LibGuides: Author Readalikes: Picoult, Jodi

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Jodi Picoult - Novels About Family, Relationships & Love
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Images of book jackets from around the world.

Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
This database offers essays, articles, and statistics from both sides of controversial topics such as gun control, bullying in schools, and medical ethics. Accessing this database requires a San Antonio Public Library card.
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American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics
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Newest Books

Last Update:

Last updated: December 2016. (CM)

Meet: Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult examines controversial topics using 'typical' everyday people who face extraordinary circumstances. For example, rather than an abstract, intellectual debate about medical ethics, Picoult draws readers into a family facing a situation that requires the family and the doctors involved to make difficult, often highly debated, decisions.

The author is thorough in her intelligent presentation of both sides of an issue and wants readers to feel sympathetic towards characters on opposing sides of a conflict. There are no clearly drawn villains nor absolute conclusions.

Bibliography/Series info

All of Picoult's novels are stand-alones. So readers can begin with any novel, as they are equally accessible. Most are available as audio books, and many have been translated into Spanish. Her most popular novel to date is My sister's keeper.

Picoult ventured into writing for Young Adults with Between the Lines in 2012.

If you enjoyed Picoult's approach to controversial & topical issues. . .

The Abortionist's Daughter by Elisabeth Hyde
ISBN: 9780307263667
Publication Date: 2006-06-20
Like Picoult, The Abortionist's Daughter tackles a emotional and sensitive topic with insight into human motivations but without villains.

Hyde tells a story about the way choices we make cause unintended consequences that ripple through our lives around the murder of Diana Duprey, an outspoken abortion doctor, in a small Colorado town.
Black and blue : a novel by by Anna Quindlen
Bobby, a New York cop, and Fran, a nurse, are crazy for each other from the very first, but Bobby’s violent nature reveals itself quickly. Despite her familiarity as a nurse with the drill, Fran finds herself trapped in the classic pattern of domestic abuse: abrupt and irrational arguments followed by beatings which become increasingly severe. Their son, Robert, is 10 when Fran finally flees with the help of group that provide new identities for Fran and her son.

Quindlen’s prose, precise and unrelenting, refuses to gloss over their suffering, from the shock of finding themselves cut off from everything familiar to Fran’s fear of her husband and Robert’s longing for his adored father.

If you liked Picoult's handling of bigotry in Small great things . . .

Run by Ann Patchett
ISBN: 9780061340635
Publication Date: 2007-09-25
Like Small great things Patchett’s Run is a moving, bittersweet story in which tragic events force characters to confront complex issues of race, class, and personal identity.

Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children—all his children—safe.

Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.
The Submission by Amy Waldman
ISBN: 9780374271565
Publication Date: 2011-08-16
Both Waldman and Picoult offer thought-provoking, compelling stories with sympathetic characters who become in entangled in public controversies born of bigotry. Waldman—like Picoult—tackles a thorny social issue in literary prose.

A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name—and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country's. The memorial's designer is an enigmatic, ambitious architect named Mohammad Khan. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the self-possessed and mediagenic Claire Burwell.

But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, she finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself—as unknowable as he is gifted. In the fight for both advantage and their ideals, all will bring the emotional weight of their own histories to bear on the urgent question of how to remember, and understand, a national tragedy. In this deeply humane novel, the breadth of Amy Waldman's cast of characters is matched by her startling ability to conjure their perspectives.

If you liked The Storyteller, take a look at these. . .

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
ISBN: 9780312370831
Publication Date: 2007-06-12
Terrible secrets and painful decisions in Sarah's Key will resonate with fans of The Storyteller.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

If you liked My Sister's Keeper & Handle with care . . .

If the fast-paced drama involving a combination of legal and ethical issues, like those raised in My sister's keeper and Change of heart, appeal to you, take a look at these:

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
ISBN: 0517703963
Publication Date: 1997-04-01
Sybil has successfully home-delivered more than 500 babies, but one freezing March night, the phone line down and the roads impassable, the laboring woman she is attending suddenly suffers what appears to be a fatal stroke. Sibyl saves the child with an emergency C-section only to find herself arrested after her assistant tells police that the operation was performed on a still-living woman.

Is there, in fact, blood on Sibyl's hands? Or is she just a target of the hostile New England medical community, whose persecution of midwives dates back to the 17th-century expulsion of Anne Hutchinson from the Massachusetts Bay?

