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Recommendations based on The 158-Pound Marriageby John Irving
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A Son of the Circus
by John Irving
A doctor's search for his father and his own identity amidst a chaotic life of a traveling circus.
A Hindi film star . . . an American missionary . . . twins separated at birth . . . a dwarf chauffeur . . . a serial killer . . . all are on a collision course. In the tradition of A Prayer for Owen ... (Goodreads)
The World According to Garp
by John Irving
A humorous and heart-wrenching journey of life, love and literature.
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a ... (Goodreads)
A Widow for One Year
by John Irving
A complex story of love, loss and redemption told across four different time periods.
The year is 1958 and Ruth Cole is 4 years old. Although she is a loved child, her parents do not have a happy marriage. Her two older brothers died several years earlier in a tragic accident, and she ... (Wikipedia)
At the Wolf's Table
by Rosella Postorino
A young German woman is forced to taste Hitler's food for poison during WWII. A story of survival, guilt, and the power of friendship.
The main character is telling the story while in the present day as a senior citizen. , The novel won the Premio Campiello literary prize. , ... (Wikipedia)
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
A man's experience of the American Dream gone wrong, as his daughter's political radicalism unravels his family life.
Seymour Irving Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey , in 1927 as the elder son of a successful Jewish American glove manufacturer, Lou Levov, and his wife Sylvia. ... (Wikipedia)
Dicey's Song
by Cynthia Voigt
Four siblings navigate life after their mother abandons them. Dicey, the eldest, takes on the role of caretaker.
Picking up where, Homecoming, left off, Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings, Sammy, Maybeth, and James, are now living with their crazy and widowed grandmother Abigail Tillerman, or Gram as the ... (Wikipedia)
Gil's All Fright Diner
by A. Lee Martinez
A diner in the middle of nowhere, plagued by supernatural creatures and a mysterious cowboy.
In the backwoods southern town of Rockwood, a vampire and a werewolf in a run-down old truck come across Gil's All Night Diner, a 24-hour restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Nearly out of gas, they ... (Wikipedia)
Wish You Well
by David Baldacci
A family's journey to reclaim their heritage in the Appalachian Mountains.
The story starts out with the Cardinal family going on a trip to relieve them from some unknown stress. On the way back, it is revealed that the Cardinal family plans to move to California, due to ... (Wikipedia)
The Areas of My Expertise: An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order
by John Hodgman
A humorous almanac of random knowledge and trivia, organized into various topics.
The brilliant and uproarious #15 bestseller (i.e., a runaway phenomenon in its own right-no, seriously) - a lavish compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom - all of ... (Goodreads)
Laughter in the Dark
by Vladimir Nabokov
A middle-aged man falls in love with a young actress, leading to his downfall. Darkly humorous and tragic.
Albinus is a respected, reasonably happy married art critic who lives in Berlin . He lusts after the 17-year-old Margot whom he meets at a cinema, where she works, and woos her over the course of ... (Wikipedia)
Brian's Winter
by Gary Paulsen
A retelling of the classic novel, "Hatchet", from the perspective of a young boy struggling to survive in the frozen wilderness.
The story deals with Brian, still stranded at the L-shaped lake during the fall and winter, constructing a winter shelter, building snow shoes , being confronted by a bear , befriending and naming a ... (Wikipedia)
Birds Without Wings
by Louis de Bernières
A story of a town in Turkey affected by war and political turmoil, told through the lives of its inhabitants.
The pace of the book is languid, even slow. The story is set in Eskibahçe, a small fictional village in southwestern coastal Anatolia during the 1900s, spanning World War I and the era of Turkish ... (Wikipedia)
The Song of Roland
by Unknown
Epic poem of a knight's heroic battle against a powerful enemy.
On 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring ... (Goodreads)
Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben
Parents attempt to protect their teenage son from a dangerous online predator.
The story is introduced with the characters Marianne, Nash and Pietra. Pietra tricks Marianne by drugging her which leads to Nash brutally beating Marianne to death, his last words to her being: ... (Wikipedia)
The Great Train Robbery
by Michael Crichton
An ingenious heist of a London-bound train, with the criminals on a thrilling race against time.
