Help with books for a young 16 year old reader who says he liked Kite runner because it read like

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. I have several suggestion.

First is Sarah's Key by Tatiana deRosnay. Both the book and the movie are excellent.

If he's at all a fan of science fiction or time travel, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is very good. The now of the book is the mid 21st century. Time travel has been invented and is in the hands of historians. A young woman is preparing for a trip to a particular village in 1328 England (the novel takes place in England). Meanwhile, a deadly flu epidemic breaks out and complicates things. The young woman arrives back in that village, not long before Christmas. Soon people around her start dying off at a scary rate. She essentially asks someone, "What the fuck year is it?" (not Willis's exact words) and is told, "It's the year of our Lord 1348, milady." She's arrived at the outset of the bubonic plague, the Black Death. Part way through reading the book I pulled out a Penguin book about the plague and I think Willis may have used that as one of her resources.

Since that particular book is a bit of a downer, a much more light-hearted look at time travel is in her next book, To Say Nothing of the Dog.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles. After the Civil War a man earns his living by travelling around Texas, reading articles for newspapers. Apparently that was an actual thing then. One day he is tasked to return a 10 year old girl to her family in San Antonio. She'd been captured by Comanches some four years earlier. Very, very good. I just looked at the trailer for the movie that should be coming out later this year, and it looks as if they made some essential changes in things like the age of the girl, and how he meets up with her. The novel is excellent.

If he's remotely interested in baseball I have several suggestions, two non-fiction two fiction. The two non fiction are Bottom of the 33rd by Dan Barry about the very longest baseball game ever played. Incredible story. The other is Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein. Wow. Men who play the game because the totally love it. The two fiction books are If I Never Get Back and Havana Heat, both by Darryl Brock. In the first, a sports writer finds himself back in 1869 and travelling with the Cincinnati Reds, the very first professional baseball time. In the second, Luther "Dummy" Taylor is a professional baseball player trying to revive his career in 1911 by going with a travelling team to Cuba. Back then, a fair number of players were deaf, as was Taylor, and typically nicknamed Dummy. The gymnasium at the school for the deaf in Olathe, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City, MO) is named for him. I used to drive by it every day when I had a job at the Johnson County KS courthouse.

I hope these are helpful. And if he has zero interest in any of these, I can offer both good wishes and lots more suggestions if you'd like.