Recommendations based on Late Nights on Airby Elizabeth Hay

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Through Black Spruce

    by Joseph Boyden
    A journey of reconciliation, to uncover the truth and find peace.

    A haunting novel about identity, love, and loss by the author of, Three Day Road, Will Bird is a legendary Cree bush pilot, now lying in a coma in a hospital in his hometown of Moose Factory, ... (Goodreads)

  2. The Book of Negroes

    by Lawrence Hill
    A gripping tale of resilience and courage, tracing the life of a woman kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery in North America.

    The Book of Negroes (based on the novel Someone Knows My Name) will be BET's first miniseries. The star-studded production includes lead actress Aunjanue Ellis (Ray, The Help), Oscar winner Cuba ... (Goodreads)

  3. Lullabies for Little Criminals

    by Heather O'Neill
    A young girl's struggles to survive and find a place in a broken world.

    The novel revolves around the twelve-year-old protagonist named Baby and follows her for two years. Baby lives with her father Jules, who has a worsening heroin addiction. The two move frequently, to ... (Wikipedia)

  4. Three Day Road

    by Joseph Boyden
    Two Cree snipers fight in WWI, one returns home addicted to morphine, the other lost to the war.

    It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is ... (Goodreads)

  5. Fugitive Pieces

    by Anne Michaels
    A poetic exploration of the trauma of displacement and the power of memory.

    The novel is split into two sections: Book I and Book II. Jakob Beer is a 7-year-old child of a Jewish family living in Poland . His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and ... (Wikipedia)

  6. The Accidental Tourist

    by Anne Tyler
    A travel writer who hates traveling, Macon Leary, navigates life after his son's death and his wife's departure.

    Set in Baltimore, Maryland , the plot revolves around Macon Leary, a writer of travel guides whose son has been killed in a shooting at a fast-food restaurant. He and his wife Sarah, separately lost ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Saturday

    by Ian McEwan
    A doctor's life is changed forever after witnessing a terrorist attack that takes place on a Saturday in London.

    Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good ... (Goodreads)

  8. Fall on Your Knees

    by Ann-Marie MacDonald
    A multi-generational saga of secrets, tragedy, and resilience in a family of sisters.

    At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother’s piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live. Working as a piano tuner, he meets and ... (Wikipedia)

  9. A Complicated Kindness

    by Miriam Toews
    A teenage girl navigates life in a strict Mennonite community while dealing with family dysfunction and questioning her faith.

    The novel is set in a small religious Mennonite town called East Village, generally considered to be a fictionalized version of Toews' hometown of Steinbach , Manitoba . The narrator is Nomi Nickel, ... (Wikipedia)

  10. The Virgin Cure

    by Ami McKay
    A young girl in 19th century New York City is sold into prostitution and must navigate the dangerous world of sex work to survive.

    From #1 international bestselling author Ami McKay comes The Virgin Cure, the story of a young girl abandoned and forced to fend for herself in the poverty and treachery of post-Civil War New York ... (Barnes & Noble)

  11. The English Patient

    by Michael Ondaatje
    A World War II love story, exploring the depths of human emotion in the midst of tragedy.

    With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, ... (Goodreads)

  12. Greenwood

    by Michael Christie
    A family saga spanning generations, exploring the relationship between humans and nature, and the consequences of our actions.

    It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is ... (Goodreads)

  13. The Dutch House

    by Ann Patchett
    A brother and sister navigate their lives after being exiled from their childhood home, the opulent Dutch House.

    New York Times Bestseller | A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick | A New York Times Book Review Notable Book | TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2019 Named one of the Best Books of the ... (Barnes & Noble)

  14. Amy and Isabelle

    by Elizabeth Strout
    A mother-daughter relationship is tested when a scandal rocks their small New England town.

    Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout’s bestselling and award winning debut, Amy and Isabelle—adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey— evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant ... (Goodreads)

  15. Divisadero

    by Michael Ondaatje
    A story of family, love, and loss, set in the 1970s California.

    From the celebrated author of The English Patient and Anil's Ghost comes a remarkable, intimate novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time. In the 1970s in Northern California ... (Goodreads)

  16. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

    by Rachel Joyce
    An elderly man's unexpected quest of faith, discovering the power of hope and love.

    Harold Fry, 65, has cut the lawn outside his home at Kingsbridge on the south coast of Devon when he receives a letter. A colleague of twenty years ago, Queenie Hennessy, has cancer and is in a ... (Wikipedia)

  17. The Summer Before the War

    by Helen Simonson
    A small English town on the brink of World War I, as lives and loves intertwine.

    The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love and war that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set. East Sussex, 1914. It is ... (Goodreads)

  18. Barkskins

    by Annie Proulx
    Epic multigenerational story of two Frenchmen who arrive in New France in 1693 and their descendants, intertwined with the destruction of the forests.

    The eponymous "barkskins" are indentured servants, transported from Paris slums to the wilds of New France in 1693, "... to clear the land, to subdue this evil wilderness," (p. 17) according to their ... (Wikipedia)

  19. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

    by Chris Cleave
    Set in London during WWII, a love story unfolds amidst the chaos of war and the challenges of societal norms.

    A spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London. It’s 1939 and Mary, a young ... (Goodreads)

  20. 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)

  21. Excellent Women

    by Barbara Pym
    A shy spinster's journey of self-discovery, exploring the limitations of life as a single woman in 1950s England.

    The book details the everyday life of its narrator, Mildred Lathbury, , a spinster in her thirties in 1950s Britain. Perpetually self-deprecating, but with the sharpest wit, Mildred is a part-time ... (Wikipedia)

  22. Thousand Cranes

    by Yasunari Kawabata
    A tale of love, loss, and longing set in traditional Japan.

    The novel is set in Japan after World War II . The protagonist, Kikuji, who has been orphaned, becomes involved with Mrs. Ota, a former mistress of his father's. She commits suicide, seemingly ... (Wikipedia)

  23. The Cellist of Sarajevo

    by Steven Galloway
    A story of resilience and courage in the midst of a war-torn city.

    This brilliant novel with universal resonance, set during the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo, tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and ... (Goodreads)

  24. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

    by Tom Stoppard
    A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".

    Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)

  25. The Art of Racing in the Rain

    by Garth Stein
    An uplifting story of a race car driver and the bond between humans and animals.

    Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by ... (Goodreads)

  26. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

    by Helen Simonson
    A widower finds love and acceptance in an unlikely place, challenging social conventions.

    You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as ... (Goodreads)

  27. Suite Française

    by Irène Némirovsky
    A story of love and loss set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France.

    The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. By the early l940s, when ... (Goodreads)

  28. War and Peace

    by Leo Tolstoy
    Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.

    The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Snow Falling on Cedars

    by David Guterson
    A murder trial in a small, coastal town reveals secrets of the past and its inhabitants.

    Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the state of Washington coast in 1954, the plot revolves around a murder case in which Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American ... (Wikipedia)

  30. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

    by Abbi Waxman
    Nina Hill, a bookworm and introvert, discovers a large family she never knew existed, forcing her to step out of her comfort zone.

    The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there ... (Goodreads)