Recommendations based on Oranges Are Not the Only Fruitby Jeanette Winterson

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

  1. Written on the Body

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A genderless narrator recounts their passionate love affairs with a married woman, exploring the complexities of desire and identity.

    Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I ... (Goodreads)

  2. The Passion

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A story of love, loss, and enduring passion between two people across time and space.

    Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms ... (Goodreads)

  3. Sexing the Cherry

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A fantastical journey through time and space, exploring gender, sexuality, and the fluidity of identity.

    In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the world like Gulliver, ... (Goodreads)

  4. Tipping the Velvet

    by Sarah Waters
    A coming of age story of a young woman's queer journey through Victorian England.

    Nancy "Nan" Astley is a sheltered 18-year-old living with her working-class family and helping in their oyster restaurant in Whitstable, Kent. She becomes instantly and desperately enamoured with a ... (Wikipedia)

  5. Fingersmith

    by Sarah Waters
    A thrilling tale of two women who conspire to swindle a wealthy gentleman.

    Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in "a Fagin -like den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to ... (Wikipedia)

  6. Beloved

    by Toni Morrison
    A haunting story of loss and resilience in the aftermath of slavery.

    Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio , where the protagonist Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver at 124 Bluestone Road. The book ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Orlando

    by Virginia Woolf
    A fantastical journey through history and gender, exploring the complexities of identity.

    The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I . He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Stone Butch Blues

    by Leslie Feinberg
    A transgender woman's journey of self-discovery and search for acceptance in a hostile society.

    The narrative of Stone Butch Blues follows the life of Jess Goldberg, who grows up in a working-class area of upstate New York in the 1940s. Her parents, frustrated with Jess's gender nonconformity, ... (Wikipedia)

  9. To the Lighthouse

    by Virginia Woolf
    Exploration of the complexities of human relationships and family life.

    The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides , on the Isle of Skye . The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the ... (Wikipedia)

  10. The Price of Salt

    by Patricia Highsmith
    Two women build a relationship against all odds, navigating a taboo romance.

    Therese Belivet is a lonely young woman, just beginning her adult life in Manhattan and looking for her chance to launch her career as a theatre set designer . When she was a small girl, her widowed ... (Wikipedia)

  11. The Bluest Eye

    by Toni Morrison
    Coming of age story of a young Black girl dealing with prejudice and racism in 1940s Ohio.

    In Lorain, Ohio , nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer and her 10-year-old sister Frieda live with their parents, a tenant named Mr. Henry, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house was ... (Wikipedia)

  12. The Night Watch

    by Sarah Waters
    A suspenseful story of ordinary people living through the turmoil of World War II.

    Kay The novel begins with Kay Langrish-a woman broken by the war. She spends her days locked in her room in London, watching her landlord's patients arrive and leave at precisely the same hours every ... (Wikipedia)

  13. Rubyfruit Jungle

    by Rita Mae Brown
    A coming-of-age story of a young girl's journey of self-acceptance and finding her place in the world.

    The novel focuses on Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of a poor family, who possesses remarkable beauty and who is aware of her lesbianism from early childhood. Her relationship with her mother is ... (Wikipedia)

  14. The Well of Loneliness

    by Radclyffe Hall
    A novel about a young girl named Stephen who struggles with her sexual identity and societal expectations in early 20th century England.

    The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era , to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the name they had already ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Mrs. Dalloway

    by Virginia Woolf
    A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.

    Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Middlemarch

    by George Eliot
    A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.

    Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Midnight's Children

    by Salman Rushdie
    A magical tale of India's history told through the story of a boy born at the stroke of midnight.

    Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem ... (Goodreads)

  18. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

    by Fannie Flagg
    A nostalgic tale of friendship, courage and resilience set in the American South.

    Throughout the novel the narrator and time period change, and the reader relies on the chapters' headings to establish the date and the source of the chapter. Some of the narration comes in the form ... (Wikipedia)

  19. Alias Grace

    by Margaret Atwood
    A psychological thriller that examines the true story of a 19th century Canadian murderess.

    Grace Marks, the convicted murderess, has been hired out from prison to serve as a domestic servant in the home of the Governor of the penitentiary. A Committee of gentlemen and ladies from the ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Bleak House

    by Charles Dickens
    A social commentary on the English legal system, exploring themes of inequality, injustice and corruption.

    Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually ... (Goodreads)

  21. In the Time of the Butterflies

    by Julia Alvarez
    A story of courage and sacrifice, as four sisters resist a tyrannical regime in the Dominican Republic.

    This is the story of the four Mirabal sisters during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. At school, one of the sisters, Minerva , meets a girl, Sinita, who later became one ... (Wikipedia)

  22. The Blind Assassin

    by Margaret Atwood
    A complex, interwoven story of family secrets, love, tragedy, and mystery.

    The novel's protagonist , Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Autumn

    by Ali Smith
    A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.

    Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)

  24. The Secret History

    by Donna Tartt
    A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.

    Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)

  25. Franny and Zooey

    by J.D. Salinger
    A brother and sister's journey towards finding spiritual understanding and inner peace.

    The short story concerns Franny's weekend date with her collegiate boyfriend, Lane Coutell. Lane takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where Franny quickly becomes exasperated when he only appears ... (Wikipedia)

  26. Oryx and Crake

    by Margaret Atwood
    An exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, and the power of human nature.

    The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character called "Snowman", living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers . Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named ... (Wikipedia)

  27. 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)

  28. Maurice

    by E.M. Forster
    A young man's journey of self-discovery and acceptance of his sexuality.

    Maurice Hall, age fourteen, discusses sex and women with his prep-school teacher Ben Ducie just before Maurice progresses to his public school. This scene sets the tone for the rest of the novel, as ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Watership Down

    by Richard Adams
    A group of rabbits embark on a treacherous journey to find a new home.

    In the Sandleford warren , ,[b], Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer , receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. , When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Tales of the City

    by Armistead Maupin
    A warm and comedic exploration of 1970s San Francisco and its colorful inhabitants.

    San Francisco, 1976. A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts ... (Goodreads)