobook book -
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsA young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte—who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire...Categorized as:
family lgbtq literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century adult animals anthologies -
Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsEmerging from a unique and powerful voice, this innovative collection offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies hidden just beyond the ordinary, skirting the border between childhood and adulthood...Categorized as:
lgbtq literary-fiction magical-realism anthologies contemporary fiction low-fantasy magic -
Fifth Life of the Cat Woman by Kathleen Dexter
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPart magical realism, part love story, this book is a vividly imagined (Jill Paton Walsh) allegory of prejudice, intolerance, and second chances...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism adult book contemporary female-author fiction -
The Night Visitor and Other Stories by B. Traven
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHere are ten of B. Traven's remarkable short stories. Three of them are long stories: The setting of "The Night Visitor" is a hacienda deep in the Mexican bush where a lonely American recreates in his imagination an eerie world of Indian folk legend...Categorized as:
latinx-mc literary-fiction poc-mc adult anthologies contemporary fiction industrial-era -
Into the Tall, Tall Grass by Loriel Ryon, Marisa Blake
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsYolanda Rodr�guez-O'Connell has a secret. All the members of her family have a magical gift--all, that is, except for Yolanda. Still, it's something she can never talk about...because, if she does, the townsfolk will call her family brujas--witches. When her grandmother, Wela, falls into an unexplained sleep, Yolanda is scared... -
Versions of Her by Andrea Lochen
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOn the surface, Melanie Kingstad-Keyes’s life is the picture of success. She’s a tenure track professor at a prestigious university and has a perfect husband. But a recent miscarriage has left her reeling and her marriage tenuous. Selling her family’s Lake Indigo summer home, which she hasn’t visited in fifteen years, feels like the perfect distraction from her problems... -
Romance through the Ages by Amy Harmon, Janette Rallison
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings(went off-sale April 30, 2014)USA TODAY BESTSELLING BOX SET: Romance through the Ages brings you SEVEN NOVELS from 7 bestselling authors, including New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon bestsellers. Join us for this fabulous, limited-availability collection... -
Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSafe as Houses, the debut story collection of Marie-Helene Bertino, proves that not all homes are shelters. The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In "Free Ham," a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary female-author female-mc fiction -
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The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsInspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game... -
Cent millions d'années et un jour by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings‘On the mountain, the only monsters are the ones you take with you.’Summer 1954. Stan has been hunting for fossils since the age of six. Now, having made a career out of studying the remains of tiny lifeforms, he hears a story he cannot forget: the skeleton of a huge creature, a veritable dragon, lies deep in an Alpine glacier. And he is determined to find it...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction drama action-adventure contemporary fantasy book -
The Bone Fire by György Dragomán
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom an award-winning European writer, a Gothic page-turner with all the menace and promise of a fairy tale In the aftermath of a revolution that has plunged her country into chaos, thirteen-year-old Emma’s small corner of the world is shattered after her dissident parents' death in a car crash... -
Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDarnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness. The sign taunts a fool into feeling some sense of achievement, some kind of end- that you have reached a destination in the very least. Yet as the sign states, Darnmoor is merely a gateway, a waypoint on the road to where you really want to be.Darnmoor is the home of the Billymil family, three generations who have lived in this 'gateway town'...Categorized as:
historical-fiction magical-realism literary-fiction poc-mc family fiction contemporary audiobook -
Everyone Knows You Go Home by Natalia Sylvester
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the acclaimed author of Chasing the Sun comes a new novel about immigration and the depths to which one Mexican American family will go for forgiveness and redemption.The first time Isabel meets her father-in-law, Omar, he’s already dead—an apparition appearing uninvited on her wedding day...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction latinx-mc literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc adult audiobook -
Kokoschka's Doll by Afonso Cruz
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt the age of forty-two, Bonifaz Vogel begins to hear a voice.But it doesn't belong to the mice or the woodworm, as he first imagines. Nor is it the voice of God, as he comes to believe. It belongs to young Isaac Dresner, who takes refuge in the cellar of Vogel's bird shop on the run from the soldier who shot his best friend... -
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe epic finale of the Latin American trilogy following The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and Senor Vivo and the Coca LordWhile the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment...Categorized as:
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The Mires by Tina Makereti
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA literary page turner that explores the intertwined lives of three neighboring families in a small coastal New Zealand town—a blend of Little Fires Everywhere and The Island of Missing Trees, combining domestic drama, suspense, indigenous folklore, and the threat of extremism on ordinary lives.Three women give birth in different countries and different decades... -
The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe People of Paper reveals the ever-elusive prophesies of the Shandean Baby Nostradamus and the approximate temperature and incendiary potential of halos. Herein disillusioned and AWOL saints reclaim their crowns and fight purses, while a gang of flower pickers go off to war, led by a lonely man who can not help but wet his bed in sadness...Categorized as:
