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The Coldest Winter Ever

Sister Souljah · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Economic InequalityAnti-HeroWorking-Class ProtagonistDark
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Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward · 274 pages

They heard it on the radio. A hurricane is coming, threatening the town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Esch's hard-drinking father can feel it in his bones. Esch and her brothers are trying to help prepare, but there are other worries too. Skeetah is watching his prized pit bull, helpless as her new litter dies one by one. Randall, when not preoccupied with basketball, is busy looking after the you

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorDark
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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

Economic InequalityMorally Gray CharacterWorking-Class ProtagonistAnti-Hero
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King of Ashes

S.A. Cosby · 352 pages

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortali

Organized CrimeMorally Gray CharacterAnti-HeroWorking-Class Protagonist
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Native Son

Richard Wright · 398 pages

Native Son (1940) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. ---------- Also contained in: [Early Works](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL506449W)

Economic InequalityAnti-HeroWorking-Class ProtagonistDark
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Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok · 293 pages

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistNew York CityFirst Person Narrator
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The Story of a New Name

Elena Ferrante · 480 pages

In 2012, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker’s James Wood described as “large, captivating, amiably peopled...a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal,” F

Working-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeFirst Person NarratorClassism
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The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorClass Struggle
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American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis · 399 pages

Anti-HeroNew York CityDarkFirst Person Narrator
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Dark Places

Gillian Flynn · 349 pages

Libby Day tinha apenas sete anos quando testemunhou o brutal assassinato da mãe e das duas irmãs na fazenda da família. O acusado do crime foi seu irmão mais velho, que acabou condenado à prisão perpétua. Desde aquele dia, Libby passou a viver sem rumo. Uma vida paralisada no tempo, sem amigos, família ou trabalho. Mas, vinte e quatro anos depois, quando é procurada por um grupo de pessoas conv

Morally Gray CharacterWorking-Class ProtagonistAnti-HeroFirst Person Narrator
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The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga · 304 pages

Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Economic InequalityAnti-HeroWorking-Class ProtagonistDark
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Blood Over Bright Haven

M.L. Wang · 428 pages

Morally Gray CharacterEconomic InequalityDarkViolent
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The Young Elites

Marie Lu · 392 pages

I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside. Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel fat

Anti-HeroMorally Gray CharacterDarkVillain Protagonist
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Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe · 298 pages

These are the true confessions of a remarkable and passionate young woman are thought to have been based on the adventures of a real prisoner in Newgate where Moll was born. ostensibly written as a warning to wrongdoers, the moral of Defoe's candid and cautionary tale is often lost in the sheer vitality of Moll - one of the supreme characters of English comic fiction. Her fortunes and misfortun

Economic InequalityMorally Gray CharacterWorking-Class ProtagonistAnti-Hero
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Sold

Patricia McCormick · 272 pages

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorDark
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Animal

K'wan · 416 pages

Tayshawn is one of the children the world throws away. The neighborhood kids give him the nickname "Animal." When his older brother, the only person in his life who shows him kindness, is taken away, Tayshawn will have to adapt to survive in the jungle.

Organized CrimeWorking-Class ProtagonistAnti-HeroNew York City
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The Godfather

Mario Puzo · 447 pages

The Godfather is a crime novel by American author Mario Puzo. Originally published in 1969 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, the novel details the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Beach, New York), headed by Vito Corleone. Puzo's dedication for The Godfather is "For Anthony Cleri". The novel's epigraph is by the French author Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is

Morally Gray CharacterNew York CityAnti-HeroOrganized Crime
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Reaper's Property

Joanna Wylde · 328 pages

Morally Gray CharacterOrganized CrimeAnti-HeroDark
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The Running Man

Richard Bachman · 352 pages

Economic InequalityAnti-HeroWorking-Class ProtagonistDark
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The Water Knife

Paolo Bacigalupi · 384 pages

The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that lush, luxurious arco

Economic InequalityMorally Gray CharacterAnti-HeroDark
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You

Caroline Kepnes · 424 pages

"Love hurts... When aspiring writer Guinevere Beck strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe works, he's instantly smitten. Beck is everything Joe has ever wanted: She's gorgeous, tough, razor-smart, and as sexy as his wildest dreams. Beck doesn't know it yet, but she's perfect for him, and soon she can't resist her feelings for a guy who seems custom made for her. But there's more to Joe

Anti-HeroNew York CityDarkFirst Person Narrator
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The Jungle

Upton Sinclair · 342 pages

Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was c

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistDarkViolent
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Economic InequalityFirst Person NarratorDarkViolent
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Red Rising

Pierce Brown · 400 pages

"I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them." "I live for you," I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more." Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and hi

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistDarkFirst Person Narrator

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