Books like A loving family by Dilly Court

Candide: A Tale of Conviviality and Optimism in a Wretched World

A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's critically acclaimed second novel, set in India in the mid-1970s and focusing on four unlikely individuals who come together in a city apartment during a state of emergency.

In Dickens’s sweeping novel, the protracted Jarndyce and Jarndyce case in the Court of Chancery pulls together a disparate cast— from heirs torn by legal costs to a mysterious ward, a cunning lawyer, and a destitute street sweeper— exposing London’s social decay.

In Jeffrey Archer’s debut of The Clifton Chronicles, the life of Harry Clifton unfolds from a Bristol dockyard in 1920 through two World Wars, revealing family secrets that shape one generation’s fortunes.

A 19th‑century tale of poverty, family, and the perils of a fraudulent antique dealer, centered on the young orphan Nell and her loyal grandfather.

Madeleine Thien’s memoir‑style novel traces an intergenerational Chinese family from Mao’s Cultural Revolution to present‑day Vancouver, exploring how political upheaval reshaped musicians, parents and children across time.

Set in 1905 England, The Edwardians follows the contrasting lives of brother Sebastian and sister Viola as they navigate the glittering highs and looming decline of aristocratic society, exploring tradition, love, and rebellion.

A young Englishwoman in 1920s Ceylon marries a tea plantation owner and widower, only to uncover unsettling secrets about his first wife that threaten to unravel their new life.

In turn‑of‑the‑century London, eighteen‑year‑old Rosina May faces family conflict and sudden hardship, navigating love, betrayal, and survival along the Thames.

Reads like prequel to Suite Francaise, but is a perfect novel in its own right - a gripping story of family life, of money and love, set against the backdrop of France in two terrible world wars.In haunting ways this wonderful, compelling novel prefigures Suite Francaise and some of the themes of Nemirovsky's great unfinished sequence of novels. All Our Worldly Goods, though, is complete, and exquisitely so – a perfect novel in its own right. First published in France in 1947, after the author's death, it is a gripping story of family life and starcrossed lovers, of money and greed, set against the backdrop of France from 1911 to 1940 between two terrible wars.Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more intimate scale, the bourgeoisie observed close-up with Nemirovsky's characteristically sly humour and clear-eyed compassion. Full of drama and heartbreak, telling observation of the devastating effects of two wars on a small town and an industrial family, this is Nemirovsky at the height of her powers. The exodus and flow of refugee humanity through the town in both wars foreshadows Suite Francaise, but differently, because this is Northern France, near the Somme, and the town itself is twice razed. Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, the novel points up with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, tragically, shockingly... It opens in the Edwardian era, on a fashionable Normandy beach, and ends with a changed world, under Nazi occupation.

Jo Baker’s novel re‑imagines Jane Austen’s world by turning the servants of Longbourn estate into the focus, following housemaid Sarah as she challenges her social limits amid a militia’s arrival and a mysterious footman.