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Recommendations based on The Hand That First Held Mineby Maggie O'Farrell
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
by Maggie O'Farrell
Story of two women's struggle to uncover a dark family secret and reclaim their freedom.
In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her ... (Barnes & Noble)
After You'd Gone
by Maggie O'Farrell
Alice, a young woman, attempts suicide and her family tries to understand why. A story of love, loss, and family secrets.
Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours ... (Goodreads)
This Must Be the Place
by Maggie O'Farrell
A story of a family's journey through life, love, and loss, spanning continents and decades.
A dazzling novel from bestselling writer Maggie O'Farrell, winner of the Costa Novel Award—an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary ... (Goodreads)
Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson
A woman lives multiple lives, reflecting on choices and consequences and the power of love.
The novel has an unusual structure, repeatedly looping back in time to describe alternative possible lives for its central character, Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 to an ... (Wikipedia)
Corelli's Mandolin
by Louis de Bernières
A story of love and loss during the tumultuous era of World War II.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set in the early days of the second world war, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his ... (Goodreads)
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel
A gripping historical drama recounting the downfall of Anne Boleyn during the reign of Henry VIII.
Bring Up the Bodies follows closely upon the events of Wolf Hall . The King and Cromwell —now Master Secretary to the King's Privy Council—are guests of the Seymour family at Wolf Hall. The King ... (Wikipedia)
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
A man's obsession and journey of love, struggling with faith, hatred and forgiveness.
"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening ... (Goodreads)
Daughter
by Jane Shemilt
A mother's search for her missing daughter uncovers secrets and lies that threaten to tear her family apart.
A riveting psychological thriller about a mother’s obsessive search for her missing daughter. Jenny is a successful doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. ... (Barnes & Noble)
And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini
Interconnected stories of family and love, tracing the consequences of decisions made throughout life.
The novel opens in the year 1952. Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. ... (Wikipedia)
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
by Sebastian Faulks
A poignant love story set during World War I, exploring the impact of war on human relationships and the human psyche.
Birdsong has an episodic structure, and is split into seven sections which move between three different periods of time before, during and after the war in the Stephen Wraysford plot, and three ... (Wikipedia)
The Gustav Sonata
by Rose Tremain
A tale of two friends in Switzerland, spanning over 70 years, exploring the complexities of friendship, love, and betrayal.
Winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, , A poignant tale about the enduring friendship between two men under the shadow of the Second World War., Gustav Perle grows up in a small ... (Barnes & Noble)
Suite Française
by Irène Némirovsky
A story of love and loss set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France.
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. By the early l940s, when ... (Goodreads)
Swimming Lessons
by Claire Fuller
A woman disappears, leaving behind letters to her husband hidden in his books. Her daughter tries to uncover the truth about her mother's disappearance.
Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When ... (Goodreads)
The Truth About Melody Browne
by Lisa Jewell
Melody Browne's life is turned upside down when she discovers her past was a lie. She embarks on a journey to uncover the truth about her identity.
This “touching, insightful, and gripping story” (Sophie Kinsella, #1, New York Times, bestselling author) from the instant, New York Times, bestselling author of, Then She Was Gone, follows a young ... (Barnes & Noble)
One Day
by David Nicholls
A story of friendship and love, exploring the complexities of life and relationships.
Dexter and Emma spend the night together following their graduation from the University of Edinburgh , in 1988. They talk about how they will be once they are 40. While they do not become ... (Wikipedia)
State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
A journey in the Amazon rainforest to find a missing colleague and unlock the secrets of a mysterious drug.
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, "State of Wonder" presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional ... (Goodreads)
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
A man's journey of understanding, uncovering a dark secret from his past.
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of ... (Goodreads)
The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain
A woman's journey of self-discovery, navigating the complexities of a passionate and tumultuous relationship.
The Paris Wife focuses on the romance, marriage and divorce of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson, who met when Hemingway was 20 years old, and Richardson 28. They marry and move ... (Wikipedia)
The Summer Book
by Tove Jansson
A grandmother and her granddaughter explore a remote summer island together, learning about life, love, and nature.
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. Gradually, the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and ... (Goodreads)
Three Junes
by Julia Glass
A story of interconnected lives, spanning three summers of joy, sadness and self-discovery.
A luminous first novel, set in Greece, Scotland, Greenwich Village, and Long Island, that traces the members of a Scottish family as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of ... (Goodreads)
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
An American couple's struggle to stay afloat in suburban conventions and expectations.
Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the ... (Wikipedia)
The Chessmen
by Peter May
A story of crime, secrets, and betrayal, set in the Shetland Islands.
Fin Macleod, now head of security on a privately owned Lewis estate, is charged with investigating a spate of illegal game-hunting taking place on the island. This mission reunites him with Whistler ... (Goodreads)
Surfacing
by Margaret Atwood
A woman returns to her childhood home in search of her missing father, uncovering buried memories and confronting her own identity.
Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. Setting out with ... (Goodreads)
Moon Tiger
by Penelope Lively
A woman's life story unravels as she reflects on her past while coping with a terminal illness.
Claudia Hampton, a 76-year-old English woman and a professional historian, is terminally ill and is spending her last remaining moments in and out of consciousness thinking of writing a history of ... (Wikipedia)
Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson
Private investigator Tracy Waterhouse rescues a child and buys a dog, leading to a complex web of secrets and lies.
The main story takes place over a few days in present-day (2010) Leeds, England and vicinity. There are frequent flashbacks to 1975, when the mystery being investigated originated. ... (Wikipedia)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
The Clockmaker's Daughter
by Kate Morton
A story of love, loss, and mystery spanning over a century, centered around Birchwood Manor and the clockmaker's daughter.
My real name, no one remembers. The truth about that summer, no one else knows. In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon ... (Goodreads)
Woman on the Edge of Time
by Marge Piercy
A woman is sent to the future to see the potential of a utopian society and how it can be achieved.
In the 1970s, an impoverished but intelligent thirty-seven-year-old Mexican-American woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a resident of Spanish Harlem , is unfairly incarcerated in a New York mental ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry
A woman's life story, told through her own words, as she reflects on her life journeys.
The main character is an old woman, Roseanne McNulty, who now resides in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. Having been a patient for some fifty years or more, Roseanne decides to write an ... (Wikipedia)
Pachinko
by Lee Min-jin
A saga spanning four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, struggling to survive and thrive amidst prejudice and poverty.
The novel takes place over the course of three books: Book I Gohyang/Hometown, Book II Motherland, and Book III Pachinko. In 1883, in the little island fishing village of Yeongdo , which is a ferry ... (Wikipedia)
