If You Like...The Glass Castle

More hard-hitting memoirs (and a few novels) about growing up in difficult circumstances.

Updated April 9, 2026
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All over but the shoutin'
Bragg, Rick.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER . From the Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving...
Angela's ashes : a memoir
McCourt, Frank.
Paper Book
A Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland--now with a new introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all...
Bastard out of Carolina
Allison, Dorothy
Paper Book
Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family—rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as...
Crying in H Mart : a memoir
Zauner, Michelle
Ebook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American--"in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself" (NPR). * CELEBRATING...
Demon copperhead A novel
Kingsolver, Barbara.
Ebook
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century * An Oprah's Book Club Selection * An Instant New York Times Bestseller * An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * A #1 Washington Post...
Educated : a memoir
Westover, Tara
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University ...
Girl, interrupted
Kaysen, Susanna
Paper Book
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital.  She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath,...
The glass castle : a memoir
Walls, Jeannette
Paper Book
In the tradition of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shouting, Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family.
Half broke horses : a true-life novel
Walls, Jeannette
Paper Book
From the author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon--"Walls vividly depicts her astonishing, resilient grandmother with a lightness of touch that is plainspoken yet heartfelt" (Chicago Tribune). Half Broke Horses has transfixed readers everywhere. "Those...
The Liars' Club : a memoir
Karr, Mary.
Paper Book
"Astonishing...one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"Mary Karr's God-awful childhood has a calamitous appeal...the choice in the book is between howling misery and howling laughter, and the reader veers toward laughter. Karr has...
Olive Kitteridge
Strout, Elizabeth
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Lucy Barton and the Oprah's Book Club pick Olive, Again "Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge<...
Oranges are not the only fruit
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
"To read Jeanette Winterson is to love her."--O, the Oprah Magazine A beloved contemporary feminist classic and pioneering work of autofiction--a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl's quirky passage into adulthood Jeanette Winterson's extraordinary career...
Running with scissors : a memoir
Burroughs, Augusten
Paper Book
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated...
A tree grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Betty
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick A special 75th anniversary edition of the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for ...

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