Young man's inheritance of his father's estate depends upon the conditions of his marriage. Dickens's last complete and full length novel, first published in 1865. For other editions, see Author Catalog.

A classic early example of "muck-racking" journalism, or reporting by reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt, "How the Other Half Lives" is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York endured at the end of the 19th century. Danish immigrant Jacob A. Riis saw first-hand the horrible conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan following his immigration...

The classic novel of a Georgia family undone by the Great Depression: “[A] story of force and beauty” (New York Post). Even before the Great Depression struck, Jeeter Lester and his family were desperately poor sharecroppers. But when hard times begin to affect the families that once helped support them, the Lesters slip completely into the abyss. Rather than hold on to each other for support, Jeeter, his wife Ada, and...

"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...

"A story about a homeless boy and his imaginary friend that proves in unexpected ways that friends matter, whether real or imaginary"--

Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.

In his final semester of law school, Rudy Baylor "finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam."

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. She recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification, and loss,...

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever...

"Clare is shown as a figure of true heroism, tenacity, beatitude and grit who plotted her improbable course in the context of the raucous and explosive period of the Middle Ages"--