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Recommendations based on Marjorie Morningstarby Herman Wouk
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War and Remembrance
by Herman Wouk
Epic saga of a Jewish family's journey through WWII, facing the struggles of a war-torn world.
War and Remembrance completes the cycle that began with, The Winds of War, . The story includes historical occurrences at Midway , Yalta , Guadalcanal , and El Alamein as well as the Allied invasions ... (Wikipedia)
The Winds of War
by Herman Wouk
The story of a family caught in the middle of World War II and their struggles to survive.
Like no other masterpiece of historical fiction, Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II is the great novel of America's Greatest Generation. , Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner
An exploration of friendship, the power of love, and the nature of life's transitions.
Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations ... (Goodreads)
Orphan Train
by Christina Baker Kline
A story of two women's intertwined lives, spanning generations and crossing continents.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller “A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Beautiful.”—Ann Packer Moving ... (Barnes & Noble)
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 Prince of Tides
by Pat Conroy
A man's search for solace and understanding in his troubled family's past.
Tom Wingo is a middle-aged man with a wife and three young daughters who has recently lost his job as a high school English teacher and football coach. He learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has ... (Wikipedia)
Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
A young girl's coming of age amidst poverty, abuse, and a broken family.
The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's 15-year-old mother Anney gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the ... (Wikipedia)
An American Tragedy
by Theodore Dreiser
A young man's ambition leads him to commit a heinous crime, and he must face the consequences of his actions.
Ambitious, handsome, but poorly educated, naïve, and immature, Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, ... (Wikipedia)
The Great Santini
by Pat Conroy
A family's psychological struggles centered around a domineering, military father.
Hard-nosed Marine fighter pilot Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meecham calls himself "The Great Santini". He runs his family with a strict hand. In 1962 before the Vietnam War , the Meecham family struggles ... (Wikipedia)
We Were the Lucky Ones
by Georgia Hunter
A family's struggle to survive the Holocaust, showing the power of hope in the face of tragedy.
It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new ... (Goodreads)
The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck
A story of humble farmers facing the struggles of poverty and the upheaval of social change.
The story begins on Wang Lung 's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future ... (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)
The Bourne Identity
by Robert Ludlum
An amnesiac assassin must uncover his past and true identity in a deadly search for the truth.
The preface of the novel consists of two real-life newspaper articles from 1975 about terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as " Carlos the Jackal ." The story opens with gunfire on a boat in the ... (Wikipedia)
Incendiary
by Chris Cleave
A mother's quest for justice after her family is tragically taken from her.
A young mother's life is blown apart when her husband and four-year-old son are killed during a bombing at a football match. Following this, the young mother falls into a depression. While the young ... (Wikipedia)
The Bookseller
by Cynthia Swanson
A woman dreams of an alternate life where she is married with children, but struggles to reconcile it with her real life as a single bookseller.
A provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her ... (Barnes & Noble)
Ladder of Years
by Anne Tyler
A woman's quest to find herself after leaving her family behind and embarking on a new life.
Married with three almost-grown children, Delia Grinstead has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, walking away from it all is an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and ... (Goodreads)
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
by Hannah Green
A young woman's story of struggle to overcome her mental illness and reclaim her life.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to ... (Goodreads)
Prayers for Sale
by Sandra Dallas
A heartwarming story of two women in a Colorado mining town during the Great Depression, who form an unlikely friendship through their shared experiences.
Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just seventeen and newly married. She and her husband have just moved ... (Goodreads)
The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey
A couple's dream of a child comes true in the Alaskan wilderness, but with unexpected consequences.
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she ... (Goodreads)
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)
Miller's Valley
by Anna Quindlen
A coming-of-age story of Mimi Miller, who grows up in a small town that is slowly being flooded.
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, ... (Goodreads)
The Lion's Game
by Nelson DeMille
An international terrorist gives chase to a CIA operative, with the fate of the world in the balance.
"The Lion" will be landing. And at New York's JFK Airport, an elite American task force waits as the notorious Libyan terrorist prepares to defect to the West. Then, aboard Flight 175, something goes ... (Wikipedia)
A Patchwork Planet
by Anne Tyler
A young man's journey of self-discovery and finding his place in the world.
The novel is narrated by 30-year-old Barnaby, whose life has gone off the rails since he was caught robbing neighborhood homes as an adolescent. To the despair of his distant father, his social ... (Wikipedia)
Unless
by Carol Shields
A writer's life is upended when her daughter drops out of college and becomes a panhandler. A story of love, loss, and self-discovery.
Reta Winters, 44-year-old successful author of light summertime fiction, has always considered herself happy, even blessed. That is, until her oldest daughter Norah mysteriously drops out of college ... (Goodreads)
The Story of the Lost Child
by Elena Ferrante
An exploration of the complexities of motherhood and female friendship, spanning four decades.
"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a ... (Goodreads)
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Tale of doomed romance set against a harsh New England winter.
The novel is a framed narrative . The framing story concerns an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, ... (Wikipedia)
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 Mists of Avalon
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
An immersive retelling of the Arthurian legend from a female perspective.
The Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend that brings it back to its Brythonic Celtic roots (see Matter of Britain ). The plot tells the story of the women who ... (Wikipedia)
The Punishment She Deserves
by Elizabeth George
Detective Lynley and Havers investigate a suspicious death in a small English town, uncovering secrets and lies along the way.
Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley are forced to confront the past as they try to solve a crime that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of a quiet, historic ... (Goodreads)
