The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullersby Carson McCullers

A grotesque human triangle in a primitive Southern town... A young boy learning the difficult lessons of manhood... A fateful encounter with his native land and former love... These are parts of the world of Carson McCullers - a world of the lost, the injured, the eternal strangers at life's feast. Here are brilliant revelations of love and longing, bitter heartbreak and occasional happiness - tales that probe the very heart of our lives. 

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 novel by American author Carson McCullers. Written in Charlotte, North Carolina, in houses on Central Avenue and East Boulevard, it is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S. state of Georgia. It created a literary sensation on publication, enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of the bestseller lists in 1940 and was the first in a string of works by McCullers to give voice to the rejected, forgotten, mistreated and oppressed. The novel was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club in 2004.