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Recommendations based on The Shadow Kingby Maaza Mengiste
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Tokyo Ueno Station
by Miri Yū
A ghost reflects on his life as a homeless laborer in Tokyo's Ueno Park, haunted by memories of his family and the unfulfilled promises of post-war Japan.
Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazu’s life is tied by a series of coincidences to Japan’s Imperial family and to one particular spot in Tokyo; the park near Ueno Station – ... (Goodreads)
Queen Bee
by Dorothea Benton Frank
A woman returns to her hometown to care for her ailing mother and confronts her past. She finds solace in beekeeping and unexpected friendships.
“If I could only read one writer from now until the end of my life, it would be Dorothea Benton Frank." —Elin Hilderbrand, the, New York Times, bestselling author,, Immerse yourself in the enchanting ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam War refugee returns to his homeland and struggles to reconcile conflicting loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be ... (Goodreads)
Saving Sophie
by Ronald H. Balson
A lawyer races against time to save a young girl from her abusive father in war-torn Poland.
From Ronald H. Balson, author of, Once We Were Brothers,, Saving Sophie, is the powerful story of the lengths a father will go through to protect his daughter and an action-packed thriller that will ... (Barnes & Noble)
Breath of Fire
by Amanda Bouchet
A young woman with magical powers must navigate a dangerous world of politics and power struggles to save her family and kingdom.
AND SHE WILL BE THEIR QUEEN Cat Fisa's warlord captor-turned-lover may have crowned her with the symbols of the three realms, but war is far from over. She believes in what Griffin is trying to ... (Barnes & Noble)
Everything Under
by Daisy Johnson
A haunting story of a mother and daughter, their secrets, and the search for a lost person.
The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a ... (Goodreads)
The Good Father
by Noah Hawley
A father's search for his son's killer leads him to question his own role in his son's life.
An intense, psychological novel about one doctor's suspense-filled quest to unlock the mind of a suspected political assassin: his twenty-year old son. As the Chief of Rheumatology at Columbia ... (Goodreads)
Hurricane Season
by Fernanda Melchor
A brutal murder in a small Mexican village exposes the dark secrets and violence that lurk beneath the surface of everyday life.
A New York Times Notable Book (2020) A Guardian and Boston.com Best Book of 2020 A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020 The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse—by a group of children playing ... (Goodreads)
Dominicana
by Angie Cruz
A young girl from the Dominican Republic is married off to a much older man and moves to New York City, where she navigates a new life and falls in love.
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK , Shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction, Angie Cruz's, Dominicana, is a vital portrait of the immigrant experience and the timeless coming-of-age ... (Barnes & Noble)
A Promise of Fire
by Amanda Bouchet
A powerful sorceress is kidnapped by a warlord who needs her magic to win a war, but she has secrets that could change everything.
KINGDOMS WILL RISE AND FALL FOR HER Cat Fisa isn't who she pretends to be. She's perfectly content living disguised as a soothsayer in a traveling circus, avoiding the destiny the Gods—and her ... (Barnes & Noble)
Salt Houses
by Hala Alyan
A Palestinian family is uprooted by war and scattered across the world, struggling to maintain their identity and relationships.
The story begins with Salma in Nablus , 1963. As her daughter Alia prepares for her wedding to Atef, Salma reads her future in a cup of coffee dregs. Though Salma reads a life full of uncertainty, ... (Wikipedia)
Elmet
by Fiona Mozley
A family living off the grid in rural England faces threats from the outside world. A haunting exploration of violence, loyalty, and love.
The narrator who speaks in the sections in cursive seems to be looking for somebody against a modern landscape of highways, lorries and café stopovers. We will come to realise that this is Daniel, ... (Wikipedia)
The Private Patient
by P.D. James
A gripping crime-mystery of murder and secrets, set in a rural English village.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a murder at a private nursing home for rich patients being treated by the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. A welcome ... (Goodreads)
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)
A Horse Walks into a Bar
by David Grossman
A stand-up comedian's harrowing story of trauma, told over the course of one explosive performance.
A Horse Walks into a Bar is narrated by a retired district court judge, Avishai Lazar, who is invited out of the blue by a local comedian to attend his show, a stand-up routine in a bar in the ... (Wikipedia)
History of Wolves
by Emily Fridlund
A teenage girl struggles to come to terms with the aftermath of a mysterious tragedy in her small town.
