18 books like The Queen's gambit
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…
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Black Queen
Shares Chess with this book.
The revolution of Marina M.
Marina Makarova is a woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life. Swept up on the tides of the Russian Revolution, Marina joins the marches for workers' rights, falls in love with a radical young poet, and betrays everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn. As her country goes through tremendous upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds,…
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Gospoda Golovlevy
"Searingly hot in summer, bitterly cold in winter, the ancestral estate of the Golovlyov family is the end of the road. There Arina Petrovna rules over her servants and family with an iron hand - until she loses power to her son Porphyry. One of the most memorable monsters in all of world literature, Porphyry is a perfect hypocrite and indefatigable schemer who preys remorselessly on everyone who…
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Cherry
Shares Sex, Coming-of-age with this book.
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…
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Breakfast Served Anytime
Spending the summer before her senior year at a camp for gifted and talented students, Gloria struggles with the recent loss of her grandmother while trying to meet new friends and make the best of her new circumstances.
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Malafrena
A book about freedom and commitment.
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Petropolis
In her stunning debut novel, Anya Ulinich delivers a funny and unforgettable story of a Russian mail-order bride trying to find her place in America. After losing her father, her boyfriend, and her baby, Sasha Goldberg decides that getting herself to the United States is the surest path to deliverance. But she finds that life in Phoenix with her Red Lobster–loving fiance isn't much better than…
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The Caxtons
A coming-of-age Victorian novel, with plenty of add-ons to justify it's classification as a Victorian melodrama or even as Victorian Gothic. Except for its length and prolixity, it is a delightful book. Try the audiobook, if the print or digital version puts you off, which would be a sad shame.
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Schachnovelle
Auf einem Passagierdampfer, der von New York nach Buenos Aires unterwegs ist, fordert ein Millionär gegen Honorar den mit einer Art mechanischer Präzision spielenden Schachweltmeister Mirko Czentovic zu einer Partie heraus. Der mitreisende Dr. B., ein österreichischer Emigrant, greift beratend ein und erreicht so ein Remis für den Herausforderer. Er hat sich, von der Gestapo, die ihn verhaftete,…
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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…
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A Dog's Purpose
A Dog's Purpose is a 2010 novel written by American author W. Bruce Cameron. It chronicles a dog's journey through four lives via reincarnation and how he looks for his purpose through each.
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Parrot in the Oven
Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle.
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The Day Watch
The second book in the internationally bestselling fantasy series, Day Watch begins where Night Watch left off, set in a modern-day Moscow where the 1,000-year-old treaty between Light and Dark maintains its uneasy balance through careful vigilance from the Others. The forces of darkness keep an eye during the day, the Day Watch, while the agents of Light monitor the nighttime. Very senior Others…
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The Twilight Watch
Translated by Andrew BromfieldNight Watch and Day Watch, the first two books in this remarkable series, established Sergei Lukyanenko as a breathtakingly bold talent. Part fantasy, part vampire story, and part detective potboiler, this is the most successful science fiction series of all time in Russia and a true international sensation. In America, Fox Searchlight released the film adaptation of…
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Windy McPherson's son
Shares Coming-of-age with this book.
Archangel
When historian Fluke Kelso learns of the existence of a secret notebook belonging to Josef Stalin he is determined to track it down, whatever the consequences. From the violent political intrigue and decadence of modern Moscow he heads north to the vast forests surrounding the White Sea port of Archangel, and a terrifying encounter with Russia's unburied past.
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