Readers > Adult & teen lists > If You Like Barbara Kingsolver
If You Like Barbara Kingsolver, You Might Enjoy . . .
BOOK BUZZ: Ever since the publication of The Bean Trees, her first novel, Barbara Kingsolver has been known as both a popular and literary author. The Poisonwood Bible, about an American family's cultural arrogance in Africa, was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 2000. Her latest work of fiction, The Lacuna, mixes art and politics in an historical novel set in Mexico and the United States. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle : A Year of Food Life is her personal story of moving her family from Arizona to rural Appalachia, challenging themselves to a sustainable diet.
Here are some read-alike suggestions for novels and nonfiction similar to Barbara Kingsolver's. Check out our blogs and Staff Picks lists for more book, music and movie recommendations.
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Abu-Jaber, Diana -
2003When a handsome professor of Arabic literature and Iraqi exile enters her life, single, 39-year-old Sirine finds herself falling in love and, in the process, starts questioning her identity as an Arab-American.
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Atwood, Margaret -
2001Containing a novel within a novel, The Blind Assassin is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. Told in a style that captures the colloquialisms of the 1930s and 1940s, it unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.
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Dillard, Annie -
2007In this powerfully moving novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dillard displays penetrating insight into the human condition with a remarkable story about the unknowable, unbreakable bonds of love and family.
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Erdrich, Louise -
2008In this "multigenerational tour-de-force of sin, redemption, murder and vengeance" (Publishers Weekly), a senseless and horrific crime in 1911 forever changes the lives of several families living in and around Pluto, North Dakota, a white town on the far western edge of an Ojibwe reservation.
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Foer, Jonathan Safran -
641.303 F654e 2009Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain to his children why people eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them.
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Kilmer-Purcell, Josh -
B-Ki55b 2010Tart and sweet, touching and laugh-out-loud funny, The Bucolic Plague shows what happens when two middle-aged New Yorkers (one, an ex-drag queen) do the unthinkable: start over, have a herd of kids (the four-legged kind) and get a little dirty.
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Matthiessen, Peter -
1965Set in a malarial outpost of the South American jungle, Matthiessen's electrifying moral thriller follows the clash between two misplaced gringos: Martin Quarrier, who has come to convert the local Indians to Christianity, and Lewis Moon, a half-Indian mercenary who has been hired to kill them. "Extraordinary . . . beautifully written". New York Times.
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McCarthy, Cormac -
1985An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild West." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a 14-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
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Patchett, Ann -
2007Set over a period of 24 hours, Run shows how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include the most unlikely of people, in this novel about secrets, duty, responsibility and the lengths people will go to protect their children.
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Smith, Alisa and J.B. MacKinnon -
641.563 S642p 2007Plenty tells the remarkable adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment and learn the simple joys of reconnecting with community and home ground in the process.
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Strout, Elizabeth -
2008New York Times best-selling author Strout binds together 13 rich, luminous narratives through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge, who offers profound insights into the human condition.

