Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in...

The novel is a classic Künstlerroman -- a coming of age story centered on its titular protagonist, a self-taught would-be writer, struggling to rise above his impoverished proletarian roots in working-class Oakland, California, to achieve a place among the literary elite. The driving force behind Martin Eden's ambition is his love for Ruth Morse and a desire to accumulate enough wealth and prestige to satisfy her bourgeois family.

"This is the story of a sincere young man from a small town who joins a government agency. His quirky coworkers accidentally discover a computer glitch, saving the State of Texas millions of dollars, but the crotchety governor and a curious reporter threaten to ruin their lives. This is an American tale--part fable, part satire, and part comedy--revealing that camaraderie amongst friends wins the day over evil intentions."--Back cover.

"After two separate catastrophes, two very different families leave the country for the bright lights of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united, and--until God seems to turn His back on their boy Fish--religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords. Change, hardship, and the war force them to swallow their dignity and share a great, breathing, shuddering house called Cloudstreet. Over the next twenty years, they...

Named by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter...

Agnes Browne faces the hardships and rewards of raising seven children on her own in a 1960s working-class Dublin neighborhood.

Annabella Lagrange has lived a life of wealth and privilege, the only child of an aristocratic couple, and plans to marry her cousin and live happily ever after, until her eighteenth birthday, when she learns the truth about her birth and finds that all she holds dear is merely

Hannah Thornton overcomes adversity and tragedy to achieve independence and happiness.