Read-Alikes: Water for Elephants

If you liked “Water For Elephants” then try…

Bynum, Sarah Shun-lien
Madeleine is Sleeping
Falling into a deep and impenetrable sleep, young Madeleine leaves behind the tangible world of her provincial French village, joins a gypsy circus, and sees in her dreams people experiencing profound and mystical transformations.

Dunn, Katherine
Geek Love
Aloysious and Lillian Binewski, proprietors of a traveling carnival, attempt to reduce overhead by breeding their own freak show, with tragic results.

Dunn, Mark
Ibid: a Life
Tells the story of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged circus performer and the CEO of Dandy-de-odor-o Inc., in a novel composed entirely of footnotes.

Fergus, Jim
The Wild Girl
Heading west to join the search for the kidnapped son of a wealthy Mexican landowner, Ned Giles meets a troubled Apache girl, imprisoned in a Mexican jail, whose fate forces him to make a choice that will change his life.

Flagg, Fannie
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.

Gaffney, Elizabeth
Metropolis: a novel
Following a fire in P.T. Barnum's circus stable, a young German immigrant becomes caught up in New York's criminal underworld while falling in love with an Irish girl, as he becomes the target of a city-wide arson investigation.

Hall, Sarah
The Electric Michaelangelo
After growing up in England and serving an apprenticeship under a drunken tattoo master, Cy heads for America, setting up a shop on Coney Island and falling in love with a circus performer.

Hough, Robert
The Final Confession of Mabel Stark
A fictionalized autobiography tells about the life, loves, and adventures of Mabel Stark, the greatest female tiger trainer in circus history.

Irving, John
A Son of the Circus
Twenty years after he had been the examining physician of two victims of a transsexual serial killer, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla leaves Toronto to return to his native Bombay and comes face to face with his own past and the murderer.

McCracken, Elizabeth
Niagara Falls All Over Again
During thirty years together as a famous comedy team, conniving comedian Rocky Carter and his straight man, Mose Sharp, a small-town boy from Iowa, have enjoyed a warm relationship, but when Rocky commits a desperate act of betrayal, their friendship is endangered.

Ursu, Anne
Disapparation of James
When the Woodrows go to the circus, son James volunteers to be part of an act in which he vanishes. The problem is - James does not come back. His sister, seven-year-old Greta, decides to find out what really happened to her brother.

Wallace, Daniel
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician
Traveling through the Deep South in 1950 with Jeremiah Musgrove's Chinese Circus, magician Henry Walker finds himself in deep trouble with three angry white teenagers, while his friends from the circus describe how Henry received the gift of magic from the devil himself.