Everyone wants to get their hands on Where the Crawdads Sing, the 2018 debut novel by Delia Owens. It was selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club in September 2018 and for Barnes & Noble’s Best Books of 2018. It topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 for 27 non-consecutive weeks and sold more print copies in 2019 than any other adult title, fiction or nonfiction. It was also number one on Amazon’s list of Most Sold Books in 2019.
So yeah, it’s popular. If you’re currently on the holds list, desperately chomping at the bit to get your hands on it, or you’ve been blessed by the book gods and have already had a chance to read it, I’ve pulled some of these read-a-like titles to help keep you busy! And be sure to check out our Lucky Day Collection located in the lobby; you may be lucky enough to snag a copy today!
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
It’s 1987 and only one person has eve truly understood 14-year-old June Elbus—her Uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family and even her own heart.
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a south poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
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My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At 14, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous. Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus—her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her.
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The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Lenora Allbright is 13 when her father convinces her mother, Cora, to forgo their inauspicious existence in Seattle and move to Kaneq, Alaska. It’s 1974, and the former Vietnam POW sees a better future away from the noise and nightmares that plague him. Having been left a homestead by a buddy who died in the war, Ernt is secure in his beliefs, but never was a family less prepared for the reality of Alaska, the long, cold winters and isolation. Locals want to help out, especially classmate Matthew Walker, who likes everything about Leni. Yet the harsh conditions bring out the worst in Ernt, whose paranoia takes over their lives and exacerbates what Leni sees as the toxic relationship between her parents. The Allbrights are as green as greenhorns can be, and even first love must endure unimaginable hardship and tragedy as the wilderness tries to claim more victims.
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Lets No One Get Hurt by Jon Pineda
Fifteen-year-old Pearl is soulful and sweet, fearless and feisty, and she is squatting in an abandoned boathouse deep in the American south with three grown men: her father, a disgraced college professor, and two of his friends, Dox and Fritter. They live on the fringe, playing music, paining and scavenging what they can—catfish, lumber and scraps for their ailing dog, Marianne Moore. Despite the isolation, Pearl feels at home with her makeshift family. Mason Boyd, a.k.a. “Main Boy,” is from a nearby affluent neighborhood, where he and his raucous and foolhardy friends ride around in tricked-out golf carts, shooting their fathers’ shotguns, and aspiring to make viral Internet prank videos. Pearl meets Main Boy, whose father, it turns out, has purchased the property on which she is squatting. With the power in Main Boy’s hands, a dark and unbalanced relationships forms between the two teens. With the cinemating and haunting beauty of the south humming behind every word, Pineda’s novel is an urgent coming of age set equally between the very real world constraints of race and class and a magical, Huck Finn-esque universe of community and exploration.
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Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.