In 1854, Edward Pierce, a charismatic and affluent "cracksman" or master thief, makes plans to steal a shipment of gold worth more than twelve thousand pounds being transported monthly from London to ... (Wikipedia)
Ocean Sea
by Alessandro Baricco
A poetic exploration of the sea, full of stories and emotions.
This haunting, suspenseful tale of love and vengeance by the author of the international bestseller Silk surges with the hypnotic power of the ocean sea. In Ocean Sea , Alessandro Baricco presents a ... (Goodreads)
Pudd'nhead Wilson
by Mark Twain
A slave switches her baby with her master's, leading to a series of tragic events in a small Missouri town.
The setting is the fictional frontier town of Dawson's Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town, and a clever ... (Wikipedia)
Leviathan
by Paul Auster
A mysterious stranger's dark and somewhat surreal journey of self-exploration.
The story is told by Peter Aaron about the victim, Benjamin Sachs, his best friend whom he first meets as a fellow writer in a Greenwich Village bar in 1975. Peter decides to try to piece together ... (Wikipedia)
Her Fearful Symmetry
by Audrey Niffenegger
Two sisters explore a haunted London estate, uncovering secrets of a mysterious past.
Elspeth dies of leukemia. Her apartment, located beside Highgate cemetery in London, is left for the daughters of Edwina, her estranged twin sister. Elspeth's nieces, identical twins Julia and ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible
by Paul Auster
A man's life is turned upside down when he receives a mysterious letter from a stranger. He embarks on a journey to uncover the truth about his past.
The first section, titled "Spring" and told in first person , chronicles the entanglement of Columbia University student Adam Walker with French political science professor Rudolf Born, who meet in ... (Wikipedia)
The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
An aging man's journey of self-discovery, revealing the beauty and complexity of life.
60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". In Brooklyn he meets his nephew , Tom, whom he ... (Wikipedia)
Confessions of a Mask
by Yukio Mishima
A young man's inner turmoil as he struggles to reconcile his true self with society's expectations.
The protagonist is referred to in the story as Kochan, which is the diminutive of the author's real name: Kimitake. Being raised during Japan's era of right-wing militarism and Imperialism, he ... (Wikipedia)
Lisey's Story
by Stephen King
A woman's journey to confront her past and unravel the secrets of her husband's death.
Lisey's Story is the story of Lisey Landon, the widow of a famous and wildly successful novelist, Scott Landon. The book tells two stories—Lisey's story in the present, and the story of her dead ... (Wikipedia)
The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
A chronicle of the lives of two couples, weaving together tragedy, deceit, and self-deception.
The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the story of those dissolutions, plus ... (Wikipedia)
The Moviegoer
by Walker Percy
A young man's journey of self-discovery, as he confronts the meaninglessness of life.
The Moviegoer tells the story of Jack "Binx" Bolling, a young stock-broker in postwar New Orleans . The decline of tradition in the Southern United States , the problems of his family and his ... (Wikipedia)
The Years of Rice and Salt
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Alternate history of a world without Europeans, where new cultures and civilizations rise.
The story is divided into ten parts. Book One, Awake to Emptiness , begins with Bold and Psin, scouts in Timur 's army, discovering a Magyar city where all the inhabitants have died from a plague. ... (Wikipedia)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie
Two city boys discover the beauty of the countryside, and the power of art, during the Cultural Revolution.
The novel, written by Dai Sijie, is about two teenage boys during the Chinese Cultural Revolution , Luo, described as having "a genius for storytelling", , and the unnamed narrator, "a fine ... (Wikipedia)
Marvel 1602
by Neil Gaiman
A reimagining of Marvel superheroes set in the Elizabethan era.
In Marvel 1602 , award-winning writer Neil Gaiman presents a unique vision of the Marvel Universe set four hundred years in the past. Classic Marvel icons such as the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic ... (Goodreads)
The High King
by Lloyd Alexander
An epic adventure of a young man's quest to reclaim the throne of Prydain.
The story begins only days after the conclusion of, Taran Wanderer, . With winter approaching, Taran and his companion Gurgi return from their wanderings to Caer Dallben after getting news from Kaw ... (Wikipedia)
The Chrysalids
by John Wyndham
A post-apocalyptic tale of survival and the struggle against oppressive forces.
The inhabitants of post-apocalypse Labrador have vague knowledge of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilization they believe was destroyed when God sent " Tribulation " to the world to ... (Wikipedia)
