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Recommendations based on The Tortilla Curtainby T. Coraghessan Boyle
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Drop City
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
An isolated commune in California's wilds, and its inhabitants' trials and tribulations.
It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier—the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska—in ... (Goodreads)
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
A story of redemption and transformation amidst a hostage crisis.
Set in an unspecified South American country, , the story begins at a birthday party thrown at the country's vice presidential home in honor of Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
Disgrace
by J.M. Coetzee
A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
A gripping story of four unlikely lives intertwined in the tumult of India's caste system.
The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi . Mistry was generally critical of Indira Gandhi in the book. ... (Wikipedia)
Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
A sweeping journey of two twin brothers and their search for identity, belonging and family.
The story is told by the protagonist, Marion Stone. He and his conjoined twin Shiva are born at Mission Hospital (called "Missing" in accordance with the local pronunciation), Addis Ababa , in ... (Wikipedia)
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
An exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, and the power of human nature.
The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character called "Snowman", living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers . Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named ... (Wikipedia)
The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
A young girl navigates life in a poor Latino neighborhood, dreaming of a better future and finding her voice through writing.
The bestselling coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world from the winner of the 2018 ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
A young man's journey across America, seeking adventure and freedom.
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan
A young man's exploration of an unusual bookstore, unlocking a world of secrets.
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, but after a few days on the job, Clay ... (Goodreads)
The Hotel New Hampshire
by John Irving
A family's uproarious journey of growth and transformation, set in a series of hotels.
This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly, and Egg. The parents, both from ... (Wikipedia)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
A boy's search for faith, set against a backdrop of unlikely events.
The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary expatriate from the United States, having settled in Toronto , Ontario , Canada and taken on ... (Wikipedia)
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
Story of two women in 19th-century China, exploring the power of female friendship.
In rural Hunan province called Puwei (nicknamed the Common Beauty Village), a county in China, Lily is destined to become a, laotong, pair with Snow Flower, a girl of the same age from Tongkou (the ... (Wikipedia)
The Women
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
A fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright's life, told through the perspectives of the women who loved him.
Welcome to the troubled, tempestuous world of Frank Lloyd Wright. Scandalous affairs rage behind closed doors, broken hearts are tossed aside, fires rip through the wings of the house and paparazzi ... (Goodreads)
The Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
An ambitious Wall Street banker's moral downfall in New York City.
The story centers on Sherman McCoy, a successful New York City bond trader . His $3 million Park Avenue co-op , combined with his aristocratic wife's extravagances and other expenses required to keep ... (Wikipedia)
The Madonnas of Leningrad
by Debra Dean
A story of resilience, courage, and perseverance in the face of tragedy and trauma.
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. And while the elderly Russian woman cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the ... (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)
Snow
by Orhan Pamuk
A man's journey of self-discovery in a politically charged atmosphere in Turkey.
Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling ... (Wikipedia)
More Tales of the City
by Armistead Maupin
A group of colorful characters navigate life and love in 1970s San Francisco.
The story begins about a couple months from where Tales of the City ended. Michael ("Mouse") Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton go on a cruise, thanks to money given to her by her former boss, Edgar ... (Wikipedia)
Every Man Dies Alone
by Hans Fallada
A man and his wife struggle to resist Nazi oppression in 1940s Berlin.
Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is the gripping tale of an ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule. This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword ... (Goodreads)
Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters
A thrilling tale of two women who conspire to swindle a wealthy gentleman.
Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in "a Fagin -like den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to ... (Wikipedia)
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 Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)
The Rotters' Club
by Jonathan Coe
A group of school friends navigating life's ups and downs during the 1970s in England.
Three teenage friends grow up in 1970s Britain watching their lives change as their world gets involved with IRA bombs, progressive and punk rock , girls and political strikes. In 2003, a four-part ... (Wikipedia)
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
Detective Sam Spade must solve a mysterious case involving a precious artifact and a deadly trio of criminals.
‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco , in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer ... (Wikipedia)
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
Three interconnected stories of nature, romance, and family in the Appalachian Mountains.
Prodigal Summer tells the story of a small town in Appalachia during a single, humid summer, when three interweaving stories of love, loss and family unfold against the backdrop of the lush wildness ... (Wikipedia)
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
A young Indian-American's journey of reconciling two different cultures and his own identity.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta , India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Ashoke is an engineering student at the ... (Wikipedia)
The Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and resilience as she takes on motherhood and a new life.
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she ... (Goodreads)
