18 books like The incendiaries
The Idiot
Embarking on her freshman year at Harvard in the early tech days of the 1990s, a young artist and daughter of Turkish immigrants begins a correspondence with an older mathematics student from Hungary while struggling with her changing sense of self, first love and a daunting career prospect.
Shares College students, Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
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 Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
An Orchestra of Minorities
"A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks. Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from…
Shares Cultural Heritage, Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
The Wangs vs The World
"A hilarious debut novel about a wealthy but fractured Chinese immigrant family that had it all, only to lose every last cent--and about the road trip they take across America that binds them back together. Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is…
Shares Cultural Heritage, Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
Our young man
282 pages ; 20 cm
Shares Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
If We Were Villains
Entreated to tell his side of the story to a detective who put him in prison a decade earlier for a murder he may not have committed, Oliver Marks describes his past as a Shakespearean actor in college whose rivalry with a castmate escalated in dangerous ways.
Shares College students, Literary, Coming-of-age
Conversations With Friends
Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home…
Shares College students, Literary, Coming-of-age
American Icon
American Icon
At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, the man who had saved Boeing, Ford had put together a bold plan to unify…
Shares New York Times reviewed
The Girls
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who…
Shares Cults, Literary, New York Times reviewed
Talent
Talent
An English grad student struggling with her dissertation about the intellectual history of inspiration desperately searches for a perfect case study to anchor her thesis, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places.
Shares Literary, Coming-of-age
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 Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
Last Days
Last Days
Last Days (winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel of the Year) by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult—with creepy consequences.When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been…
Shares Cults
The scorpio illusion
His name defines the international thriller. Now Robert Ludlum has crafted his most suspenseful, most surprising novel since The Bourne Identity - a multileveled, deftly plotted story of a brilliant and seductive woman who lives single-mindedly for revenge; the Scorpios, the powerful, shadowy forces that support her; and the one man who must find her before it is too late. Amaya Bajaratt is…
Shares Terrorists, New York Times reviewed
Little Faith
"A Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church"--
Lyle Hovde lives a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence, Shiloh has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is…
Shares Cults, Literary, Coming-of-age
Normal People
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal.
A year later, they’re…
Shares College students, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
Such a Fun Age
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand,…
Shares Literary, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed
The kinship of secrets
"From the author of The Calligrapher's Daughter comes the riveting story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart"--
Shares Cultural Heritage, Coming-of-age
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 Literary, Coming-of-age