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Ford County

John Grisham · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Cannery Row

John Steinbeck · 183 pages

Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there. Steinbeck revisited these characters and this milieu nine years later in his novel Sweet Thursday.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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Hill William

Scott McClanahan · 222 pages

Hill William is a novel-in-stories chronicling the life of a young boy growing up in the mountains of today's West Virginia. Going no further than a mile from his home, the reader accompanies the narrator as he discovers the universe, as well as himself.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthShort StoriesSmall Town
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Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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No One Is Coming to Save Us

Stephanie Powell Watts · 384 pages

"JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can'

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day

Ann B. Ross · 320 pages

Frustrated with her life in the trailer park, Etta Mae Wiggins dreams of something better, but her ambition to marry a wealthy elderly man is challenged by the man's scheming children, her ex's underworld enemies, and her former flame Bobby Lee.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories

Jennifer Haigh · 244 pages

Now, in this collection of interconnected short stories, Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two World Wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding--sometimes cruelly - succeeding generations to the place that made them.

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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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.

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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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

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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Big Bad Love

Larry Brown

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthDark Comedy
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A Virtuous Woman

Kaye Gibbons · 176 pages

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistNovellaContemporary Fiction
❤️

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros · 110 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for he

Short StoriesWorking-Class ProtagonistContemporary FictionNovella
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Crum: The Novel

Lee Maynard · 262 pages

In Crum, a gritty coal town on the West Virginia-Kentucky border, the boys fight, swear, chase and sometimes catch girls. The adults are cramped in and clueless, hemmed in by the mountains. The weight of wonder, dejection, and even possibility loom over this tiny, suffocating town. This story is the tale of Jesse Stone, who doesn't know where he's going, but knows he is leaving, and whose rebellio

Working-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary FictionAmerican South
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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 ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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Rubyfruit Jungle

Rita Mae Brown · 246 pages

Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor Southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy the tub and loses her virginity to her girlfriend in sixth grade. As she grows to realize she's different, Molly decides not to apologize for that. In no time she mesmerizes the head cheerleader of Ft. Lauderdale High and captivates a g

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistContemporary FictionDark Comedy
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The Notebook

Nicholas Sparks · 266 pages

A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love. A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender sto

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary Fiction
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The Golden Apples

Eudora Welty

American SouthShort StoriesSmall TownLiterary Fiction
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Burning Bright

Ron Rash · 205 pages

Jacob and Edna have fallen on hard times. They haven't lost everything the way others have, but they have lost enough. When one of their hens stops laying eggs, it seems like the final straw. Jacob is determined to solve the mystery. What he discovers is as heartbreaking as it is revelatory.

Short StoriesAmerican SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary Fiction
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Collected Stories

William Faulkner · 900 pages

“A Bear Hunt,” “A Rose for Emily,” “Two Soldiers,” “Victory,” “The Brooch,” “Beyond”—these are among the forty-two stories that make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets, William Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata

American SouthShort StoriesSmall TownLiterary Fiction
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The Help

Kathryn Stockett · 464 pages

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women: Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownFunny
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The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Carson McCullers · 152 pages

American SouthShort StoriesSmall TownLiterary Fiction
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Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Fred Chappell · 212 pages

American SouthSmall TownContemporary FictionShort Stories
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Everybody's Fool

Richard Russo · 510 pages

"A best-selling and beloved author, at the very top of his game, now returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and the characters who made Nobody's Fool, his third novel, his first great success. The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is now staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he only has a year or two left, and he's busy as hell

Working-Class ProtagonistSmall TownContemporary FictionDark Comedy
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Who do you think you are?

Alice Munro · 224 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistShort StoriesSmall TownLiterary Fiction
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Dead Until Dark

Charlaine Harris · 320 pages

For years, Charlaine Harris has delighted fans with her mystery series featuring small-town waitress-turned-paranormal sleuth Sookie Stackhouse. Now, we are pleased to offer her first novel in the series in a special hardcover edition. And with HBO launching an all-new show, True Blood, based on the Southern Vampire novels, the demand for Charlaine Harris and Sookie Stackhouse will be bigger than

American SouthWorking-Class ProtagonistSmall TownFunny

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