Poverty Fiction

John and Lorraine happen to be passing by the Pigman’s abandoned house when they receive the shock of their lives: someone or something is watching them from the upstairs window. Convinced this is a sign from beyond the grave, John and Lorraine decide they have been given a chance to make up for what happened to the Pigman. Can they make things right once and for all?

J. D. Vance erzählt die Geschichte seiner Familie - eine Geschichte vom gescheiterten Aufstieg und von der Resignation einer ganzen Bevölkerungsschicht. Seine Großeltern, echte Hillbillys, das heißt Angehörige der weißen Arbeiterschaft, versuchten, mit Fleiß und Mobilität der Armut zu entkommen und sich in der Mitte der Gesellschaft zu etablieren. Doch letztlich war alles vergeblich. Misshandlung, Alkoholismus und Armut sind wesentliche Eigenschaften des Hillbilly-Lebensstils.

Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gannon (just "Gannon" to her friends) is invisible to almost everyone in her life. To her parents, to her teachers - even her best friend, who is more interested in bumming cigarettes than bonding. Some days the only way Gannon knows she is real is by carving bloody lines into the flesh of her stomach. Then she meets Michael Brooks, and for the first time she feels like she is being seen to the core of her being.

Max Einstein is not your typical genius. She hacks the computer system at NYU to attend classes, builds inventions to help the homeless, and talks to Albert Einstein! (Okay, that's just in her imagination). But everything changes when Max is recruited by a mysterious organization! Their mission: solve some of the world's toughest problems using science. She's helped by a diverse group of young geniuses from around the globe as they invent new ways to power the farthest reaches of the planet. But that's only if the sinister outfit known only as The Corporation doesn't get to her first.

Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things—to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever. Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead.

Lizzie St. Claire wants to be invisible. Forced to move out of her home, she and her mom now live in a transitional housing shelter, Good Hope, until they can get back on their feet. She just wants to keep her head down at Good Hope and her new school so that she doesn’t have to admit the real reason she and her mom lost everything. But at the nearby Birchwood Stables, some new friends - along with the arrival of a frightened pony named Fire - help Lizzie to open up and accept help from those around her, even if it means she’ll have more to lose if things change again.

Richly complex, darkly comical, and irresistibly charming. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, from one of literature's most esteemed craftsmen. Published serially between 1837 and 1839, it secured Dickens' reputation as a writer of exceptional skill and talent.

Healing is a hanging offense, and Ena is done risking her neck to watch her patients die. Fleeing a future of blood and death, Ena braves the dark unknown. Life taught her the cruelty of the world. But she never imagined the dangers of her journey. As evil surrounds her, Ena is threatened with a fate worse than the one she escaped. Legends and dark magic stand between her and the future she dreams of. A future that will cost more than pain. When innocent lives depend on her mercy, Ena must face an enemy with the power to set the sky on fire.

Eleven Minutes tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that “love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer.” A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune, yet ends up working as a prostitute.

Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.

Esperanza thought she'd always live a privileged life on her family's ranch in Mexico. She'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home filled with servants, and Mama, Papa, and Abuelita to care for her. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California and settle in a Mexican farm labor camp.

Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are at it again. Escaping disaster by the skin of their teeth, they find refuge in Toll, a strange gateway town where visitors may neither enter nor leave without paying a price. By day, the city is well-mannered and orderly; by night, it’s host to rogues and villains. Wherever there’s a plot, there’s sure to be treachery, and wherever there’s treachery, there’s sure to be trouble - and where there’s trouble, well, Clent, Mosca, and Saracen can’t be far behind.

In The Skin I'm In, listeners saw into the life of Maleeka Madison, a teen who suffered from the ridicule she received because of her dark skin color. For decades fans have wanted to know the fate of the bully who made Maleeka's life miserable, Char. Now in Sharon Flake's latest and unflinching novel, The Life I'm In, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.

For more than three decades, Jeffrey D. Sachs has been at the forefront of international economic problem solving. But Sachs turns his attention back home in The Price of Civilization, a book that is essential reading for every American. In a forceful, impassioned, and personal voice, he offers not only a searing and incisive diagnosis of our country’s economic ills but also an urgent call for Americans to restore the virtues of fairness, honesty, and foresight as the foundations of national prosperity.

One of Dickens' early works, Nicholas Nickleby combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity that is interspersed with Dickens' moving condemnation of society's mistreatment of children and the cruelty of the educational system. Young Nickleby struggles to seek his fortune in Victorian England, yet succeeds despite social injustice, in a story that mirrors Dickens' own rise from poverty to great success.

Twelve-year-old Zola thinks she has the perfect life. She thinks everyone does, now that it’s 2193, and humanity has solved all its problems. Insta-Closets deliver new clothes every morning, Insta-Ovens deliver gourmet meals on demand, and virtual reality goggles let her have any adventure she wants, with friends from all over the world. Then one day Zola finds a handwritten note in her Insta-Closet: If you want to see things as they really are, come find me. What if Zola’s wrong about everything—even the year?

Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American “royalty,” is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow. Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians.

Max is back with a thrilling new adventure that involves time travel, creepy bad guys, killer drones, and a shocking mystery about her past that she will stop at nothing to solve! Under constant danger of being kidnapped by the shadowy Corporation, Max is on the run from New York to London and beyond. But soon the call comes for the Change Maker kids' next mission: make sure no kid ever goes hungry again! If anyone can tackle a problem this big, Max and her genius friends can.

Best-selling author Robert Cormier's suspenseful and masterfully told novel takes bold steps into some of the most difficult topical territory ever conceived for young adult fiction.