The Leftovers Reading List

By Lynn Ann Lobash, Associate Director, Readers Services and Engagement
August 13, 2014
The Leftovers

Before it was an HBO hit, The Leftovers was a book by Tom Perrotta. Each episode revolves around one of the four members of the Garvey family, following a mysterious "rapture" that disappeared 2% of the world's population. Before you start to binge or after you are finished here are some other books featuring interconnected stories you might enjoy.​

Monkeys by Susan Minot
This story of a family before and after the matriarch dies is told in stories that span from 1966 to 1979.A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Stories revolving around Bennie, an aging music executive; his former assistant, Sasha; and their various friends.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Three generations of women affected by the Virginia Woolf novel Mrs. Dalloway.The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Originally published as short stories in pulp magazines in the 40s, the novel chronicles the colonization of Mars.

Flower Children by Maxine Swann
What child longs for rules? In Flower Children, four siblings grow up in rural Pennsylvania under the “guidance” of their devoutly hippie parents. This semblance of a novel is not only interesting for its construction of stories into a novel, but also for its keen empathy and dreamy sense of place. Good choice for readers who loved The Virgin Suicides.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
A terrorist in Okinawa, a record store worker in Tokyo, a lawyer in Hong Kong, an old woman in China, an eight-year old Mongolian boy’s ghost, an art thief in St. Petersburg, a ghostwriter in London, a physicist in Ireland, and a DJ in New York.Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
A collection of sequentially related short stories about World War II.Later, at the Bar by Rebecca Barry
10 stories each focused on a regular at Lucy's bar over a long upstate New York winter.Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Quite possibly the original novel-in-stories, Sherwood Anderson's novel debuted over 100 years ago. The collection of stories is centered around George Willard, as he grows up in a small town and becomes confidant to many of its inhabitants.