Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom · 196 pages

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a 2003 novel by Mitch Albom. It follows the life and death of a ride mechanic named Eddie who is killed in an amusement park accident and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. It was published by Hyperion and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

The Turnaround

George P. Pelecanos · 294 pages

This novel takes us on a journey from the rock-and-soul streets of the 1970s to the changing neighbourhoods of Washington DC today. It is a story about fathers and sons, wives and husbands, loss, victory and ultimately violent redemption.

Astro City, Vol. 4: The Tarnished Angel

Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross, Brent Anderson · 224 pages

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo · 747 pages

In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.

Nobody's Fool

Richard Russo · 549 pages

In 1750, without warning or apparent reason, the mineral springs of the colonial resort town of Bath, New York, ran dry. A little more than two hundred years later, after numerous warnings and for too many reasons, Sully, the unluckiest man in this unlucky town, isn't doing too hot either. He's broke, out of a job, and the owner of a dead pickup truck. The good news? Sully has the dumbest man in N

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

Small Steps

Louis Sachar · 272 pages

Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it's hard when you have a record, and everyone expects the worst from you. The only person who believes in him is Ginny, his 10-year old disabled neighbor. Together, they are learning to take small steps. And he seems to be on the right path, until X-Ray, a buddy from Camp Gree

Marcovaldo

Italo Calvino · 192 pages

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce · 355 pages

Harold Fry has recently retired and now, he doesn't do very much. Even mowing the lawn, like his wife Maureen tells him to do, seems too much work for him. When, one day, he recieves a lettre in a pink envelope, this lazyness changes. In it, his collegue from long time ago, Queenie Hennessy, tells him she is going to die soon from a cancer in a hospice at the other end of England. Harold, at first

The River Is Waiting

Wally Lamb · 451 pages

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that's before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness

The Assistant

Bernard Malamud · 246 pages

Frank, a troubled, somewhat desperate, Italo-American works long hours in the grocery store of a struggling Jewish family in a Brooklyn neighborhood. He develops a secret passion for his employer's attractive daughter.

Tsotsi

Athol Fugard

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens · 469 pages

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1

The Women of Brewster Place

Gloria Naylor · 192 pages

The Women of Brewster Place depicts seven courageous black women struggling to survive life's harsh realities. . Each woman has an individual story to tell. Their stories include the trials and tribulations they endured to end up at Brewster Place; Brewster Place is a dead end street that is cut off from the rest of the town. The seven women include: Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Kiswana Brown

How to Read a Book

Monica Wood · 280 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]:

A Patchwork Planet

Anne Tyler · 288 pages

One of five Anne Tyler novels reissued in stunning new jacketsBarnaby Gaitlin is a loser - just short of thirty he's the black sheep of a philanthropic Baltimore family. Once upon a time he had a home, a loving wife, a little family of his own; now he has an ex-wife, a 9-year old daughter with attitude, a Corvette Sting Ray that's a collector's item but unreliable, and he works as hired muscle for

This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz · 240 pages

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love, as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

Ask the Dust

John Fante · 165 pages

A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Third Life Of Grange Copeland

Alice Walker · 302 pages

"Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head North. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, he returns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of the couple's youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third and final cha

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.

Lockdown

Walter Dean Myers · 247 pages

When I first got to Progress, it freaked me out to be locked in a room and unable to get out. But after a while, when you got to thinking about it, you knew nobody could get in, either.It seems as if the only progress that's going on at Progress juvenile facility is moving from juvy jail to real jail. Reese wants out early, but is he supposed to just sit back and let his friend Toon get jumped? Th

Electric God

Catherine Ryan Hyde · 318 pages

"As Electric God begins, Hayden Reese is a middle-aged man unsuccessfully trying to bury his past. He is newly released from jail, living a marginal life in a remote California town. He has just buried his dog, Jenny - the thing he loved most in the world. Now he finds that he is also losing the woman with whom he has formed the closest thing to a relationship that he has known for years. It seems