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Recommendations based on Children of Godby Mary Doria Russell
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The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell
A Jesuit mission to an alien planet ends in tragedy, raising questions about faith, morality, and the nature of God.
In the year 2019, the SETI program at Arecibo Observatory discovers radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri . The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the ... (Wikipedia)
A Thread of Grace
by Mary Doria Russell
A young girl's story of resilience through the chaos of WWII Italy.
Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God . It is September 8, 1943, and ... (Goodreads)
Doc
by Mary Doria Russell
A tale of a doctor's quest to understand an alien race, and the moral dilemmas he faces.
The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and ... (Goodreads)
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 Witching Hour
by Anne Rice
A dark and mysterious tale of secret families and supernatural forces.
From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries. Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding ... (Goodreads)
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A diplomat's mission to a distant planet, exploring themes of gender and identity.
The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen, a coalition of humanoid worlds. , Ai travels to the Gethen planetary system ... (Wikipedia)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
An autobiographical account of a young man dealing with grief and responsibility.
'When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once.' "Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided ... (Goodreads)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich
A priest's journey of self-discovery as he unravels secrets of a Native American community.
There are two main timelines: novel’s “present day,” set in 1996 during the last few months of Father Damien's life, and Damien's past as Agnes DeWitt, from 1910 onward. Erdrich intermixes these ... (Wikipedia)
A Fire Upon the Deep
by Vernor Vinge
An interstellar adventure of exploration, uncovering a powerful and mysterious force.
An expedition from Straumli Realm, an ambitious young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of ... (Wikipedia)
Son of a Witch
by Gregory Maguire
A story of redemption set in a fantastical world, as a young man searches for his true identity.
Liir hid in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Left for dead in a gully, the teen is shattered in spirit and body. But silent novice Candle tends him at the Cloister of Saint ... (Goodreads)
Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
A young man discovers his magical family history and learns to use his new supernatural powers.
Anansi Boys is the story of Charles "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a timid Londoner devoid of ambition, whose unenthusiastic wedding preparations are disrupted when he learns that his father (Mr. Nancy) has ... (Wikipedia)
A Deepness in the Sky
by Vernor Vinge
A futuristic story of two civilizations clashing on a distant planet.
The Qeng Ho arrive at the OnOff star shortly before the Emergent fleet, a few years before the sun turns on, at which point the Spider civilization will "wake up" and continue its climb into a ... (Wikipedia)
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr.
A post-apocalyptic tale of a world struggling to rebuild after a devastating nuclear war.
After 20th century civilization was destroyed by a global nuclear war , known as the "Flame Deluge", there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led ... (Wikipedia)
The Royal We
by Heather Cocks
A modern fairytale of a young woman's romance with a prince, and the challenges of life as a royal.
An American girl finds her prince in this "fun and dishy" (, People,) royal romance inspired by Prince William and Kate Middleton.,American Bex Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Traveler
by John Twelve Hawks
A man embarks on a thrilling, action-packed journey to protect the world from a sinister, oppressive force.
Maya, a young woman, is trying to live the life of a normal citizen. Her background, on the other hand, is anything but normal. She is the daughter of a famous German Harlequin named Thorn, who had ... (Wikipedia)
Empire Falls
by Richard Russo
A small town's citizens struggle to find meaning and find their place in a rapidly changing world.
Set in the decaying, nearly bankrupt, small town of Empire Falls, Maine, this is the story of the unassuming manager of the Empire Grill, Miles Roby, who has spent his life in the town. The town, and ... (Wikipedia)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
A story of two unlikely outcasts who find solace and comfort in each other's company.
The story revolves mainly around the characters of Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, residents of an upper-middle class Left Bank apartment building at 7 Rue de Grenelle – one of the most elegant ... (Wikipedia)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
A soldier's story of courage and survival in the Spanish Civil War.
The novel graphically describes the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. It is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. It draws on Hemingway's own ... (Wikipedia)
Xenocide
by Orson Scott Card
A space-opera style adventure of survival, where a group of humans battle against an extraterrestrial force to save their planet.
On Lusitania, Ender finds a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together. However, Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but ... (Wikipedia)
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.
There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
A collection of interviews recounting tales of the zombie apocalypse.
It has been nearly twenty years since the start of the apocalyptic worldwide pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since the war has ended in humanity's victory. The framing device ... (Wikipedia)
Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter
A romantic story of fate, secrets, and destiny, spanning from Italy in the 1960s to present day.
"The best novel of the year." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece” (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the ... (Goodreads)
Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A young man's journey to trace his family's past, uncovering the secrets of the Holocaust.
Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), a young American Jew, who is vegetarian and an avid collector of his family's heritage, journeys to Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who saved his ... (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)
A Tale for the Time Being
by Ruth Ozeki
An exploration of the connections between two lives, bridging time, space and cultures.
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her ... (Goodreads)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (Wikipedia)
A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A young wizard embarks on a quest to master his own magical powers and battle a mysterious force of evil.
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon ... (Goodreads)
Cibola Burn
by James S.A. Corey
Space explorers encounter new civilizations with differing values, sparking a power struggle.
After the events of, Abaddon's Gate, , humanity has gained entry to thousands of new worlds and solar systems through the gate networks. At the start of Cibola Burn the United Nations, Martian and ... (Wikipedia)
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
A post-apocalyptic tale of survival, as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.
The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: the first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is ... (Wikipedia)
The Samurai's Garden
by Gail Tsukiyama
A young man's journey of healing in a remote Japanese village.
A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent ... (Goodreads)