historical-fiction latinx-mc literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc adult book classics -
The Back of the Turtle by Thomas King
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThis is Thomas King’s first literary novel in 15 years and follows on the success of the award-winning and bestselling The Inconvenient Indian and his beloved Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Bright Water, both of which continue to be taught in Canadian schools and universities. Green Grass, Running Water is widely considered a contemporary Canadian classic...Categorized as:
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Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes–a gambler notorious for never winning—dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him... -
Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEveryone has a story to tell ... Dirk McDonald's life was almost perfect. He lived with this grandmother, Fifi, in a beautiful gingerbread cottage in Hollywood. He had the beach, and his surfboard, and Fifi's red-and-white 1955 Pontiac convertible. But Dirk wasn't happy. Inside, he was harboring a deep, dark secret...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction lgbtq magical-realism book coming-of-age contemporary fiction -
Green Frog: Stories by Gina Chung
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA short story collection that explores Korean American womanhood, bodies, animals, and transformation as a means of survival...Categorized as:
magical-realism historical-fiction poc-mc literary-fiction family fiction fantasy contemporary -
Black Girls Must Be Magic by Jayne Allen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this highly anticipated second installment in the Black Girls Must Die Exhausted series, Tabitha Walker copes with more of life's challenges and a happy surprise--a baby--with a little help and lots of love from friends old and new.For Tabitha Walker, her grandmother's old adage, "Black girls must die exhausted" is becoming all too true... -
The Threads of the Heart by Carole Martinez
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThey say Frasquita knows magic, that she is a healer with occult powers, that perhaps she is a sorcerer. She does indeed possess a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for generations...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century adult book contemporary -
Daydreams of Angels by Heather O'Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsInventive, outlandish, and tender fairy tales from a bestselling authorThe fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O'Neill's work. In her bestselling novels Lullabies for Little Criminals and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, she transformed the shabbiest streets of Montreal with her beautiful, freewheeling metaphors... -
Blue-Skinned Gods by S.J. Sindu
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the award-winning author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies comes a brilliantly written, globe-spanning novel about identity, faith, family, and sexuality.In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin... -
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA luminous meditation on sons and fathers, ghosts of war, and living history that moves between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora... -
Devil Is Fine by John Vercher
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom acclaimed novelist John Vercher, a profoundly moving novel of what it means to be a father, a son, a writer, and a biracial American fighting to reconcile the pastReeling from the sudden death of his teenage son, our narrator receives a letter from an he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction historical-fiction family poc-mc fiction audiobook fantasy -
Vintage Murakami by Haruki Murakami
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNot since Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata has a Japanese writer won the international acclaim enjoyed hy Haruki Murakami. His genre- busting novels, short stones, and repodage, which have been translated into thirty-four languages, meld the surreal and the hard-boiled, deadpan comedy and delicate introspection...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc action-adventure angst anthologies asian-mc classics -
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Crow Winter by Karen McBride
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNanabush. A name that has a certain weight on the tongue—a taste. Like lit sage in a windowless room or aluminum foil on a metal filling.Trickster. Storyteller. Shape-shifter. An ancient troublemaker with the power to do great things, only he doesn’t want to put in the work.Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism poc-mc adult book contemporary female-author -
The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"In her amazing, wildly inventive collection, Amy Bonnaffons writes about transformation, each story further complicating the world as we know it. With a style that blends humor and sincerity in such strange, perfect ratios, Bonnaffons reveals the mysteries inside of us, just waiting to make themselves known. The Wrong Heaven, so wondrous, will alter you in all the necessary ways...Categorized as:
lgbtq literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies audiobook contemporary feminism -
A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratings“Wild and ambitious . . . [with] something ablaze at its core. It burns.” ― The New York Times Book ReviewA Tiny Upward Shove is inspired by Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice―or mercy.Marina Salles’s life does not end the day she wakes up dead...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction historical-fiction lgbtq poc-mc fiction fantasy horror -
Santa Lucia by Michelle Damiani
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsStorybook Italian villages only seem innocent. Surrounded by glimmering olive groves and embellished with flower-lined alleys, it would be easy to believe that Santa Lucia is as idyllic as it appears. After all, what drama could possibly unfold in such a picturesque village? As it happens, Santa Lucia is rife with secrets that are swapped over espresso at the local bar... -
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsPart visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction -
May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratings***Best Small Press Debut of 2012 -- The Atlantic Wire***May We Shed These Human Bodies peers through vast spaces and skies with the world's most powerful telescope to find humanity: wild and bright and hard as diamonds...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction fantasy
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