The 6 books on this stack
Tap “Want to read” on the ones that catch your eye. No account needed, we'll keep them for you.
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Richard Russo 2001
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The bestselling author of Nobody's Fool and Straight Man delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace. “Rich, humorous ... Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far.” — The New York Times Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves with the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends and neighbors and who find humor and hope in the most unlikely places, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool , coming soon.
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Alice Walker 1983
Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this is the story of two sisters--one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South--who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. This classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.
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Min Jin Lee 2017
A victorian epic transplanted to Japan, following a Korean family of immigrants through eight decades and four generations.
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Fredrik Backman 2017
Now an HBO Original Series “You’ll love this engrossing novel.” — People Named a Best Book of the Year by LibraryReads , BookBrowse , and Goodreads From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People, a dazzling and profound novel about a small town with a big dream—and the price required to make it come true. By the lake in Beartown is an old ice rink, and in that ice rink Kevin, Amat, Benji, and the rest of the town’s junior ice hockey team are about to compete in the national semi-finals—and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. Under that heavy burden, the match becomes the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown. This is a story about a town and a game, but even more about loyalty, commitment, and the responsibilities of friendship; the people we disappoint even though we love them; and the decisions we make every day that come to define us. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
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Irvine Welsh 1993
Read the seminal bestselling novel that changed the face of British fiction and inspired Danny Boyle's film. * The Trainspotting sequel - Men in Love - is available now * 'The best book ever written by man or woman... Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible' Rebel Inc Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life. 'Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius.' Sunday Times
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Douglas Stuart 2026
From Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a stunning new novel, John of John . Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades. Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled. John of John is a vivid, moving, and beautifully crafted novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a close-knit community and a fraying family, of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires.