Books like Kings of the Roundhouse by John Preston

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.

After a catastrophic pandemic, former actress Kirsten Raymonde joins a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare for scattered communities, only to confront a ruthless prophet in a desperate quest for survival.

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

Never Let Me Go is a contemplative study of friendship, identity, and the ethical limits of science as it follows the lives of a group of students growing up in a quiet English boarding school.

In the unforgettable Le Cirque des Rêves, two young magicians, Celia and Marco, are locked in a nocturnal duel of wonder and will—an impossible game where love and magic collide on a stage of breathtaking spectacle.

The Goldfinch chronicles the life of thirteen‑year‑old Theo Decker, who survives a museum attack that kills his mother and carries an art piece that becomes a lifelong obsession, exploring loss, identity, and art in contemporary America.

Cora, a woman enslaved on a Georgia cotton plantation, partners with a new slave named Caesar to flee the South. Their daring escape follows a literal underground network of tunnels that mirrors the perilous journey of countless fugitive slaves toward freedom.

Inspector Tyador Borlú journeys from Besźel to Ul Qoma to investigate the murder of a woman, navigating two distinct cities that both share one physical space yet have separate identities.

Jennifer Egan’s interlocking narratives weave the lives of Bennie Salazar, a former punk rocker turned record executive, and Sasha, a restless young woman, across decades and continents, exploring music, memory and the fragile threads that bind us.

A trio of light Regency romances where love and duty intertwine, featuring Cathleen Clare’s The Impossible Bride, a spinster torn between family duty and the man she loves.

An entertaining and relatable collection of short stories exploring the ups and downs of love, from a humorist who turns ordinary moments into absurd ones.

A Trooper and an Orphan: A Regency Romance by Dana Corbit

Sarah Wendell’s inspirational guide to love stories and romance novels that teach life lessons and inspire happy endings.

A romance novel where a journalist is unexpectedly taken to the Falcon family, where she falls in love with a roguish man.

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story--of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder--but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse....An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions--and a rich literary delight.From the Hardcover edition.

A romance novel about a widowed widower and a spirited young woman who sets out to prove that age isn't a barrier to love in a small town in the South during the 1930s during the Great Depression. The book explores themes of perseverance and overcoming adversity through the love story of Reed Tyler, a young man who dreams of settling down on his own land with the woman he has promised to marry, and Hattie Colfax, a spirited young woman who runs her family's farm and dreams of a brighter future for her family. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and explores themes of perseverance and overcoming adversity through the love story of Reed Tyler, a young man who dreams of settling down on his own land with the woman he has promised to marry, and Hattie Colfax, a spirited young woman who runs her family's farm and dreams of a brighter future for her family.