Books like Shake Rag by Amy Littlesugar

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

Three white women in 1962 Mississippi team up with their Black maids to write a forbidden book that challenges the town’s rigid social order.

Jeannette Walls' memoir chronicles her turbulent childhood in a dysfunctional, itinerant family, detailing poverty, alcoholism, and homelessness across the United States as she seeks stability and personal growth.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

In 1964 South Carolina, Lily Owens, grieving her mother’s death, seeks refuge with a fierce stand‑in mother and a trio of black beekeeping sisters who open her to the secret world of bees, honey, and healing.

Sisters Vianne and Isabelle are pulled into the turmoil of World War II, each forging a path of courage and resistance against the Nazi occupation of France.

A devoted dog reflects on life, love, and racing while watching his owner, a race car driver, navigate family trials and professional ambition.

When a coastal dog retrieves a bone that turns out to be human, Isa Wilde’s idyllic village of Salten is thrust into terror as her childhood friends uncover a dark secret, unraveling their shared past.

A young girl discovers her love for music and friendship through unexpected circumstances while auditioning for top music schools in New York City.

A young girl with a mysterious past and extraordinary musical talents navigates the world of coexisting dragons and humans, grappling with her identity and secrets.

Three children linked across time by a mysterious harmonica face family‑sacrifice and destiny‑bound quests in the forbidden forest, Germany, Pennsylvania, and California.

A playful rhyme that sings the story of a violin’s special part in a musical performance, inviting young readers to count and celebrate music.

A 1941 Mississippi drama in which a black youth, assaulted by two white boys, turns the tables with a tire iron and seeks escape with Cassie's help.

A young boy discovers music and friendship with the help of a washed-up musician in the summer of 1969.

The true story of a friendship spanning religious divisions and four decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In the summer of 1967, not long after the Six Day War, three young Palestinian men ventured into the town of Ramla in Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes, from which they and their families had been driven out nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had the door slammed in his face, one found that his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir, was met at the door by a young woman named Dalia, who invited him in... This poignant encounter is the starting point for the story of two families – one Arab, one Jewish – which spans the fraught modern history of the region. In the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard of his childhood home, Bashir sees a symbol of occupation; Dalia, who arrived in 1948 as an infant with her family, as a fugitive from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. Both are inevitably swept up in the fates of their people and the stories of their lives form a microcosm of more than half a century of Israeli-Palestinian history.What began as a simple meeting between two young people grew into a dialogue lasting four decades. The Lemon Tree offers a much needed human perspective on this seemingly intractable conflict and reminds us not only of all that is at stake, but also of all that is possible.

In early 1900s St. Louis, a young black girl named Tumpie dreams of dancing amid poverty and lively street life, foreshadowing her future renown as Josephine Baker.

An autobiographical recollection of summers in Spanish Harlem, where a young boy learns merengue, conga, and Puerto Rican stories from his grandmother.

A young girl and her grandfather bond over the sounds of a mouth organ and the natural music of birds and insects in rural Georgia.

Sunday Tolliver, a successful but troubled African American teenager, navigates the challenges of fame and the music industry.

A young girl sets out to prove she is still alive after separating her shadow from herself.