After Life by Rhian Ellis

"First, I had to get his body into the boat." 

 

This ominous opening begins a tale of secrets and lies, visions, and hovering spirits. At its center is Naomi Ash, a young woman who has come of age on the frigid banks of a western New York lake community called Train Line. Here she grows up and falls in love in a town where mediums, spiritualists, and professional clairvoyants hold "psychic fairs" to help make ends meet. When the skeleton of Peter, Naomi's ex-lover, surfaces, the mystery of his death must be uncovered. In the process, Naomi, now a clairvoyant herself, unveils a world where the secrets of the dead cannot stay buried and where her past must confront her precarious present.

Hailed as "a study of eccentricities, which rises above the merely quirky to address those issues of life, death, memory, and love that preoccupy us all," After Life is a stunning first novel of extraordinary suspense and evocative imagery.

286 pages (July 2000)

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Title Read-alikes: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell; You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks; The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager; I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney; Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger; The Lost Girls by Jennifer Spence; The Dead Girls Club by Damien Walters; Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka; The Broken Girls by Simone St. James; The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell; A False Dawn by Tom Lowe; Perfect Crime by Jack Erickson; and Sister, Sister by Sue Fortin.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

 

The story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

229 pages (September 2007)

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Title Read-alikes: If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric L Gansworth; The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland; Character Driven by David Lubar; Winger by Andrew Smith; Matthew Meets the Man by Travis Nichols; What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen; Dumplin' by Julie Murphy; The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe; Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram; A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi; The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis; American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang; and The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

 

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

 

552 pages (January 2005)

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Title Read-alikes: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys; Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit; Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli; Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang; All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton; Lovely War by Julie Berry; Ashes by Kathryn Lasky; Malka by Mirjam Pressler; The Love That I Have by James Moloney; The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel; They Went Left by Monica Hesse; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

An unforgettable journey into one man's remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others set in 1960s & 1970s Ethiopia and 1980s America.

 

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

667 pages (February 2009)

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Title Read-alikes: In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume; The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner; Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste; The Girls by Lori Lansens; The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne; Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss; The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu; The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers; Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford; State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need, Ward is nonetheless embarking on a search of monumental proportions—to rediscover his grandmother, now long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life.

 

Wallace Stegner has said of his epic novel, "It's perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that's my story." It is a testament to the power of Stegner's prose and vision that Angle of Repose, winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, can be appreciated as America's story as well. Based on the correspondence of the little-known 19th century writer, Mary Hallock Foote, the novel's heroes represent opposing but equally strong strains of the American ideal. 

557 pages. (January 1971)

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Wallace Stegner Collection at the University of Utah (C-SPAN Cities Tour): 

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Title Read-alikes: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Only Story by Julian Barnes; 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster; A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul; The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich; Three Junes by Julia Glass; The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather; Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; and All the Wild That Remains by David Gessner.

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan

A sequel to the bestselling, much-beloved Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan's intimate new novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long moved away. She dreams of visits by her grandchildren while mourning the turnover of her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when her sole companion and sister-in-law Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change. As she grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities.

Like most older women, Emily is a familiar yet invisible figure, one rarely portrayed so honestly. Her mingled feelings - of pride and regret, joy and sorrow - are gracefully rendered in wholly unexpected ways. Once again making the ordinary and overlooked not merely visible but vital to understanding our own lives, Emily, Alone confirms O'Nan as an American master.

255 pages (March 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: This is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison; My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout; Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan; Tempting Fate by Jane Green; Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf; All Adults Here by Emma Straub; George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl; The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood; Who Asked You? by Terry Mcmillan; Bear Necessity by James Gould-Bourn; Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler; Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason; and Monogamy by Sue Miller.

Faith: a novel by Jennifer Haigh

In the spring of 2002, a perfect storm hits Boston: Trusted priests are accused of the worst possible betrayal. Faith explores the fallout for one devout family.

Estranged from her family, Sheila McGann returns home when her older brother, Art—a popular pastor—finds himself at the center of the maelstrom. Her strict mother is in a state of angry denial. Sheila’s younger brother, Mike, has convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who dodges Sheila’s questions and refuses to defend himself.

As secrets begin to surface, Faith explores the corrosive consequences of one family’s history of silence—and the resilience it finds through forgiveness. A suspenseful tale of one woman’s quest for the truth, Faith is a haunting meditation on loyalty and family, doubt and belief. Elegantly crafted, sharply observed, this is Jennifer Haigh’s most ambitious novel to date.

318 pages (May 2011)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: Beartown by Fredrik Backman; Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng; All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; The Precious One by Marisa De los Santos; This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper; One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel; The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin; The Gathering by Anne Enright; Household Words by Joan Silber; Maggie-Now by Betty Smith; The Widow Waltz by Sally Koslow; and The End of Day by Bill Clegg.