18 books like Infinite Jest
The sleeping army
Freya is an ordinary girl living in modern Britain, but with a twist: people still worship the Viking gods. One evening, stuck with her dad on his night shift at the British Museum, she is drawn to the Lewis Chessmen and Heimdall's Horn. Unable to resist, she blows the horn, waking three chess pieces from their enchantment; the slaves Roskva and Alfi, and Snot the Berserk. They are all summoned…
Shares: Family life, Humorous stories
Asymmetry
Explores the imbalances that spark and sustain dramatic human relations, tracing the overlapping stories of a young American editor's relationship with a famous older writer, an unexpected New York romance during the early years of the Iraq War and an Iraqi-American man who is detained by immigration officers in Heathrow.
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
Brood
Two teenagers struggle with a horrific family legacy in the sequel to Chase Novak's novel, Breed. Thirteen years ago, a radical fertility doctor helped bring Adam and Alice Twisden into the world. The treatment came at a great cost: it turned the twins' parents into barbarous animals and threatens to transform the children, too. As Adam and Alice find themselves on the brink of maturity, they…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
Harriet Spies Again
Harriet M. Welsch is up to her old spying tricks when her beloved nanny Ole Golly, who had married and moved to Montreal, returns without her husband, Harriet's friend Sport announces he has a crush on a schoolmate, and the people across the street appear to be holding a child hostage.
Shares: Family life, Humorous stories, Friendship
All the ugly and wonderful things
"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
Shares: Motion Pictures, Humorous stories
The secret wisdom of the earth
"After witnessing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, 14-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age, Friendship
Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants
The further confessions of teenaged Georgia Nicolson continue as, among other things, she begins to wonder if Robbie is really the right boy for her.
Shares: Family life, Humorous stories
Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age, Friendship
Academy street
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
Blankets
Loosely based on the author's life, chronicling his journey from childhood to adulthood, exploring the people, experiences, and beliefs that he encountered along the way.
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
We Need New Names
Whenever foreigners visit Paradise they always ask Darling and her friends to smile for the camera. Here are some of the things Darling and her friends have to smile about: stealing guavas, gifts from NGOs, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. But they all want to go to the real paradise in America or Britain.
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
The Universe Versus Alex Woods
The Universe Versus Alex Woods (2013) is the debut novel by Gavin Extence. The book won the Waterstones Eleven award, and was nominated for the National Book Awards.
Shares: Coming-of-age, Friendship
Mike and Psmith
Gloomy when his poor scholastic record forces him to change schools just as he is about to become captain of the cricket team, an English boy cheers up when he discovers another new boy in similar circumstances.
Shares: Humorous stories, Friendship
Life
In 1960s Norfolk, England, seventeen-year-old Clem Ackroyd lives with his mother and grandmother in a tiny cottage, but his life is transformed when he falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy farmer in this tale that flashes back through the stories of three generations.
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
Ramona the Pest
Ramona the Pest, by Beverly Cleary, is the second book of the Ramona series and the first to focus on Ramona Quimby as the protagonist. This children's book chronicles the adventures of Ramona's first few months at kindergarten. The book's title is derived from the characterization of Ramona as a "pest" by many, including her older sister Beatrice, known as "Beezus." Ramona the Pest was first…
Shares: Family life, Humorous stories
Invincible summer
Four close friends who graduate college together in 1998 venture off to pursue their fortunes in the new millennium, but find themselves drawn back together twenty years later amidst broken dreams, lost jobs, and shattered relationships.
Shares: Coming-of-age, Friendship
The Interestings
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty. Their friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their…
Shares: Coming-of-age, Friendship