Books like Carry Me Down by M. J. Hyland

The beloved classic of American literature, Little Women, narrates the adventures of four March sisters as they grow up during the Civil War era.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens’s 1837-39 social novel, follows an orphan raised in a workhouse who flees to London, joins a gang of pickpockets, and uncovers family secrets while exposing child labour and exploitation.

A love story set in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, where Anne Elliot finds herself amidst the Regency era as her sister rents Miss Elliot's father's house, leading to an unexpected reunion with Captain Frederick Wentworth and the return of her beloved.

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.

Two lovers flee a war-torn city through mysterious doors, carrying hopes and memories into a world of uncertainty.

A coming‑of‑age narrative set in 19th‑century England, following young David Copperfield as he navigates orphanhood, hardship and society’s social hierarchies.

A tense Dutch family drama in which two brothers and their wives confront the moral dilemma of protecting their children after the kids are implicated in a crime.

On Beauty explores a New England family’s life as they confront love, identity, and cultural divides over three decades, weaving personal struggles with broader conversations about race and belonging.

Thomas Hardy’s bleak final novel follows Jude Fawley, a stonemason from rural Wessex, whose search for faith, love and independence collides with society’s harsh conventions and leads to tragedy.

A young woman wrestles with the legacy of her brother’s childhood brain tumor while navigating a 20‑year arc of family tension, isolation and the strict Catholic culture of a rural Irish farming community.

Turtle Alveston, a fourteen‑year‑old survivor of a painful home life, finds hope when she meets Jacob, a wholesome high‑school boy who invites her into a world beyond the wilderness and her abusive father.

Near her hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty confronts the impending closure of Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, revealing her life and Ireland’s hidden past through journals with her psychiatrist, Dr Grene.

Barchester Towers, the second novel of Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire series, follows the clash of ambition, love and clerical politics in the cathedral city of Barchester.

Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son follows the proud industrialist Paul Dombey and his family, exposing how commercial ambition can corrupt personal bonds while hinting at redemption through love.

A Norwegian fiction by Tarjei Vesaas.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain follows the Mason family—a itinerant couple and their two sons—traversing the American Northwest as they pursue fleeting fortunes in hospitality, agriculture, and bootlegging during the early twentieth century.

A top crime journalist reveals precisely how the world-shattering murder of John Lennon happened—and why In Let Me Take You Down, Jack Jones penetrates the borderline world of dangerous fantasy in which Mark David Chapman stalked and killed Lennon: Mark David Chapman rose early on the morning of December 8 to make final preparations. . . . Chapman had neatly arranged and left behind a curious assortment of personal items on top of the hotel dresser. In an orderly semicircle, he had laid out his passport, an eight-track tape of the music of Todd Rundgren, his little Bible, open to The Gospel According to John (Lennon). He left a letter from a former YMCA supervisor at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where five years earlier, he had worked with refugees from the Vietnam War. Beside the letter were two photographs of himself surrounded by laughing Vietnamese children. At the center of the arrangement of personal effects, he had placed the small Wizard of Oz poster of Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. “I woke up knowing, somehow, that when I left that room, that was the last time I would see the room again,” Chapman recalled. “I truly felt it in my bones. I don’t know how. I had never seen John Lennon up to that point. I only knew that he was in the Dakota. But I somehow knew that it was it, this was the day. So I laid out on the dresser at the hotel room . . . just a tableau of everything that was important in my life. So it would say, ‘Look, this is me. Probably, this is the real me. This is my past and I’m going, gone to another place.’ “I practiced what it was going to look like when police officers came into the room. It was like I was going through a door and I knew I was going to go through a door, the poet’s door, William Blake’s door, Jim Morrison’s door. . . . I was leaving what I was, going into a future of uncertainty.”

Analyse : Roman d'amour. Roman du terroir.

In 1959 Wicklow, Ireland, Annie and cousin Sarah run Sarah’s farm. When Annie’s niece and nephew arrive, domestic chaos erupts, complicating their lives and a local man’s interest in the farm, leading to a season of growth, loss, and reconciliation.