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Recommendations based on Setting Free the Bearsby John Irving
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Until I Find You
by John Irving
A man's quest to uncover the secrets of his past, revealing the realities of his family's history.
Every major character in Until I Find You has been marked for life – not only William Burns, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed, but also William's song, Jack, an actor who is shaped ... (Goodreads)
Last Night in Twisted River
by John Irving
Story of a father and son's journey of survival, spanning five decades of trials and tribulations.
The novel opens in 1954 in the small logging settlement of Twisted River on the Androscoggin River in northern New Hampshire . A log driving accident on the river has just claimed the life of a young ... (Wikipedia)
The Hotel New Hampshire
by John Irving
A family's uproarious journey of growth and transformation, set in a series of hotels.
This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly, and Egg. The parents, both from ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A single day in a Soviet prison camp, detailing the hardships and struggle of the inmates.
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II ... (Wikipedia)
The Lords of Discipline
by Pat Conroy
A young man's struggle to survive the brutal hazing rituals of a Southern military college.
Will McLean, returning to the Carolina Military Institute in Charleston, South Carolina an unknown number of years after his graduation, tells the story of his life at the Institute. In 1966, Will ... (Wikipedia)
Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
An elderly man reflects on his past, uncovering long-buried secrets and memories.
We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of ... (Goodreads)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
The Prince of Tides
by Pat Conroy
A man's search for solace and understanding in his troubled family's past.
Tom Wingo is a middle-aged man with a wife and three young daughters who has recently lost his job as a high school English teacher and football coach. He learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has ... (Wikipedia)
The Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
A satirical novel of a young boy's journey through WWII Germany, and the power of the human spirit.
The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a mental hospital during the years 1952–1954. Born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk , ... (Wikipedia)
Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
A young man's struggles to find a sense of purpose, despite a series of catastrophic misfortunes.
The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the much beloved mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and his father had died a few months before. Now orphaned, he is sent to ... (Wikipedia)
The Razor's Edge
by W. Somerset Maugham
A spiritual journey in search of personal fulfillment, as an individual in a rapidly changing world.
Maugham begins by characterizing his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major ... (Wikipedia)
The Magus
by John Fowles
A man's search for truth, enlightenment and freedom amid a web of deception.
The story reflects the perspective of Nicholas Urfe, a young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet. After graduation, he briefly works as a teacher at a small school, but becomes bored and decides to ... (Wikipedia)
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)
The Angel's Game
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A writer's journey through a supernatural world of secrets and lies.
The Angel's Game is set in Barcelona in the 1920s and 1930s and follows a young writer, David Martin. In a once-abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, Martín makes his living by writing ... (Wikipedia)
The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt
A unique western, following two brothers on a quest to find and murder a prospector.
In 1851, Eli and Charlie Sisters, a pair of assassins of minor repute, are hired by a wealthy businessman known only as "the Commodore" to travel from Oregon City to California in order to murder a ... (Wikipedia)
Narcissus and Goldmund
by Hermann Hesse
An exploration of the spiritual journey of two men, contrasting their different paths.
Narcissus and Goldmund tells the story of two medieval men whose characters are diametrically opposite: Narcissus, an ascetic monk firm in his religious commitment, and Goldmund, a romantic youth ... (Goodreads)
The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham
A post-apocalyptic world overrun by carnivorous plants, exploring themes of survival and morality.
In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having ... (Goodreads)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of two separate yet interwoven realities.
The story is split between parallel narratives. The odd-numbered chapters take place in the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland', although the phrase is not used anywhere in the text, only in page headers. The ... (Wikipedia)
A Tale of Two Cities / Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Dual story of redemption and revolution, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution.
Two of the most beloved novels in all of English literature-together in one extraordinary volume. A TALE OF TWO CITIES After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor ... (Goodreads)
Mirror Mirror
by Gregory Maguire
A retelling of Snow White, exploring the perspectives of the wicked stepmother and the dwarves.
In Montefiore , Italy in the early 16th century, a nobleman named Don Vicente de Nevada lives on a small estate with his seven-year-old daughter, Bianca, and a small staff, two of whom are Primavera, ... (Wikipedia)
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 Broken Window
by Jeffery Deaver
A twisted killer uses data mining to commit crimes. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs must race against time to stop him.
In the book, a killer has access to the world's greatest data miner called Strategic Systems Datacorp. He is using detailed information to commit crimes and blame them on innocents. Lincoln Rhyme, ... (Wikipedia)
Saint Maybe
by Anne Tyler
A man's journey of atonement, struggling to make amends for his past mistakes.
Tyler's plot explores the ways ordinary people react to disastrous events with quietly heroic behavior. When seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe confronts his older brother Danny with his belief that the ... (Wikipedia)
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
A story of unrequited love in the midst of war.
The novel is divided into five sections or 'books'. Frederic Henry is first person narrator of the story. Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American paramedic , is serving in the Italian Army . The novel ... (Wikipedia)
Dracul
by Dacre Stoker
A prequel to Bram Stoker's "Dracula," following the author's own experiences with the supernatural and the origins of the iconic vampire.
The prequel to, Dracula, inspired by notes and texts left behind by the author of the classic novel,, Dracul, is a supernatural thriller that reveals not only Dracula's true origins but Bram ... (Goodreads)
No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
A gripping tale of violence and pursuit in Texas' desolate landscape.
The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh , and Ed Tom Bell) set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the ... (Wikipedia)
Tourist Season
by Carl Hiaasen
A journalist investigates the mysterious killings of tourists in the Florida Keys.
Las Noches de Diciembre ( Spanish , "The Nights of December") is a small terrorist cell led by rogue newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, calling himself El Fuego .. Skip believes that the only way to ... (Wikipedia)
Light a Penny Candle
by Maeve Binchy
A story of two Irish girls and their intertwined paths of friendship, love and life.
London was a dangerous place to live during World War II, and many children were evacuated to Ireland or the United States . Elizabeth White, an only child, is sent to live with her mother's ... (Wikipedia)
Lucky You
by Carl Hiaasen
A comedic adventure of a lottery winner who finds himself in a dangerous quest for justice.
Newspaper reporter Tom Krome is sent to the small Florida town of Grange to interview JoLayne Lucks, an African-American veterinary assistant who holds one of two winning tickets to the state lottery ... (Wikipedia)
