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Recommendations based on Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamerby Steven Millhauser
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields
A woman's life story told through a series of vignettes, examining the joys and sorrows of life.
The book is the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies during childbirth. Through ... (Wikipedia)
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
A complex, interwoven story of family secrets, love, tragedy, and mystery.
The novel's protagonist , Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her ... (Wikipedia)
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.
Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)
Angle of Repose
by Wallace Stegner
A man's search for his ancestors and their stories, leading to a journey of self-discovery.
Lyman Ward narrates a century after the fact. Lyman interprets the story at times and leaves gaps that he points out at other times. Some of the disappointments of his life, including his divorce, ... (Wikipedia)
Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
Interconnected stories of ordinary lives in 1970s New York, inspired by a high-wire artist's death-defying feat.
The events of the story are told in a largely non-linear fashion, with several different narrators telling the story from different perspectives. The story is interspersed with fictionalized accounts ... (Wikipedia)
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
A tangled web of family secrets, betrayal, and tragedy in the American South.
Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen , a white man born into poverty in West Virginia who moves to Mississippi with the complementary aims of gaining wealth and becoming a ... (Wikipedia)
The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William Styron
A fictionalized account of the life of Nat Turner, a slave who led a rebellion in Virginia in 1831.
The time is November, 1831. African American slave Nat Turner sits in a Virginia jail awaiting execution for his crimes. Nat led a slave rebellion which ended in the deaths of dozens of white people ... (Wikipedia)
Rabbit at Rest
by John Updike
A story of family and mortality, exploring the struggle of growing old and facing death.
This novel is part of the series that follows the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from 1960 to 1990. Rabbit at Rest focuses on the years 1988–89. Harry, nearly 40 years after his glory days as a high ... (Wikipedia)
Ironweed
by William Kennedy
An exploration of the struggles of the homeless, and the power of redemption.
Ironweed is set during the Great Depression and tells the story of Francis Phelan , an alcoholic vagrant originally from Albany, New York , who left his family after accidentally killing his infant ... (Wikipedia)
From Here to Eternity
by James Jones
Tragic tale of fate and destiny, set in the backdrop of World War II.
In February 1941, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, nicknamed "Prew", reports to his new posting at G Company, a US Army infantry unit stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Prew is a career soldier ... (Wikipedia)
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
An exploration of the life of a small-town woman, revealing her struggles and emotional complexities.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. At times stern, at other times ... (Goodreads)
The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
Private eye investigates a complex case involving a wealthy family and blackmail.
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy and elderly General Sternwood, in the month of October. He wants Marlowe to deal with an attempt by a bookseller named Arthur ... (Wikipedia)
The Moor's Last Sigh
by Salman Rushdie
The story of a family's exile and their struggle to keep their culture alive.
Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby is a 'high-born crossbreed', the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinise spice merchants and crime lords. He is also a ... (Goodreads)
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
by Oscar Hijuelos
A story of two Cuban brothers and their pursuit of the American dream.
It's 1949. Two young Cuban musicians make their way up from Havana to the grand stage of New York. It is the era of the mambo, and Castillo brothers, workers by day, become by night stars of the ... (Goodreads)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Epic tale of two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
It is the late 1870s. , Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae, two famous retired Texas Rangers , run the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small Texas border ... (Wikipedia)
A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
A family's story of death and inheritance, exposing secrets of their past.
Larry Cook is an aging farmer who decides to incorporate his farm, handing complete and joint ownership to his three daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. When the youngest daughter objects, she is ... (Wikipedia)
The Stories of John Cheever
by John Cheever
A collection of short stories that explore the human condition in the modern era.
Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising ... (Goodreads)
The Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk
A naval officer is court-martialed after leading a mutiny against his captain.
The story is told through the eyes of Willis Seward "Willie" Keith, an affluent but callow young graduate of Princeton University . Following a mediocre living as a nightclub piano player, he signs ... (Wikipedia)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
A coming of age story set in Brooklyn, depicting a young girl's struggles and growth.
The novel is split into five "books", each covering a different period in the characters' lives. Book One opens in 1912 and introduces 11-year-old Francie Nolan, who lives in the Williamsburg ... (Wikipedia)
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
A collection of stories about the Vietnam War, interweaving the past and present.
In 1979, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato —a novel about the Vietnam War—won the National Book Award. In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again ... (Goodreads)
Broken Harbor
by Tana French
A detective investigates a murder case in a ghostly housing estate, uncovering a web of secrets.
Mick “Scorcher" Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thatʼs how the biggest case of the year ends up in his hands. On one of the half-abandoned ... (Goodreads)
The Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, standing up to society's expectations.
Isabel Archer, from Albany, New York , is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's rich husband, Daniel, at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. ... (Wikipedia)
The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
A man sells his wife and daughter while drunk, then becomes a successful businessman and mayor, but his past haunts him.
At a country fair near Casterbridge in Wessex Michael Henchard, a 21-year-old hay-trusser, argues with his wife Susan. Drunk on rum-laced furmity he auctions her off, along with their baby daughter ... (Wikipedia)
Pnin
by Vladimir Nabokov
The life of a Russian professor in America, struggling with language and cultural barriers, while dealing with personal and professional challenges.
Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, the title character, is a professor of Russian at Waindell College; "ideally bald" with a "strong man torso," "spindly legs," and "feminine feet." Pnin is on a train from ... (Wikipedia)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
Blue van Meer navigates her senior year at an eccentric school, uncovering secrets and tragedies along the way.
Blue van Meer is a film-obsessed, erudite teenager. She is the daughter of itinerant and arrogant academic Gareth van Meer, who, after the death of his amateur lepidopteran-catching wife (and Blue's ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
Tales of the South Pacific
by James A. Michener
Collection of interrelated stories set in the Pacific theater during World War II, exploring the complexities of war and human relationships.
Winner of the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for FictionEnter the exotic world of the South Pacific, meet the men and women caught up in the drama of a big war. The young Marine who falls madly in love with a ... (Goodreads)
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
A young couple's journey through a difficult, yet passionate, wedding night.
In July 1962, Edward Mayhew, a graduate student of history, and Florence Ponting, a violinist of a string quartet, have just been married and are spending their honeymoon in a small hotel on the ... (Wikipedia)
High-Rise
by J.G. Ballard
In a high-rise building, social boundaries begin to break down as the inhabitants descend into chaos and violence.
Following his divorce, doctor and medical-school lecturer Robert Laing moves into his new apartment on the 25th floor of a recently completed high-rise building on the outskirts of London. This tower ... (Wikipedia)
