by Walker Percy (1961)
Kate's desperate struggles to maintain her sanity force Binx to relinquish his dreamworld.
Edward Lewis Wallant
Sol Nazerman is a WWII Nazi deathcamp survivor. Now, he runs a pawnshop and takes refuge in misery and a bitter condemnation of humanity. When his assistant sacrifices his own life for the pawnbroker during a robbery, Sol is finally confronted with the inherent goodness of the human spirit.
Leonard Gardner
A [debut] "novel about the indestructibility of hope, the anguish and comedy of the human condition. It tells the story of two young boxers out of Stockton, California: Ernie Munger and Billy Tully, one in his late teens, the other just turning thirty, whose seemingly parallel lives intersect for a time. Set in an ambiance of glittering dreams and drab realities, it tells of the two fighters' struggles to escape the confinements of their existence, and of the men and women in their world. Fat City is a novel about the sporting life like no other ever written: without melodrama or false heroics, written with a truthfulness that is at once painful and beautiful."--From dust jacket.
Philip Roth
Reading myself and others is a celebrated work by Philip Roth (Pulitzer Prize Winner, National Book Award Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.
John Cheever
Meet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses's adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, and partly based on Cheever's adolescence in New England, The Wapshot Chronicle is a stirring family narrative in the finest traditions of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James