Moser, N. (2010). Masquerade. Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
In 1886, English socialite Charlotte Gleason decides an arranged marriage is not for her by trading places with her maid, Dora. What turned out to be a quick decision by a spoiled heiress becomes a test of survival.
Moser, N. (2011). An unlikely suitor. Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
Three women from different social class backgrounds become close friends as they struggle to find love and happiness with each unlikely suitor in the backdrop of Gilded Age New York.
Moser, N. (2016). The pattern artist. Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
English housemaid Annie Wood arrives in New York City in 1911 with her wealthy mistress. Wide-eyed with the possibilities America has to offer, Annie wonders if there’s more for her than a life of service.
Mosley, W. (2006). Fortunate son: A novel. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books.
Fortunate Son follows the lives of two boys who are vastly different from one another – Tommy, who is pitied and suffers major health problems, and his stepbrother, Eric, a charming, well-liked star athlete. After tragedy breaks apart their family, the lives of these boys take different paths, with each confronting the challenges in their lives.
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Naylor, G. (1983). The women of Brewster Place. New York, NY: Penguin.
The Women of Brewster Place depicts seven courageous black women struggling to survive life's harsh realities. It chronicles the communal strength of the diverse women who live in run-down rental homes in a secluded, urban neighborhood.
Naylor, G. (1986). Linden hills. New York, NY: Penguin.
Linden Hills, is loosely based on Dante's Inferno, but the hell created is in an African-American middle-class neighborhood. The novel is a critical perspective of the African-American middle class that sacrifices their racial identity for material success.
Neely, B. (1994). Blanche among the talented tenth. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.
Blanche White visits her children at their private school in Amber Cove, an exclusive, all-black resort in Maine, where she can observe them with their wealthy friends. Here she gains an insider's view of the color and class divisions within the black community.
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O'Dell, T. (2007). Sister mine: A novel. New York, NY: Shaye Areheart Books.
Sister Mine centers on Shae-Lynn Penrose, who has overcome an abusive childhood and a teenage pregnancy to finish college, work as a police officer, raise her son alone, and return to her coal mining hometown of Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania. Then Shannon, the younger sister Shae-Lynn thought was long
dead, shows up.
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Patterson, K. (1991/1995). Lyddie. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
When Lyddie and her younger brother are hired out as servants to help pay off their family farm's debts, Lyddie is determined to find a way to reunite her family once again. Hearing about all the money a girl can make working in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, she makes her way there, only to find that her dreams of returning home may never come true.
Petry, A. (1946/1998). The street: A novel. New York, NY: Mariner Books.
Set in World War II era Harlem, Lutie Johnson, a single black mother, is confronted by racism, sexism, and classism on a daily basis in her pursuit of the American dream for herself and her son, Bub.
Price, R. (1976/1999). Blood brothers. Boston, MA: Mariner Books.
Blood Brothers recounts the story of Stony De Coco, an eighteen-year old boy growing up in a working-class environment. Stony’s father is a construction worker who expects his son to follow in his footsteps, but Stony is determined to break loose from this life despite opposition from everyone else in his family.
Price, R. (1992/2001). Clockers. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
Clockers immerses the reader in the drug culture of inner-city housing projects. The novel is both an intense mystery and a revealing study of two men, a veteran homicide detective and a young African American man with a steady job and a clean record, but who has confessed to a shooting outside a fast-food restaurant.
Price, R. (2008). Lush life: A novel. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In Lush Life, Richard Price exposes the hidden cracks of the “new” New York, a New York of underground networks of control and violence. In this novel, we meet two different men, Eric Cash, 35-year-old living on the Lower East Side, serving those he desired to be, and Ike Marcus, a young man going places; their lives become intertwined after one night.
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Rivera, T. (1987). ...y no se lo tragó la tierra /...And the earth did not devour him. (T. Rivera & E. Vigil-Piñón, Trans.). Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press. (Original work published 1971).
This book tells its stories through the eyes of a young boy, the child of poor, migrant farm workers. The stories communicate the community's ability to come together to help one another survive and also stories that depict the pressures inflicted on relationships by the hardship of their lives.
Rosenfeld, L. (2017). Class. New York, NY: Hachette Books.
