The Kite Runner

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris2018

A Slovakian Jew is forced to tattoo identification numbers on fellow prisoners in Auschwitz. He uses his position to exchange jewels for food.

Same earnest register, still historical fiction

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Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert1856

A doctor's wife in provincial France seeks escape from her mundane life through expensive tastes and extramarital affairs.

earnest → tense

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Skylarking

Kate Mildenhall2016

Two girls grow up together at an isolated Australian lighthouse in the 1880s. A sudden accident shifts their relationship and their futures.

earnest → elegiac, still historical fiction

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Paradise Logic

Sophie Kemp2025

A young woman follows advice from a magazine to become a perfect partner. Her quest involves surreal jobs and messages from the beyond.

earnest → epic

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Walking Disaster

Jamie McGuire2013

This novel retells the events of 'Beautiful Disaster' from the perspective of Travis Maddox. It follows his college years and obsession with Abby.

earnest → propulsive

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And One Last Thing...

Molly Harper2010

After a public divorce, a woman moves to a small town to start over and finds herself pursued by a local deputy.

earnest → wry

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Ten Big Ones

Janet Evanovich2004

Stephanie Plum witnesses a gang hit and becomes a target herself. She balances the threat with her ongoing romantic indecision.

earnest → playful

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Savage Prince

Meghan March2018

A powerful man in the New Orleans underworld becomes obsessed with a woman and pursues her despite the danger of his lifestyle.

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

The Professional: Part 2 (The Game Maker, #1b)

Kresley Cole

A Russian enforcer continues his pursuit of a graduate student across Europe. The focus is on their sexual power dynamic and his mafia duties.

earnest → tense

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Victory at Prescott High

C.M. Stunich

A high school girl seeks revenge against the boys who bullied her while navigating a complex relationship with all of them at once.

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Kolyma tales

Varlam SHALAMOV1980

Short stories documenting daily life and survival in a Soviet labor camp. The prose is detached and focuses on the physical reality of starvation.

earnest → clinical, still historical fiction

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The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje1992

Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. They care for a burned, anonymous man who recounts his past in the desert.

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Fugitive Pieces

Anne Michaels1996

A Jewish boy rescued from Nazi-occupied Poland is raised in Greece and Canada. The prose follows his life and the lives of those he touches.

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A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry1995

Four people from different castes share a small apartment during the 1975 Indian Emergency. Their lives are upended by state-sanctioned violence.

earnest → bleak, still historical fiction

pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

The Confessions of Nat Turner

William Styron1967

A fictionalized confession of the leader of an 1831 slave revolt while he awaits execution in a Virginia jail cell.

earnest → bleak, still historical fiction

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

The Known World

Edward P. Jones2003

A black man who was once a slave becomes a slave owner in antebellum Virginia. The story follows the fallout on the plantation after his death.

earnest → meditative, still historical fiction

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