Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck
A run-down street in seaside Monterey, California, is as colorful a character as any of the people who populate it in this sweet Depression-era story about a community of the world’s cast-offs. This semiautobiographical novel, a warm wash of nostalgia, also serves as a requiem for a lost world the author could never find again. Steinbeck often kept it short and bittersweet: Look also for The Moon Is Down, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, The Red Pony, and Tortilla Flat.