Here are 2 books that A Bag of Marbles fans have personally recommended if you like A Bag of Marbles. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Helen Button

Janet Hulstrand Author Of A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

From Janet's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Reader Editor Francophile Minnesotan Once and forever Brooklynite

Janet's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Janet Hulstrand Why Janet loves this book

This provocative novel explores the challenges of living in an oppressive political environment. The springboard for the story is a character, a little girl featured in Gertrude Stein's 1940 book, Paris France. This author has taken that character from the Stein book and made her the protagonist of Helen Button--giving her a whole (fictional, but very believable) life. In the process the reader is led into considering not only Gertrude Stein's activities and sympathies during the Nazi Occupation of France--but also what each of us would have the courage, or the presence of mind, to do when confronted with situations that call for exceptional courage.

By Carol Roh Spaulding ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Helen Button as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Eludia Award from Hidden River Arts.Daughter of a Collaborationist. Housekeeper to Gertrude Stein. An ordinary woman lives through extraordinary times.In this dual timeline narrative, a young French housekeeper lives out the years of World War II near Vichy France with her famous employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. Decades later, she returns to France from the United States, finding that a fateful decision she made as a young woman echoes in the present in unexpected ways.In the years leading to Nazi occupation, young siblings Hélène andGuillaume Bouton, reluctant newcomers to the village of Bilignin, France happen upon…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Bone of the Bone

Janet Hulstrand Author Of A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

From Janet's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Reader Editor Francophile Minnesotan Once and forever Brooklynite

Janet's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Janet Hulstrand Why Janet loves this book

This collection of essays published by Sarah Smarsh from 2013 to 2024 gives a much richer, more complex and more authentic picture of life in the great heartland of the US than is usually provided in mainstream media. Her compassion for those struggling in the rural working class world in which she was raised, the sharpness of her insights into the current social and political challenges Americans are facing, and her gift for compelling storytelling and graceful writing make this a book that anyone who cares about the future of this country could benefit by reading.

By Sarah Smarsh ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bone of the Bone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A must-read for today's politics” (San Francisco Chronicle), the brilliant and provocative essays that established National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on America's class problem are collected in one searing and insightful volume.

In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times—class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on…


Book cover of Helen Button
Book cover of Bone of the Bone

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