Karen Kipple works full-time at a nonprofit that helps children from disadvantaged homes. She chooses to live in an urban neighborhood and send her daughter to an integrated public school. But when a trouble student from a nearby housing project begins bullying children in her daughter’s class, Karen must grapple with social and economic issues that test her values.
Russo, R. (2001/2005). Empire falls. New York, NY: Vintage.
This novel explores the lives of working-class characters living in the dead-end, small town of Empire Falls, Maine.
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Sapphire. (1997). Push: A novel. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
An obese and illiterate teen girl named Claireece escapes her abusive household and gains a positive attitude on life when she enrolls in an alternative school for women from troubled backgrounds.
Segal, E. (1988). Love story. New York, NY: HarperTorch.
It is the story of two young people from different worlds – Oliver Barrett IV, a wealthy Harvard jock and heir to the Barrett fortune and legacy, and Jennifer Cavilleri, daughter of a Cranston, Rhode Island baker, with not much money, but lots of love. The novel follows them as they encounter different obstacles as their love grows strong and deep.
Sheehan, S. (1984). Kate Quinton's days. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Kate is a woman in a nursing home caught in a bureaucratic cycle of Medicare while she tries to qualify for at-home assistance so that she can leave the nursing home.
Sheehan, S. (1994). Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. New York, NY: Vintage.
This Pulitzer Prize winning author tells the story of a black family’s experience with the foster care system in New York City.
Sittenfeld, C. (2005). Prep: A novel. New York, NY: Random House.
Prep chronicles the coming-of-age of Lee Fiora, a South Bend, Indiana, teenager who wins a scholarship to the prestigious Ault School, an East Coast institution where the presence of money of campus was as obvious as it was understated.
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Tanabe, K. (2016). The gilded years. New York, NY: Washington Square Press.
Now a senior in the class of 1897, Anita Hemmings is hiding a secret that would have banned her from admission: Anita is the only African American student ever to attend Vassar College. As the daughter of a janitor and descendant of slaves, she used her olive complexion to pass as white. But Anita finds herself rooming with a wealthy New York socialite.
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Vachon, D. (2007). Merger & acquisitions. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Mergers & Acquisitions is the story of Tommy Quinn, a recent Georgetown graduate who has acquired the job of his dreams as an investment banker, and the perfect girl, Frances Sloan, the daughter of one of New York's elite families. As we follow Tommy through the novel, we discover that the job and the girl are not what they once seemed.
Viramontes, H. M. (1996). Under the feet of Jesus. New York, NY: Plume.
The story focuses on one migrant family working in California's fruit fields. The novel centers primarily around Estrella, a young girl, and her relationship with Alejo, another migrant worker of the same age.
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Ward, J. (2012). Salvage the bones. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
A novel about family and poverty in the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
West, D. (1995/1997). The wedding. London, United Kingdom: Virago Press Limited.
The Wedding opens with preparation for the marriage of Shelby Coles, the daughter of one of the most admired couples in the Oval—the exclusive black community of Martha’s Vineyard—to white jazz musician Meade Wyler. Shelby’s choice of fiancé brings a range of dormant and unresolved issues to the fore in this novel of an upper-class black family.
Wolfe, T. (2004). I am Charlotte Simmons: A novel. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
I am Charlotte Simmons is the story of a first-year college student, Charlotte Simmons, who is from a poverty-stricken rural town, and her first semester at the prestigious Dupont University. Despite the university’s scholarly reputation, the student culture is focused upon gaining material wealth, physical pleasure and social status.
Woodrell, D. (1998). Tomato red: A novel. New York, NY: H. Holt.
Tomato Red explores the bonds between Sammy Barlach, an ex-convict who tries to do the right thing, and the Merridews: Bev, the prostitute/mom; Jason, the stylish son; and Jamalee, the feisty redhead who wants to use anyone and anything to get out of Venus Holler, Missouri.
Woodrell, D. (2006). Winter's bone: A novel. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Co.
Rees Dolly, 17, struggles daily to care for her two brothers and an ill mother in the poverty-stricken hills of the Ozarks. When she learns that her absent father, a meth addict, has put up the family home as bond, she sets out to find him and bring him home for an upcoming court date.
