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Recommendations based on Arcadiaby Lauren Groff
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The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer
A group of friends meet at a summer camp and navigate their way through life's ups and downs, successes and failures.
The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and ... (Goodreads)
State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
A journey in the Amazon rainforest to find a missing colleague and unlock the secrets of a mysterious drug.
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, "State of Wonder" presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional ... (Goodreads)
The Monsters of Templeton
by Lauren Groff
A woman's search for her family history leads to a surprising discovery of her true identity.
Willie Upton returns home to Templeton for the summer from her graduate studies in archaeology with several dark secrets. Her life seemingly in shambles, she moves back in with her mother for the ... (Wikipedia)
The Round House
by Louise Erdrich
A teenage boy seeks justice for a crime committed against his mother in a Native American community.
The novel opens with Joe Coutts and his father, Judge Bazil Coutts, pulling out saplings from their house's garden and foundation. They realize Joe's mother and Bazil's wife, Geraldine Coutts, has ... (Wikipedia)
Fates and Furies
by Lauren Groff
A tale of the secrets and passions of a marriage, exploring the depths of private lives.
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, ... (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)
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 Signature of All Things
by Elizabeth Gilbert
A woman's quest for knowledge and self-fulfillment, spanning through the 19th century.
A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed. In The Signature of All Things, ... (Goodreads)
Salvage the Bones
by Jesmyn Ward
A family struggles to survive in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane.
The novel follows a working-class African-American family living in southern Mississippi in 2005. The family consists of Daddy, his daughter Esch (the narrator), and his sons Randall, Skeetah, and ... (Wikipedia)
The Dog Stars
by Peter Heller
A man struggles to survive in post-apocalyptic world, searching for a better life.
Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a ... (Goodreads)
Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson
A woman lives multiple lives, reflecting on choices and consequences and the power of love.
The novel has an unusual structure, repeatedly looping back in time to describe alternative possible lives for its central character, Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 to an ... (Wikipedia)
Fourth of July Creek
by Smith Henderson
A social worker in rural Montana tries to help a troubled boy and his survivalist father. A haunting and powerful story of family and survival.
In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our ... (Goodreads)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
A family's secrets and a girl's quest for the truth about her own identity.
The, New York Times, bestselling author of, The Jane Austen Book Club, introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this novel that won the PEN/Faulkner Award ... (Barnes & Noble)
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
by Karen Russell
Magical realism tale of young girls raised by wolves, learning to become human in a strange new world.
In these ten glittering short stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its ... (Goodreads)
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
A young girl's journey of grief and healing as she discovers the secrets of her beloved uncle's life.
June Elbus is a 14-year-old girl living in Westchester in 1986. She is in love with her gay uncle, Finn Weiss, a fact she is scared to admit even to herself. Finn is dying of AIDS. Being a ... (Wikipedia)
White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
A multi-generational saga exploring identity, race, and culture in modern-day London.
On New Year's Day 1975, Archie Jones, a 47-year-old Englishman whose disturbed Italian wife has just walked out on him, is attempting to take his own life by gassing himself in his car when a chance ... (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)
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)
When She Woke
by Hillary Jordan
In a dystopian future, a woman's skin is genetically altered to reflect her crime. She navigates a world of religious extremism and political turmoil.
In an unspecified future 26 year old Hannah Payne awakes in a prison cell having been chromed (i.e. having her skin altered) red for murder. Hannah lives in Texas after a great outbreak of a sexually ... (Wikipedia)
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
A family's journey through the Mississippi Delta, confronting a traumatic past.
It is Jojo's thirteenth birthday. To step into his new role as a man, Jojo tries to bravely help his grandfather, Pop, kill a goat. Jojo ends up throwing up at the sight although Pop is sympathetic. ... (Wikipedia)
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A contemporary retelling of Jane Austen's classic novel, exploring love, family, and societal expectations in modern-day Cincinnati.
Liz is a magazine writer in her thirties; her older sister Jane is a yoga instructor. They both live in New York City. Their father has a health scare and they return to their childhood home in ... (Wikipedia)
The Orphan Master's Son
by Adam Johnson
A man's struggle to survive in a totalitarian North Korean regime and his journey to freedom.
Part 1 details Jun Do's upbringing in a state orphanage and his service to the state, including as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens , and later as a signal operator stationed on a fishing boat. Due ... (Wikipedia)
The Robber Bride
by Margaret Atwood
A story of three women and their experiences with a manipulative friend.
Set in present-day Toronto , Ontario , the novel is about three women and their history with old friend and nemesis, Zenia. Roz, Charis, and Tony meet once a month in a restaurant to share a meal ... (Wikipedia)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
Canada
by Richard Ford
A family's relocation to a small Canadian town, exploring the depths of human relationships.
After his parents are arrested for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is left to fend for himself. His twin sister Berner has run off, leaving him to a family friend who secrets him away ... (Wikipedia)
Dear Committee Members
by Julie Schumacher
An epistolary novel of a professor's reflections on his life and career.
Finally, a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary." Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished ... (Goodreads)
The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker
Two supernatural creatures from different mythologies, living in New York City, find companionship and friendship in each other.
In the Polish town of Konin at the end of the 19th century, a corrupt kabbalist named Yehudah Schaalman creates a golem in the shape of a woman at the request of young Otto Rotfeld, who seeks a ... (Wikipedia)
Tinkers
by Paul Harding
A dying man reflects on his life and family, grappling with his mortality.
The Los Angeles Times, praised "a writer [who] describes something so well—snow, oranges, dirt—that you can smell it or feel it or sense it in the room." ,, The New Yorker, enjoyed Harding's ... (Wikipedia)
The Orchardist
by Amanda Coplin
A story of a reclusive orchardist and his unlikely friendships that help him find redemption.
Set in the untamed American West, a highly original and haunting debut novel about a makeshift family whose dramatic lives are shaped by violence, love, and an indelible connection to the land. You ... (Goodreads)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
