Books like Among the living and the dead by Inara Verzemnieks

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.

A historical novel that follows a young woman’s journey from a fishing village into the refined, yet perilous world of Japanese geishas, exploring the rituals, social pressures, and personal ambitions that shape her life.

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

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.

The Orphan Master's Son follows a man's journey through propaganda, identity, and state power in North Korea.

An Indian judge in a Himalayan estate grapples with retirement and family secrets when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives, sparking personal discovery amid the echoes of colonial history.

Anne Tyler’s humorous novel reimagines Shakespeare’s "The Taming of the Shrew" as a contemporary family story set in the United States, exploring marriage, gender roles, and generational dynamics.

A moving memoir of a Vietnamese family’s immigration from Saigon to a Pennsylvania town in 1975, charting the challenges of assimilation, isolation, and teenage rebellion.

Carlos Eire’s memoir recounts his privileged Havana childhood before the Cuban Revolution, his family's exile in 1962, and the emotional journey of becoming a refugee in the United States.

Agate was six when she and her family fled their comfortable parsonage in rural Latvia to avoid the Russian advance. First interned in Germany, they were sent to work at an institute in East Germany where they were bombed and then captured after all by brutal Russian Mongolian troops. A witness to rape, torture and executions, Agate and her sister played among the corpses as the family starved, awaiting death. Time and again it was their mother who kept them going, and yet it was one moment in which she lost hope that changes their relationship and haunts Agate. Ultimately the family is admitted to a Displaced Persons Camp in the British Zone. There Agate goes to school once more. It is her mother's wish for her daughters that they be well-educated; that although she was deprived of her chance, that the life of the mind will be theirs. In her spare time Agate reads a battered paperback first volume of Gone With the Wind, in Latvian. Five years later the Nesaules arrive, penniless, in Indianapolis where Agate teaches herself to read English from a library copy of the book. The Latvian community in exile clings together but Agate wins a scholarship to the university, fulfilling her mother's dream. Yet, though she assimilates, part of Agate is still frozen in the past, still overcome with the shame of "not being worth feeding," and the terror of captivity, never at ease with her mother, always missing the affection they once shared. And she in unable to choose fulfillment over degradation in her private life... until she begins to tell her story.

A memoir of a woman’s life across a century of Ethiopian history, weaving personal tribulations—parenthood, widowhood, poverty—with political upheavals, from fascist occupation to revolutionary war.

A father's life story through the songs of his daughter and the memories of his people in the United States.