Lost Memory of Skin

The Beauty of Men

Andrew Holleran · 280 pages

Lark's mourning over the loss of his youth and of friends and acquaintances, his visits to his dying mother, and his actual and remembered visits to boat docks and baths comprise a narrative of loneliness, aging, and obsessive desire.

No One Writes to the Colonel

Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 170 pages

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 174 pages

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Iv

How Late it Was, How Late

James Kelman · 373 pages

In Scotland, the portrait of a petty crook who had one run-in with police too many. It is a series of reflections as he sits in jail, contemplating his fate. He had been in trouble before, but this time it's different, the latest brawl with police cost him his eyesight. Now in addition to all his other troubles he is blind.

Hard Rain Falling

Don Carpenter · 308 pages

Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good - a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black r

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy · 440 pages

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a liv

Post Office

Charles Bukowski · 160 pages

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sad

Delicious Foods

James Hannaham · 371 pages

"Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs, and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace. Unbeknownst to eleven-year-old Eddie, now left behind in a panic-stricken search for her, Darlene has been lured away with false promi

An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser · 831 pages

The classic depiction of the harsh realities of American life, the dark side of the American Dream, and one man's doomed pursuit of love and success..."Mr. Dreiser is not imitative and belongs to no school. He is at heart a mysticist and a fatalist, though using the realistic method. He is, on the evidence of this novel alone, a power." --The New York Times Book Review

As God Commands

Niccolo Ammaniti · 406 pages

Despite his hope that the scheme of his alcoholic father, Rino, and his cronies will land a great fortune for the family, and the hand of the beautiful Fabiana for him, Cristiano finds his life changed in a single night, and not in the way he had hoped.

Joe

Larry Brown · 348 pages

The Garden of Last Days

Andre Dubus III · 537 pages

Explosive elements converge one early September night in a Florida men's club revealing the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed. Reluctantly bringing her daughter to her men's club office when her babysitter falls ill, stripper April endeavors to keep her child safe while servicing a wealthy foreign client, while a drunken regular angrily retaliates for being th

Carry Me Down

M.J. Hyland · 326 pages

John Egan has a gift. He can tell when people are lying. Hoping that his talent will bring him fame, he has written to the Guinness Book of Records. But while he waits for a letter in return, his obsession with uncovering the truth begins to threaten his already fragile family.

Ask the Dust

John Fante · 165 pages

Studs Lonigan

James T. Farrell · 819 pages

[William V. Lipton][1] from Ann Arbor, MI says: "This is both a coming-of-age novel and a social history. Set during the 1920s and 1930s, it follows Studs as he grows through his teen years in Chicago. It shows the influences on urban children, the stresses on families and the American society during that time. The characters and dialogue are captivating." ([on Flashlight Worthy][2]) [1]:

Midnight Cowboy

James Leo Herlihy · 253 pages

To Have and Have Not

Ernest Hemingway · 262 pages

This 1936 novel tells the story of an American fishing boat skipper who dabbles in a little smuggling to make ends meet. In need of money for his family the captain reluctantly becomes agrees to smuggle a group of Chinese immigrants from Cuba to Florida. This is Hemingway’s only novel to be set in the United States.

The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton · 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

Suttree

Cormac McCarthy · 471 pages

By the author of *Blood Meridian* and *All the Pretty Horses, Suttree* is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there--a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters--he rises above the physic

The Paperboy

Pete Dexter · 313 pages

Ward James is a reclusive, obsessed young reporter, half of a famous investigative team in Miami, the son of a newspaper family. His younger brother, Jack, recently expelled from the University of Florida's swimming team, and then from the university itself, drives a delivery truck for their father's paper in northern Florida. The brothers are brought together when Ward returns home to investigat

Rabbit, Run

John Updike · 307 pages

*Rabbit, Run* is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in

Untouchable

Mulk Raj Anand · 160 pages

With precision, vitality, and a fury that earned him praise as India's Charles Dickens, Mulk Raj Anand recreates in" Untouchable" what it was like to live on the fringes of society in pre-independence India. Bakha, an attractive, proud, and strong young man, is also an Untouchable, the lowest of the low in India's caste system. A sweeper and a toilet-cleaner, he must warn others on the street of h

The Mirror & the Light

Hilary Mantel · 759 pages

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 498 pages

A masterpiece of guilt and redemption that transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, is determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will. When he commits an act of murder and theft, he sets in