Books like The Library Book
12 books with a reading profile close to The Library Book by Susan Orlean. Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
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1
The Downstairs Girl
by Stacey Lee
history, narrative
In 1890s Atlanta, Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid by day and lives in a hidden basement beneath a newspaper office by night.
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2
The Good Lord Bird
history, narrative
Henry Shackleford, an enslaved boy in Kansas Territory, survives an encounter with abolitionist John Brown by pretending to be a girl named Henrietta.
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3
The Light in Hidden Places
history, narrative
In occupied Poland during 1943, sixteen-year-old Stefania Podgórska works in a grocery store while caring for her six-year-old sister, Helena.
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4
Rodham
history, narrative
This novel presents a counterfactual history starting in 1971, when Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton meet at Yale Law School.
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5
Salt to the Sea
by Ruta Sepetys
history, narrative
In early 1945, the Soviet army advances through East Prussia, forcing thousands of refugees toward the Baltic coast.
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6
Between Shades of Gray
by Ruta Sepetys
history, narrative
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is seized from her Lithuanian home by the Soviet secret police.
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7
A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
history, narrative
In 1922, a Bolshevik tribunal sentences Count Alexander Rostov to life imprisonment within the Metropol Hotel.
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8
Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
history, narrative
Natalie Haynes re-examines the foundations of Western mythology by tracking how female figures were systematically marginalized or vilified through centuries of translation and artistic interpretation.
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9
The Lion Women of Tehran
history, narrative
Set in mid-twentieth-century Iran, the narrative follows Homa and Ellie, two girls from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds whose lives intersect in a Tehran classroom.
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10
Marvels
by Kurt Busiek
history, narrative
Phil Sheldon, a news photographer, witnesses the emergence of the superhero era in mid-twentieth-century New York.
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11
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12
The Help
history, narrative
In 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, university graduate Skeeter Phelan returns home and finds herself at odds with the rigid social hierarchy of her white peers.
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