Books like Crossroads

01

Freedom

Jonathan Franzen · Literary fiction

Walter and Patty Berglund are the kind of liberal couple that makes their neighbors slightly uncomfortable — too earnest, too visibly trying, their St.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Suzanne Simard · Science

Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini · Literary fiction

The Kite Runner opens in Kabul in the early 1970s and follows Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun merchant, and Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant.

Both dig into guilt and redemption.

07

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy · Literary fiction

The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with an act so audacious it takes a moment to process: a drunken hay-trusser named Michael Henchard sells his wife and infant daughter at a country fair for five guineas.

Both dig into guilt and redemption.

08

The Moor's Last Sigh

Salman Rushdie · Literary fiction

The Moor's Last Sigh is narrated by Moraes Zogoiby — the Moor — a man who ages at twice the normal rate and has only months to live.

Both dig into family and betrayal.

09

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens · Classics

Great Expectations follows Pip, an orphan boy on the Kent marshes who is yanked from modest obscurity into the orbit of wealth and social aspiration when an anonymous benefactor funds his move to London.

Both dig into guilt and redemption.

10

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction

A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.

A kindred literary fiction read.

11

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction

A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.

A kindred literary fiction read.

12

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction

A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.

A kindred literary fiction read.