An amusing portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London, an irrepressible mum and dad and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a sneering layabout. A vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams (such as the father's desire to open a food truck) carry enormous weight. Perched on the line between humor and melancholy.

A super-rich and pretentious socialite winds up in the world of a struggling carpenter with four kids.

A powerful portrait of blue-collar America, a timeless tribute to the inherent decency and good humor that sustains working-class people in everyday life.

"A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American family: broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel's title, pointedly uncapitalized, refers to those Americans...

"In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are teenagers in love. A basketball star, Brick could escape his abusive father and be the first person in his working-class family to go to college. But when Ellie becomes pregnant, they marry, she gives up her dream of nursing school, and Brick gets a union card instead. This riveting novel tells the story of three generations in a working-class family; especially Brick and Ellie's daughter Samantha. Illuminating issues...

"The Beans of Egypt, Maine introduced the world to the notorious, unforgettable Bean clan of small town Egypt, Maine -- from wild man Reuben, an alcoholic who can't seem to keep himself out of jail; to his cousins, the perpetually pregnant Roberta, and Beal, a man gentle by temperament but violent in defeat who marries his pious neighbor, Earlene Pomerleau before poverty kills him. As the Beans struggled with their inner demons to survive against...

"After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during...

"The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars -- Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic -- they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find...

An absurd black comedy that centers on Gloria, a very resourceful working class housewife and cleaning woman, who is hooked on amphetamines and must contend with her crazy family.

Georgie is a resourceful twelve-year-old girl who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London following the death of her mother. She makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. Out of nowhere, her estranged father Jason arrives and forces her to confront reality. Uninterested in this sudden new parental figure, Georgie is stubbornly resistant...