Provisional:

Wm. Attaway, Blood on the Forge

alt: Meridel Le Sueuer, The Girl

Edith Wharton, Custom of the Country

alt: Frank Norris, McTeague

Richard Powers, Gain

alt: Toni Morrison, Beloved

Jon Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

alt: Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

Shorter texts by Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, HD Thoreau, et al

Tropes, genres and themes: the grifter, the rebel, the dream, empire, capital, naturalism, modernism, the historical novel, proletarian lit