18 books like Shadow of a bull
Clayhanger
This coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England follows Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business and falls in love. Bennett wrote it in 1910 at the Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton, and in Lausanne. Edwin Clayhanger's father, Darius, has risen from an extremely poor background, which Bennett repeatedly returns to, to become a prominent printer in Bursley.…
Shares Fathers and sons, Bildungsromans, Social life and customs
The real question
Fisher Brown, a sixteen-year-old over-achiever, is on the verge of academic burnout when he impulsively decides to stop cramming for the SATs for one weekend and accompany his ne'er-do-well neighbor to an out-of-town job repairing a roof.
Shares Fathers and sons, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age, Children's fiction
Windy McPherson's son
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Johnny Tremain
Johnny Tremain, a young apprentice silversmith, is caught up in the danger and excitement of 1775 Boston, just before the Revolutionary War. But even more gripping than living through the drama of Revolutionary Boston is the important discovery Johnny makes in his own life.
Shares Newbery Medal books, Newbery Medal, Social life and customs, Children's fiction
The true tale of the monster Billy Dean
Billy Dean is a secret child, growing up in the dark heart of Blinkbonny. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the smell of incense and cigarettes. His world is just a bed, some pictures of the holy island and a single locked door, but his father fills his dreams with mysterious tales and dreadful warnings. When his father disappears, Billy's mum brings him…
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There's a Zombie in the Basement
Shares Boys, Children's fiction with this book.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the titular orphan, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of…
Shares Boys, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age, Children's fiction
Agostino
Thirteen-year-old Agostino is spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful widowed mother. When she takes up with a cocksure new companion, Agostino, feeling ignored and unloved, begins hanging around with a group of local young toughs. Though repelled by their squalor and brutality, and repeatedly humiliated for his weakness and ignorance when it comes to women and sex, the…
Shares Coming-of-age, Social life and customs, Children's fiction
World's fair
Recalls a certain New York City boyhood in the 1930s, through the eyes of the child himself and then him as an adult trying to reconstruct the past.
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Voices
Young Memer takes on a pivotal role in freeing her war-torn homeland from its oppressive captors.
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Abyssinian Chronicles
"The teller of this tale is Mugezi, a quick-witted, sharp-eyed man whose life encompasses the traditional and the modern, the peaceful and the insanely violent, the despotic and the democratic. Born in a rural community in the early l960s, he is raised by his grandfather, a deposed clan chief, and his great-aunt, or "grandmother," after his parents immigrate to the capital city of Kampala.
At…
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Der Nachsommer
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Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture
Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture
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Gadis Pantai
"In a poor coastal fishing village, a beautiful girl unknowingly attracts the attention of a local aristocrat. Before she knows it, she is forced to marry this man she has never seen and leave behind all that is familiar to her - her carefree days spent helping her mother with daily tasks, dreamily listening to the sounds of the wind and the waves, and watching boats come and go. She is taken…
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Sinister street
Michael Fane arrives in the thin red house in Carlington Road to his new family of Nurse, Cook, Annie the housemaid, his younger sister Stella, and the occasional presence of Mother. From here, the novel follows the next twenty years of his life as he tries to find his place in the upper echelons of Edwardian society, through prep school, studies at Oxford, and his emergence into the wide world.…
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Benny And Omar
"In my old school, we had fighting, no pool and there'd be vicious matches against the other schools . . . I miss all that stuff!"Moving to Africa is the worst thing that has ever happened to Benny Shaw. No one plays hurling (the best game on the planet) and the local school is run by hippies who like to talk about feelings. As if.But when Benny meets wisecracking Omar (the name's Bond, James…
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury's unparalleled literary classic SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin.
The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early.…
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Missing the Piano
When Mike's mother and sister go on tour with "Les Miserables," Mike's father and his new wife enroll Mike in St. Matthew's Military Academy where, facing brutality and ignorance, he learns to survive.
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