working class families

"Hugh "Shuggie" Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Hismother Agnes is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for hissiblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close toher-- especially her beloved Shuggie"--Adapted from dust jacket.

Called the most widely read English novel of the twentieth century, D.H. Lawrence's largely auto-biographical "Sons and Lovers tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Paul's hard-drinking father, devotes all her energies to her son. They develop a powerful and passionate relationship, but eventually tensions arise when Paul falls in love with a girl and seeks to escape his family. Heralding Lawrence's mature period, "Sons and Lovers vividly evokes the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction. Lushly descriptive and deeply emotional, it is rich in universal truths about human relationships.

Paul Morel, a painter from a British working-class family, is unable to choose between his possessive mother and two young beautiful women.

Marci Cruz struggles to find and maintain her identity against a variety of challenges, including a perilous homelife, an incomprehensible Church, and a largely indifferent world.

Paul Morel, a painter from a British working-class family, is unable to choose between his possessive mother and two young beautiful women.

Based on the recollections of a former student of the author's about the nightmare adventures of the Wendall family, living in the slums of Detroit.

Michael Smolij is forced to grow up fast when his father leaves--like so many other families in his Detroit neighborhood--and he takes a job at the mall, enrolls in classes at the community college, and tries to make a life for himself.

Working-class Dublin woman Agnes Browne and her clan of seven children must cope after their tenement is demolished in this novel about the humor and heartache of Irish family life.