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Recommendations based on Summerlandby Michael Chabon
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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 Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
A murder mystery set in an alternate reality, with characters that explore the boundaries of identity and tradition.
The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Beside the corpse lies an open ... (Wikipedia)
The Final Solution
by Michael Chabon
A retired detective investigates the theft of a parrot and uncovers a deeper mystery involving a mute Jewish boy and his rare stamp collection.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. ... (Goodreads)
The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
The story of a young gay man in Thatcher's England, navigating his identity and sexuality.
The novel is set in Britain in three parts, taking place in 1983, 1986 and 1987. The story surrounds the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest. Nick is middle-class and from the fictional market town of ... (Wikipedia)
The System of the World
by Neal Stephenson
A thrilling adventure of espionage, science, and revolution in a world on the brink of chaos.
Daniel Waterhouse returns to England from his "Technologickal College" project in Boston in order to try to resolve the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus . ... (Wikipedia)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A young boy's quest to find the lock that matches a mysterious key his father left behind.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and ... (Goodreads)
High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
A man reflects on his past relationships while trying to understand the nature of love.
Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old man who owns a record shop in London called Championship Vinyl. His lawyer girlfriend, Laura, has just left him and now he's going through a crisis. At his record shop, ... (Wikipedia)
The Plot Against America
by Philip Roth
An alternate history of America, where a fascist president rises to power.
The novel is told from the point of view of Roth as a child growing up in Newark, New Jersey , as the younger son of Herman and Bess Roth. It begins with aviation hero Charles Lindbergh , who is ... (Wikipedia)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
A whimsical tale of two magicians mastering the mysteries of English magic.
The novel opens in 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, whose members are "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The ... (Wikipedia)
The People of Sparks
by Jeanne DuPrau
After fleeing their underground city, Lina and Doon lead their people to a new town, but tensions arise with the locals.
The story resumes after the evacuation of Ember, an underground city, which has been cut off from the surface for more than 200 years. The 400+ refugees from the city cannot return, as the city's ... (Wikipedia)
About a Boy
by Nick Hornby
A man reevaluates his life when he meets an awkward 12-year-old boy.
Set in 1993 London, About a Boy features two main protagonists: Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus Brewer, an incongruous schoolboy described as 'introverted' by his suicidal mother, ... (Wikipedia)
I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories
by Ray Bradbury
Collection of stories exploring humanity and its impact on the universe.
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one ... (Goodreads)
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 Pox Party
by M.T. Anderson
A historical fiction novel set during the American Revolution, following the life of a young slave boy named Octavian.
It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and ... (Goodreads)
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
A mosaic of characters, lives, and relationships as they intertwine and evolve over time.
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. ... (Goodreads)
Cane River
by Lalita Tademy
An epic tale tracing the history of four generations of African-American women in Louisiana.
A, New York Times, bestseller and Oprah's Book Club Pick-the unique and deeply moving saga of four generations of African-American women whose journey from slavery to freedom begins on a Creole ... (Goodreads)
The Gunslinger Born
by Peter David
A thrilling fantasy adventure, filled with action, suspense, and unexpected plot twists.
'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.' With those words, millions of readers were introduced to Stephen King's Roland ' an implacable gunslinger in search of the ... (Goodreads)
Shades of Grey
by Jasper Fforde
A satirical fantasy adventure through a world divided by the ability to see colors.
Chromatacia is a future dystopian society that exists at least five hundred years (although possibly more) after the collapse of our own society, identified as 'the Previous'. All life is governed by ... (Wikipedia)
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
A historical fiction about the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII.
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry ... (Goodreads)
Little, Big
by John Crowley
A multigenerational family's journey of magical discovery in a fantastical realm.
Turn-of-the-century American architect John Drinkwater begins to suspect that within this world there lies another (and within that, another and another ad infinitum, each larger than the world that ... (Wikipedia)
Juliet, Naked
by Nick Hornby
A story about a complex love triangle, set against a backdrop of music and fandom.
Duncan, an obsessive music fan, receives a CD of Juliet, Naked , an album of solo acoustic demos of the songs on the album Juliet by his favourite artist, Tucker Crowe. Duncan's girlfriend, Annie, ... (Wikipedia)
The Surgeon's Mate
by Patrick O'Brian
A tale of adventure and romance set during the Napoleonic Wars.
Sailing into Halifax, the victorious HMS Shannon contends with her losses in officers and crew, with particular concern for Captain Broke, who lies unconscious from head wounds. The American Captain ... (Wikipedia)
Sacré Bleu
by Christopher Moore
A fantastical and humorous journey through the art world of 19th century Paris.
“Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of that word.” —Carl Hiassen “[Moore’s novels] deftly blend surreal, occult, and even science-fiction doings with laugh-out-loud satire ... (Goodreads)
The Yellow Birds
by Kevin Powers
A soldier's haunting experience in the Iraq War and the aftermath of his return home.
The Yellow Birds begins: "The war tried to kill us in the spring" and follows Pvt. John Bartle, the novel's protagonist and narrator, in Al Tafar, Iraq; Fort Dix , New Jersey ; Kaiserslautern , ... (Wikipedia)
The Little Friend
by Donna Tartt
A young girl sets out to avenge her brother's mysterious death.
In the mid-1960s, on Mother's Day , Robin, the eldest child and only son of the Dufresnes, a white family living in Mississippi, is found hanging from a tree on the family property. Only nine years ... (Wikipedia)
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A humorous exploration of life's absurdities, through a madcap journey of a protagonist.
Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but ignored and virtually invisible writer who is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a ... (Wikipedia)
Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
A mysterious journey through a hidden realm of London, filled with danger and unexpected allies.
Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, recently moved from Scotland and with a normal life ahead. ... (Wikipedia)
The Milagro Beanfield War
by John Nichols
A small town's battle against land developers, and their struggle for justice.
Nearly 500 residents of the agricultural community of Milagro in the mountains of northern New Mexico face a crisis when politicians and business interests make a backroom deal to usurp the town's ... (Wikipedia)
The Confusion
by Neal Stephenson
An epic tale of navigating a political and economic crisis in an alternate version of 18th century Europe.
Though the first publication of the Series in three volumes combined the two novels Bonanza and The Juncto , here the plots will be dealt with as separate entities, true to the author's original ... (Wikipedia)
Oblivion: Stories
by David Foster Wallace
A collection of short stories exploring the human condition, often through the lens of modern society's obsession with entertainment and technology.
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness—a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. ... (Goodreads)
