Fiction with Great Characters and Meaningful Relationships

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Fiction
• Strong characterization
• Meaningful relationships

Year of Wonders
By Geraldine Brooks
F BROOKS
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family and the disintegration of her local community as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England.

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer
F SHAFFER
In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.

Blue Castle
By L.M. Montgomery
YA F MONTGOME
Valancy Stirling, an inhibited twenty-nine-year-old spinster, undergoes a total personality change when a doctor tells her she has no more than one year to live.

The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
F ZUSAK
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Charms for the Easy Life
By Kaye Gibbons
F GIBBONS
This novel depicts three generations of Southern women living together during World War II. Unworthy men marry into this formidable tribe, but they cannot break the women's circle of strength and grace. Margaret, the narrator, gently and humorously regales readers with the adventures of her grandmother, Charlie Kate, as a respectable yet unlicensed physician.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
By Helen Simonson
F SIMONSON
Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?