A journalist describes the years she worked in low-paying domestic work under wealthy employers, contrasting the privileges of the upper-middle class to the realities of the overworked laborers supporting them.

Richard Russo—from his first novel, Mohawk, to his most recent, Straight Man—has demonstrated a peerless affinity for the human tragicomedy, and with this stunning new novel he extends even further his claims on the small-town, blue-collar heart of the country.
Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one,...

Examines "the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets--and of one's own nature--when he returns home"--Amazon.com.

Traces the first 16 years of the life of a Scottish girl, born into picaresque poverty to a single mother, who is trying to find a man (any man) who can help them elevate their circumstances and secure some stability

Hue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America's most venerated and most original writers. McPherson's characters -- gritty, authentic, and pristinely rendered -- give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology. First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize-winning...

"Homesick and alone, a teenaged girl has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory. Her family, still in the countryside, is too impoverished to keep sending her to school, so she works long, sunless days on a stereo-assembly line, struggling through night school every evening in order to achieve her dream of becoming a writer"--Amazon.com.