With acutely sensitive character delineation, Bohjalian manages to present all the participants in this drama, from the family members to the grieving widower, as complex, fully realized individuals. As with Picoult, this is a story with no obvious villains or heroes.
One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
ISBN: 067940712X
Publication Date: 1994-08-30
Another intimate look at a family's decisions when faced with a tragedy. A mother. A daughter. A shattering choice. From Anna Quindlen, bestselling author of Black and Blue, comes a novel of life, love and everyday acts of mercy.
At risk by by Alic Hoffman
Like Picoult At risk combines the story of an intimate family tragedy with larger social issues.

Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast living in a small New England town.

Amanda, who has been winning gymnastic meets despite a summer-long malaise, tests positive for AIDS, contracted some five years before when she was transfused with contaminated blood after an appendectomy. In unsensationalized detail, Hoffman depicts the effects of her illness. Too stunned, angry and anguished even to turn to each other, Polly and Ivan retreat into separate worlds. Charlie is abandoned by his best friend and shunned by his schoolmates. Amanda, an average adolescent who loves Madonna records, must come to grips with the process of dying. The hysterical reaction of some members of the community is a further blow. Hoffman's sensitive handling of this material is both matter of fact and heartbreaking.

If you liked Nineteen Minutes . . .

Th1rteen r3asons why : a novel by by Jay Asher
Although centered around suicide rather than a school-shooting (as in Nineteen minutes), Asher is also addressing the questions, and repercussions, surrounding a tragic event involving teenagers.

13 teenagers in a small town have each been designated to listen, in secret, to a box of audiotapes recorded by their classmate Hannah and mailed on the very day she commits suicide. "I'm about to tell you the story of my life," she says. "More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why." Clay, the narrator, receives the tapes a few weeks after the suicide (each listener must send the box to the next), and his initial shock turns to horror as he hears the dead girl implicate his friends and acquaintances in various acts of callousness, cruelty or crime. Asher expertly paces the narrative, splicing Hannah's tale with Clay's mounting anxiety and fear. Just what has he done?

If you liked ordinary characters in difficult situations . .

If you enjoy the focus on everyday people, their relationships with friends and family and the often difficult choices they face, take a look at these titles.

And sometimes why by by Rebecca Johnson
Like most of Picoult's titles, Johson examines the ties that bind and break in the face of tragedy and the many ways life can (very quickly) change.

Tragedy strikes the McMartin family when 16-year-old Helen becomes involved in a near-fatal accident after arguing with older sister Miranda over the use of the family car. Miranda and parents Darius and Sophia each respond differently to this catastrophe. Their story is intertwined with that of Harry Harlow, the driver of a vehicle involved in the accident and host of a popular, bizarre reality television game show, as well as a number of secondary characters. Over the next eight months, during which Helen remains comatose, crucial decisions loom and unexpected choices are made.
The rest of her life by by Laura Moriarty
Like many of Picolt's novels, Moriarty paints an intimate look at a family struggling after a tragedy.

Kara Churchill, 18, is driving with a friend and talking on her phone when she blows through a stop sign and strikes a classmate, killing her instantly. Kara retreats into herself, baffling and upsetting her mother, Leigh, who can't find a way to reach her. Moriarty focus is on the internal workings of the Churchill family and their shock and grief in the days following the girl's death. Leigh in particular wonders how her daughter will move on beyond the accident that will haunt her for the remainder of her days.

Screen Adaptations

My Sister's Keeper
ISBN: B001OQCV1K
Publication Date: 2009
Sara and Brian live an idyllic life with their young son and daughter. Suddenly, their baby girl falls ill, and her only hope for survival rests in her parents' ability to find a compatible bone marrow donor. Their desperate decision to conceive another child raises both ethical and moral questions and begins to erode their relationship. Their actions ultimately set off a court case that threatens to tear the family apart.

My Sister's Keeper was released on June 26, 2009 in the United States as Picoult's first feature film.

Several other books by Picoult have been adapted for the small screen. The Pact was released as a Lifetime Original Movie in 2002. Plain Truth was a Lifetime Original Movie in 2004, Tenth Circle was a Lifetime Original Movie in 2008 and Salem Falls was a made for TV movie in 2011.

If you'd like more information about the actors, the plots, or fun trivia, visit the Internet Movie Database.