Fourteen-year-old Madeline lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. ... (Goodreads)
French Exit
by Patrick deWitt
A wealthy widow and her son flee to Paris to escape financial ruin, leading to a series of eccentric encounters. Darkly comedic and satirical.
Frances Price, a sixty-five year old wealthy widow, and her adult son Malcolm Price live together in New York City. When her financial planner reveals that she is completely insolvent, something he ... (Wikipedia)
Some Luck
by Jane Smiley
A saga tracing five generations of a farming family in midwestern America.
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn ... (Goodreads)
The Ambassadors
by Henry James
A wealthy American is sent to Paris to convince his friend's son to return home, but he becomes entangled in the city's social scene.
Graham Greene and E.M. Forster marvelled at it, but F.R. Leavis considered it to be 'not only not one of his great books, but to be a bad one.' As for the author, he held The Ambassadors as the ... (Goodreads)
A Banquet of Consequences
by Elizabeth George
A gripping whodunit set in England, as a detective unravels a complex web of secrets.
Inspector Lynley investigates the London end of an ever more darkly disturbing case, with Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted ... (Goodreads)
Birds of a Feather
by Jacqueline Winspear
Private investigator Maisie Dobbs investigates the murder of a wealthy aviatrix in 1920s London.
An eventful year has passed for Maisie Dobbs. Since starting a one-woman private investigation agency in 1929 London, she now has a professional office in Fitzroy Square and an assistant, the ... (Goodreads)
Boxers
by Gene Luen Yang
A young Chinese boy's quest to save his village from foreign invaders during the Boxer Rebellion.
China, 1898. Bands of foreign missionaries and soldiers roam the countryside, bullying and robbing Chinese peasants. Little Bao has had enough. Harnessing the powers of ancient Chinese gods, he ... (Goodreads)
The Mars Room
by Rachel Kushner
A gritty and raw portrayal of life in a women's prison, following the story of a young mother serving two consecutive life sentences.
It's 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley . Outside is the world from which she has ... (Wikipedia)
How I Became Stupid
by Martin Page
A man decides to become stupid to escape the pressures of modern life, but finds it harder than he thought.
Ignorance is bliss, or so hopes Antoine, the lead character in Martin Page's stinging satire, "How I Became Stupid" a modern day "Candide" with a Darwin Award-like sensibility. A twenty-five-year-old ... (Goodreads)
The Confessor
by Daniel Silva
A master spy embarks on a thrilling mission to uncover secrets and protect the innocent.
Gabriel Allon is tasked to investigate the murder of scholar Benjamin Stern in Munich . The lack of Stern's computer and other documents indicate that he was not killed for being a Jew — but rather ... (Wikipedia)
The Moor's Account
by Laila Lalami
A fictional memoir of the first black explorer of America, Estebanico, who was part of the Narváez expedition in the 16th century.
The story is narrated in the first person by Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, a Moroccan slave who has been taken by his Spanish master, Andrés de Dorantes, on an expedition to the New ... (Wikipedia)
Daisy Miller
by Henry James
A young American woman travels to Europe and flouts social conventions, leading to her downfall.
Annie "Daisy" Miller and Frederick Winterbourne first meet in Vevey , Switzerland, in a garden of the grand hotel, , where Winterbourne is allegedly vacationing from his studies (an attachment to an ... (Wikipedia)
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
by Elif Shafak
A dying woman's memories flash before her eyes, revealing the harsh realities of her life in Istanbul's red-light district.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by, Bookpage, NPR, Washington Post,, and, The Economist, A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from ... (Barnes & Noble)
The English Assassin
by Daniel Silva
An art restorer is tasked with investigating a murder related to a long-lost masterpiece.
Art restorer, Gabriel Allon, who also works part-time for 'The Office', a semi-official Israeli intelligence agency, accepts an assignment from an anonymous Zurich banker. Arriving at his villa , he ... (Wikipedia)
Next Year in Havana
by Chanel Cleeton
A Cuban-American woman travels to Havana to scatter her grandmother's ashes and uncovers family secrets and a forbidden love story.
After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity–and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, ... (Goodreads)
