Books like 'Curse of the Starving Class'
Readers who enjoyed Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century drama realistic classics gothic southern-gothic
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My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsFifty years after its first publication, the multimillion-copy international bestseller is available again in English, sharing the heartbreaking tale of a gifted, mischievous, direly misunderstood boy growing up in Rio de Janeiro.When the precocious Zeze grows up, he wants to be a poet in a bow tie... -
![The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor]()
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find... -
![The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy]()
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsPAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born... -
![The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck]()
The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsCollected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels...Categorized as:
classics drama realistic 20th-century anthologies contemporary fiction historical-fiction -
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![Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O'Connor]()
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFlannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality... -
![On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sábato]()
On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sábato
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSabato's dark, philosophical novel is woven around a violent crime committed by Alejandra, the daughter of a prominent Argentinian family. Alejandra's act entwines the lives of three men: her father, Fernanda Vidal, a man who believes himself hunted by a secret organization of the blind, her troubled lover, Martin, and Bruno, a writer who loved her mother... -
![A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor]()
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThis now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South... -
![A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, Lydia Davis]()
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, Lydia Davis
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin... -
![The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play by Wallace Stevens]()
The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play by Wallace Stevens
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA collection that all the major long poems and sequences, and every shorter poem of lasting value in Stevens' career. Edited by Holly Stevens, it includes some poems not printed in his earlier Collected Works...Categorized as:
classics drama 20th-century anthologies contemporary fiction industrial-era victorian -
![The Collected Poems, Vol. 2: 1939-1962 by William Carlos Williams]()
The Collected Poems, Vol. 2: 1939-1962 by William Carlos Williams
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'And when the second and final colume of Williams' 'Collected Poems' is published, it should become even more apparent that he is this century's major American poet... -
![Collected Stories by William Faulkner]()
Collected Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings“A Bear Hunt,” “A Rose for Emily,” “Two Soldiers,” “Victory,” “The Brooch,” “Beyond”—these are among the forty-two stories that make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction... -
![Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos]()
Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA vivid chronicle of the solitary life of a peasant family in a harsh and unforgiving land, austerely told by a classic Brazilian writer... -
![Novecento by Alessandro Baricco]()
Novecento by Alessandro Baricco
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe story was made into The Legend of 1900, a 1998 film starring Tim Roth. Told through the eyes of Novecento’s (the greatest pianist who ever played on the ocean) best friend, trumpeter Tim Tooney, Baricco’s virile text echoes heroic fables and great myths, whilst winking at the beautiful and terrible minutiae that makes up life... -
![Fool for Love and Other Plays by Sam Shepard]()
Fool for Love and Other Plays by Sam Shepard
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHere are eight of Pulitzer-prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays. This brilliant American dramatist creates what The New Yorker dubbed "Shepard Country"--a landscape of the imagination, a unique theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciouness, our fears and fantasies... -
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![Seven Plays by Sam Shepard]()
Seven Plays by Sam Shepard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIncludes "Buried Child", "Curse of the Starving Class" , "The Tooth of Crime", "La Turista" , "Savage Loge", and "True West". Brilliant, prolific, uniquely American, Pulitzer prizewinning playwright Sam Separd is a major voice in contemporary theatre. And here are seven of his very best. "One of the most original, prolific and gifted dramatists at work today... -
![The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty]()
The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWith a preface written by the author especially for this edition, this is the complete collection of stories by Eudora Welty...Categorized as:
classics gothic southern-gothic 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante]()
The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHenry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father, Nick, though weak and alcoholic, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, though ill and devout to her Catholicism, still has the power to comfort and confuse her children... -
![Fear by Stefan Zweig]()
Fear by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFinding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother predictable after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover’s former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear... -
![Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo]()
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsRichard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York—and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years... -
![The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon]()
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
![Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing / Superfudge by Judy Blume]()
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing / Superfudge by Judy Blume
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsACE 0330483633 (ISBN13: 9780330483636)Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge are the first two books about the adventures of the Hatcher family.Peter Hatcher's younger brother Fudge may only be little, but he's one BIG heap of trouble... -
![The Complete Plays by Joe Orton]()
The Complete Plays by Joe Orton
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history and was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward... -
![Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado]()
Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt thirteen Tereza is sold by her aunt to a ranch owner who treats her like a piece of property, and sexually abuses her. When caught in bed with her lover she defends herself against the ranch owner’s violence with a knife and ends up in jail. Freed by a long-time admirer, she eventually ends up in a brothel... -
![Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte]()
Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNearing fifty, Joe Ransom won't slow down, not in his pickup, not with a gun-and certainly not with women. But all the fast living in Mississippi won't fill the hunger Joe can't name. At fifteen, Gary Jones is already slipping through the cracks. Part of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, he's desperate for a way out. He finds it in Joe... -
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![In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff]()
In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAmong the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the... -
![The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D'J Pancake, James Alan McPherson]()
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D'J Pancake, James Alan McPherson
