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Blanche on the Lam

Barbara Neely · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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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

Working-Class ProtagonistRacismAmerican SouthMystery
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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 When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn.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.

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleAmerican SouthRacism
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The Last Ballad

Wiley Cash · 400 pages

"The eagerly awaited next novel from the author of the New York Times bestselling A Land More Kind Than Home about a young mother desperately trying to hold her family together in the years before the Great Depression, a haunting and moving story of cowardice, courage and sacrifice"-- Ella May Wiggins, a young mother desperately trying to hold her family together with the paltry nine dollars a

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleAmerican SouthRacism
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The Cuckoo's Calling

J.K. Rowling · 480 pages

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleMysterySeries
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The Well and the Mine

Gin Phillips · 256 pages

“When you close the book, you’ll miss these characters. But The Well and the Mine doesn’t just give you characters who’ll stay with you—it gives you a whole world.”—Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man. A novel of warmth and true feeling, The Well and the Mine explores the value of community, charity, family, and hope that we can g

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleRacismAmerican South
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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

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleRacismAmerican South
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Foundryside

Robert Jackson Bennett · 501 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleSeries StarterSeries
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A Garden of Earthly Delights

Joyce Carol Oates · 440 pages

In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleSeries StarterSeries
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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.

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleAmerican SouthRacism
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In the Heat of the Night

John Dudley Ball · 186 pages

RacismAmerican SouthMysterySeries Starter
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Sounder

William H. Armstrong · 116 pages

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and through his relationship with his devoted dog Sounder.

RacismClass StruggleWorking-Class ProtagonistAmerican South
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The Handsome Road

Gwen Bristow · 326 pages

Class StruggleWorking-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthSeries
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Me Before You

Jojo Moyes · 451 pages

Louisa Clark is an ordinary young woman living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cann

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleFemale LeadSeries
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Black Boy

Richard Wright · 288 pages

Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthRacismClass Struggle
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Steeplejack

A.J. Hartley · 334 pages

Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga, Ang for short, works repairing the chimneys, towers, and spires of Bar-Selehm, the ethnically-diverse industrial capital of a land resembling Victorian South Africa. The city was built on the trade of luxorite, a priceless glowing mineral. When the Beacon, a historical icon made of the largest piece of luxorite known to exist, is stolen, this news commands the he

Class StruggleRacismSeries StarterMystery
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Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley · 219 pages

In a Los Angeles bar, "Easy" Rawlins, a black war veteran just fired from his job, wonders how he'll pay his mortgage. DeWitt Albright, a quietly vicious white man, walks in and offers Easy good money if he'll find Daphne Monet.

Working-Class ProtagonistRacismMysterySeries Starter
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Necessary Lies

Diane Chamberlain · 370 pages

Caring for her family on their mid-20th-century tobacco farm after the loss of her parents, 15-year-old Ivy connects with Grace County social worker Jane, who strains her personal and professional relationships with her advocacy of Ivy's family, whose dark secrets test Jane's resolve against racial tensions and state-mandated sterilizations.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthRacismSeries
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The House Girl

Tara Conklin · 372 pages

A novel of love, family, and justice follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in a Manhattan law firm, as she searches for the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

RacismClass StruggleAmerican SouthMystery
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The Poppy War

R.F. Kuang · 545 pages

Winner of the Reddit Fantasy Award for Best Debut 2018 ‘The best fantasy debut of 2018’ – WIRED

Working-Class ProtagonistRacismSeries StarterSeries
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Ranchero

Rick Gavin · 265 pages

Attacked by a belligerent man who steals an important car and flees with a television that was being repossessed, Nick Reid and his best friend, Desmond, pursue the man and find themselves on the trail of a notorious meth producer.

Working-Class ProtagonistAmerican SouthSeries StarterMystery
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Child of the River

Irma Joubert · 416 pages

"Persomi's dreams are much bigger than the world of poverty and deprivation that surround her in the Bushveld of the 1940s and 1950s in South Africa. Persomi is young, white and poor, born the middle child of illiterate sharecroppers on the prosperous Fourie farm. Persomi's world is extraordinarily small. She has never been to the local village and spends her days absorbed in the rhythms of the na

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleRacismFemale Lead
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My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante · 336 pages

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, "My Brilliant Friend" is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but

Class StruggleWorking-Class ProtagonistSeries StarterSeries
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The Coldest Winter Ever

Sister Souljah · 360 pages

A New York Times and USA TODAY Bestseller “50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years.” —Essence Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read The instant classic from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Life After Death brings the streets of New York to life in a powerful and utterly unforgettable first novel. I came busting into the worl

Working-Class ProtagonistClass StruggleRacismFemale Lead
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A Field of Darkness

Cornelia Read · 308 pages

"In Syracuse, New York, a tough-talking, shotgun-toting, ex-debutante gets in over her head in a twenty-year-old murder investigation"--Provided by publisher.

Class StruggleMysterySeries StarterSeries

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