Books like The Queen's Gambit
12 books with a reading profile close to The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis. Inward-looking; a moderate read.
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1
By Any Other Name
by Jodi Picoult
narrative, classic literature
This novel follows two women separated by centuries who both navigate the constraints placed on female authorship.
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2
The Birth of Venus
by Sarah Dunant
narrative, classic literature
Alessandra Cecchi is the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant in fifteenth-century Florence, a city transitioning from the height of humanist art to the religious fervor of the monk Savonarola.
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3
The Palace of Illusions
narrative, classic literature
This retelling of the Mahabharata is narrated by Panchaali, also called Draupadi, who emerges from a sacrificial fire to marry the five Pandava brothers.
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4
Post Office
narrative, classic literature
Henry Chinaski is a hard-drinking, hard-gambling, constantly broke man who takes a job as a substitute mail carrier in Los Angeles.
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5
Peace Like a River
by Leif Enger
narrative, classic literature
Set in 1962 Minnesota, the story follows eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy who believes his father, Jeremiah, performs literal miracles.
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6
Daughter of Fortune
narrative, classic literature
In mid-nineteenth-century Valparaiso, Eliza Sommers is raised as a foundling by a rigid British family.
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7
Ham on Rye
Also inward-looking · narrative, classic literature
Henry Chinaski grows up in Los Angeles in the 1930s with a father who beats him and a mother who looks away.
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8
The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler
Also inward-looking · narrative, classic literature
Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates traveling.
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9
Empire Falls
narrative, classic literature
Miles Roby manages the Empire Grill, a greasy spoon in a decaying Maine logging town owned by the wealthy Whiting family.
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10
The Yearling
narrative, classic literature
Set in the thickets of late nineteenth-century Florida, the story follows Jody Baxter, a boy living a precarious existence on a frontier farm.
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11
O Pioneers!
by Willa Cather
narrative, classic literature
Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish-American immigrant in late nineteenth-century Nebraska, inherits her father’s struggling farm amid a harsh prairie landscape.
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12
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Also inward-looking · narrative, classic literature
Edgar Sawtelle is born mute in rural Wisconsin, into a family that breeds a special line of dogs, the Sawtelle dogs, chosen for their intelligence and character.
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