Books like

Books like Prodigal Summer

12 books with a reading profile close to Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. Thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Bel-Ami

by Guy de Maupassant

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Georges Duroy arrives in Paris as a penniless veteran with nothing but his appearance and a lack of scruples.
2

The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

narrative, classic literature

Balram Halwai, a chauffeur from a poverty-stricken village in rural India, details his rise to entrepreneurial success through a series of letters to the Chinese Premier.
3

Hag-Seed

by Margaret Atwood

narrative, classic literature

Felix Phillips is a theater director ousted from his festival job by a treacherous associate.
4

Sister Carrie

by Theodore Dreiser

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Eighteen-year-old Caroline Meeber leaves her rural Wisconsin home for Chicago with nothing but a small satchel and a desire for material comfort.
5

A Thousand Ships

by Natalie Haynes

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Natalie Haynes reimagines the Trojan War through a choral narrative that centers the women, goddesses, and victims usually relegated to the margins of epic poetry.
6

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

by Michael Chabon

narrative, classic literature

Joe Kavalier, a magician and escape artist, flees Nazi-occupied Prague and arrives in New York City to live with his cousin, Sammy Clay.
7

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Set along the Mississippi River in the mid-19th century, these interconnected novels follow the lives of two boys navigating the constraints of antebellum society.
8

Silk and Insight

by Yukio Mishima

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Set in 1950s Japan, this novel dramatizes the labor dispute at a major textile factory to examine the reality of industrial paternalism.
9

The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Set in early twentieth-century Maine, the narrative follows Homer Wells, a perpetual orphan raised at St.
10

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

In this adaptation, Benjamin Button is born with the physical appearance and ailments of a seventy-year-old man, forcing his father to navigate social embarrassment in nineteenth-century Baltimore.
11

Go Set a Watchman

by Harper Lee

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch returns to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus.
12

Susan Lenox

by David Graham Phillips

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise follows an illegitimate girl born into a rigid Midwestern environment.

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