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBreece D'J Pancake cut short a remarkably promising writing career when he took his own life in 1979 at the age of 26. In 1983 Little, Brown and Company's posthumous publication of this book electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades... -
![The Gypsy Ballads of Federico Garcia Lorca by Federico García Lorca, Robert G. Harvard]()
The Gypsy Ballads of Federico Garcia Lorca by Federico García Lorca, Robert G. Harvard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTranslations of "Preciosa and the Wind""Walking Asleep," "The Moon, The Moon" "Fracas," "The Gypsy Nun" "Black Trouble" "St. Michael (Granada)""St. Gabriel (Seville)""Dead of Love""The Man Who Was Given a Summons""The Comical History of Pedro, Knight""Walking Asleep""The Unfaithful Married Woman""The Martyrdom of St... -
![Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams]()
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsThe members of a well-to-do Southern family gather to await the impending death of their domineering father, "Big Daddy," and are forced to face the truth about themselves as well... -
![Los árboles mueren de pie by Alejandro Casona]()
Los árboles mueren de pie by Alejandro Casona
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAlejandro Casona plays with fantasy and reality in his plays. Here we are in play within the play, not in the Pirandellian way but as orchestrating elements of the vaudeville. This work offers a world of fantasy and characters who exemplify a moral idea. They intended to show the viewer the good, beautiful life in its most genuine, kind and wonderful expression... -
![The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry by Rita Dove]()
The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry by Rita Dove
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsPenguin’s landmark poetry anthology, perfect for learning poems by heart in the age of ephemeral media Recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Wallace Stevens Award (Dove)Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, introduces readers to the most significant and compelling poems of the past hundred years in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century... -
![The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh]()
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative aging mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific... -
![Crave by Sarah Kane]()
Crave by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998... -
![Big Bad Love: Stories by Larry Brown]()
Big Bad Love: Stories by Larry Brown
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLarry Brown caught the rapt attention of readers and critics with the 1988 publication of Facing the Music, his prize-winning first collection of stories. The following year, his first novel, Dirty Work, won national acclaim as a work of uncompromising power and honesty. Big Bad Love, his third book, collects ten new stories... -
![Girl by Jamaica Kincaid]()
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry;..." Girl, a short story by Jamaica Kincaid, was originally published in the June 26, 1978 issue of The New Yorker and subsequently included in the short story collection At the Bottom of the River in 1983... -
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![A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams]()
A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTennessee Williams’s sensuous, atmospheric plays transformed the American stage with their passion, exoticism and vibrant characters who rage against their personal demons and the modern world... -
![São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos]()
São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPaulo Honório is a sometime field hand who has kicked and clawed and schemed his way to prosperity, becoming master of the decrepit estate São Bernardo, where once upon a time he toiled. He is ruthless in his exploitation of his fellow man, but when he makes a match with a fine young woman, he is surprised to discover that this latest acquisition, as he sees it, may be somewhat harder to handle... -
![Trash: Stories by Dorothy Allison]()
Trash: Stories by Dorothy Allison
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTrash, Allison's landmark collection, laid the groundwork for her critically acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, the National Book Award finalist that was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "simply stunning...a wonderful work of fiction by a major talent... -
![Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates]()
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRichard Yates's unflinchingly realistic stories explore loneliness, but they don't neglect failure, cruelty, and heartbreak. Most of the stories feature men who have been disappointed, somehow, by their inability to go on and fulfill the promise of their youth... -
![The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor]()
The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFirst published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work... -
![No Exit and the Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit and the Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn these two plays, Jean-Paul Sartre, the great existentialist novelist and philosopher, displays his mastery of drama. NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story... -
![Heaven by V.C. Andrews]()
Heaven by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOf all the folks in the mountain shacks, the Casteels were the lowest the scum of the hills.Heaven Leigh Casteel was the prettiest, smartest girl in the backwoods, despite her ragged clothes and dirty face...despite a father meaner than ten vipers...despite her weary stepmother, who worked her like a mule. For her brother Tom and the little ones, Heaven clung to her pride and her hopes... -
![Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote]()
Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsAt the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a ‘nonfiction novel’ based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice... -
![Dark Angel by V.C. Andrews]()
Dark Angel by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSecond in the Casteel family saga series set in Virginia and Boston. As Heaven moves away from home she is determined to leave her traumatic past behind... -
![Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro]()
Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia... -
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![The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories by Truman Capote]()
The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom... -
![Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham]()
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham takes us on a masterful journey through four generations of the Stassos family as he examines the dynamics of a family struggling to "come of age" in the 20th century... -
![A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews]()
A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the acclaimed author of such novels as "Blood and Grits" and "Childhood" comes a wildly weird and breathtakingly original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia. "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations"... -
![The Second Form at St. Clare's by Enid Blyton]()
The Second Form at St. Clare's by Enid Blyton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe first term of the second form turns out to be an eventful one, with new girls Gladys and Mirabel revealing unsuspected talents for acting and music, while Elsie, the form's unpopular Head Girl, learns to be less spiteful...Categorized as:
classics drama realistic 20th-century action-adventure boarding-school book children -
![A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill]()
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight... -
![Full of Life by John Fante]()
Full of Life by John Fante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe narrator is an Italian-American writer living in Los Angeles with his pregnant wife, Joyce. As the novel follows the course of Joyce's pregnancy, John deals with Joyce's shifting emotional moods, her growing interest in Roman Catholicism (from which John himself has fallen away), and termite infestation in the house...
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