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American Salvage

Bonnie Jo Campbell · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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The Neon Wilderness

Nelson Algren · 286 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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The Stories of Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver · 447 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

Breece D'J Pancake · 192 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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The Outlaw Album: Stories

Daniel Woodrell · 176 pages

Twelve short stories depict people on the fringes of society, including an injured rapist who is cared for by a young girl and a husband who cruelly avenges the murder of his wife's pet.

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionBleak
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Big Bad Love

Larry Brown

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionBleak
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Dubliners

James Joyce · 226 pages

James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionBleak
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Knockemstiff

Donald Ray Pollock · 224 pages

In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents.Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved--but irresistibly, undeniably real.

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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Last Exit to Brooklyn

Hubert Selby Jr. · 303 pages

Last Exit to Brooklyn is a raw depiction of life amongst New York's junkies, hustlers, drag queens and prostitutes. An unforgettable cast of characters inhabits the housing projects, bars and streets of Brooklyn: Georgette, a hopelessly romantic and tormented transvestite; Vinnie, a disaffected and volatile youth who has never been on the right side of the law; Tralala, who can find no escape from

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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Dirty Havana Trilogy

Pedro Juan Gutierrez · 400 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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North American Lake Monsters: Stories

Nathan Ballingrud · 300 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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Sabrina & Corina

Kali Fajardo-Anstine · 212 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionSubstance Abuse
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A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Lucia Berlin · 417 pages

"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts m

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionSubstance Abuse
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Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionBleak
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The Push Man and Other Stories

Yoshihiro Tatsumi · 224 pages

"Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics story-telling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists, but, until now, the majority of his work has remained unavailable outside of

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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The Acid House

Irvine Welsh · 256 pages

In the title piece an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousness with sardonically unexpected results, Snuff is on a man who videotapes his own suicide, and in Vat 69 a woman keeps her husband's head alive in a jar.

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionSubstance Abuse
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South of No North

Charles Bukowski · 189 pages

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on M

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionSubstance Abuse
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Refresh, Refresh

Benjamin Percy · 252 pages

'The stories in Refresh, Refresh are big-hearted and drunk and dangerous, and there's a heightened, unnerving vibe as you travel through Percy's world. You never know where you will end up... but you can be sure that he'll actually take you somewhere.'Dan Chaon.Here is the United States of today. The young men and boys in this bold, fiery collection do the unthinkable to prove to themselves – to e

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionBleak
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The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936-1941: The Grapes of Wrath, The Harvest Gypsies, The Long Valley, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

John Steinbeck · 1,067 pages

This second volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features his acknowledged masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Written in an incredibly compressed five-month period, the novel had an electrifying impact upon publication in 1939, unleashing a political storm with its vision of America's dispossessed struggling for survival. It continues to exert a powerful influ

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionRural Farm
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Odour of Chrysanthemums

D.H. Lawrence · 433 pages

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The Rainbow Stories

William T. Vollmann · 560 pages

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionSubstance Abuse
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Barn Burning

William Faulkner · 47 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary FictionBleak
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Rock Springs

Richard Ford · 252 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesLiterary Fiction

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