hardware literature
art fiction film music television history language poetry stores tools hardware catalog jmcvey.net
overall directory of hardware store literature.
categories include art, fiction, film/music/television, history (a kind of catch-all box), language (ditto), poetry, tools... — because things need to go somewhere.
year, category and author/name are sortable.
| year | category | author / name | title / memory-prompt excerpt or description | links, summaries, &c. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1719 | fiction, providence, deliverance | Defoe, Daniel | The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe / “the Carpenter’s Chest, which was indeed a very useful Prize to me” | fiction |
| 1827 | history; language, lists | Forbes, Charles P. | The merchant’s memorandum and price book... particularly designed as a pocket memorandum for the country trader | history |
| 1855 | history; retail genre | Hunt, Freeman (1804-58) | An Omnibus Store, in Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine and Commercial Review, taken from The Philadelphia Merchant | history |
| 1875 ? | fiction, humorous sketch | anon. | The Man Who Felt Sad / “Can you speak of hardware to me at a time such as this?” | fiction |
| 1888 | language, instruction | Stedman, T. L. and K. P. Lee | At a Hardware Store, Lesson 22 in A Chinese and English Phrase Book in the Canton Dialect... | language |
| 1905 | history; commercial travelers | Crewdson, Charles N. | Tales of the Road / “I went right up to the man’s store. You ought to have seen this place!” / J. J. Gould, illustrations | history |
| 1906 | fiction, humorous | Burgess, Gelett | The Whaup and the Whimbrel / “Fancy romance in a hardware store! It’s impossible. It’s absurd!” | fiction |
| 1908 | fiction (comedy of errors) | Randall, F. J. | Love and the Ironmonger / wholesale not retail; humor, romance | fiction / review |
| 1913 | language, instruction | Austin, Ruth | The Hardware Store, Lesson 25 in Lessons in English for Foreign Women, For Use in Settlements and Evening Schools | language |
| 1917 | fiction, humorous | O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) | Confessions of a Humourist / “Within a month I was turning out copy as regular as shipments of hardware.” | fiction |
| 1918 | poetry | Lowell, Amy | The Landlady of the Whinton Inn Tells a Story / “...Funny name for a hardware store... But them things does happen...” | poetry / hathitrust |
| 1918 | fiction, conduct-of-life | Whitehead, Harold | Dawson Black : Retail Merchant / hardware-oriented, each chapter a different business and personal lesson | fiction / archive.org |
| 1919 | nails | Bellucci, Giuseppe | I chiodi nell’etnografia antica e contemporanea / historical and ethnographic study of nails | tools |
| 1920 | fiction (short story) | Hughes, Rupert | The Stick-in-the-Muds / thwarted ambition. “Joel’s father was an editor; Luke’s kept a hardware store.” | fiction / hathitrust |
| 1921 | poetry | Anthony, Edward (1895-1971) | A Hardware Romance, in Harper’s Magazine / “Luella Loranna O’Shaughnessy Firth / Is a clerk in a hardware store...” | poetry |
| 1921 | language (marketing, shoes) | Wallen, James | Emotion in Advertising, in The Boot and Shoe Recorder / “One might not look for romance in the sombre aisles...” | language |
| 1925 | memoir | Norris, Kathleen | Noon / I had a position in a hardware establishment at thirty dollars a month... But they were terrible years... | fiction / hathitrust |
| 1927 | fiction; film | Norris, Kathleen; Mary Pickford | My Best Girl / “From this puzzle, Maggie was attempting to bring forth some sort of order again...” / R. F. James, illus. | fiction / hathitrust |
| 1929 | fiction, literary | Faulkner, William | The Sound and the Fury / two hardware stores here, dark unhappy places as elsewhere in Faulkner | fiction |
| 1930 | fiction, absurdist/philosophical | Durkin, Douglas | Mr. Gumble Sits Up / “He had been a hardware merchant, in a quiet way...” | fiction / hathitrust |
| 1931 | fiction, romance, Evangelical | Hill, Grace Livingston | The Chance of a Lifetime / Alan must mind his father’s floundering hardware store... “much good is accomplished” | fiction |
| 1937 | sketch | Merrick, Elliott | The Lady at the Hardware Store, in The New Yorker (July 10) / flinty lady shopkeeper critical of customer’s choices | fiction |
| 1940 | poetry (“light” verse) | McGinley, Phyllis | Please Lock the Hardware Store, or The Temptations of Oliver James, in A Pocketful of Wry | poetry |
| 1941 | art, illustration | Hader, Bert and Elma | Little Town / Mrs. Dee and children visit the hardware store. Mrs. Dee buys marigold seeds. Dotty chooses nasturtiums. | art |
| 1946 | film, plumbing | Lubitsch, Ernst; Margery Sharp | Cluny Brown / Jennifer Jones & Charles Boyer navigate “the complex plumbing of old estates and bewildered hearts” | film |
| 1947 | poetry; a vision of hell | Auden, W. H. | The Age of Anxiety / “Will nightfall bring us / Some awful order — Keep a hardware store / In a small town...” | poetry |
| 1947 | film | Delmar, Viña; Robert Leonard, dir. | Cynthia / based on “The Rich, Full Life” (drama, 1946) and “Time of Her Life” (story, 1944) / father is a hardware man | film |
| 1950 | science fiction; race | Bradbury, Ray | June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air / Silly will join Black exodus to Mars, where he’ll open his own hardware store | fiction |
| 1951 | history; retail genres | Clark, Thomas D. | The Country Store in American Social History, in Ohio History 60:2 (April 1951) / elegiac in tone, interesting | history / link |
| 1954 | history; retail genres | Carson, Gerald | The Old Country Store / in two parts : 1791-1861 and 1861-1921 | history |
| 1955 | art, stores | Johnson, Carol | painting of the interior of Wolgast Hardware, in Alta Vista (Wabaunshee County), Kansas | art / KSHS |
| 1955 | poetry; absence from own life | Kees, Weldon (1914-55?) | father in hardware biz / “the one book that did appear with his name on the spine was Nonverbal Communication” | poetry |
| 1959 | fiction | Robbins, Harold | The Dream Merchants / “...right, the hardware business is safer. But the picture business has more opportunity.” | wikipedia |
| 1958 | history (merchandise mixes) | Kelly, Fred C. | A Soft Spot for Hardware, in The Rotarian 93:6 (December 1958) / examination of hardware catalogues of late 19c | history / link |
| 1964 | fiction | O’Hara, John | The Hardware Man, in The Saturday Evening Post (29 February 1964) / moral tale, conflict between two hardware men | fiction |
| 1966 | stores (Sudbury, Ontario) | Geldart, Winston J. | For Want of a Nail : The Story of Cochrane-Dunlop Hardware Ltd. / founder Francis Cochrane (1852-1919) | stores |
| 1967 ? | poetry | Guest, Edward A. | Hardware Store Fascination. / “There is something about a hardware store / Which, strangely, I can’t resist...” | poetry | 1968 | art, comic | Russ, Johnson | Mister Oswald | art / external |
| 1969 | fiction, juvenile (race) | Raymond, Charles | Enoch / Enoch Parnell is 12 and white; father operates hardware store in ghetto; helped by Skullcap a Black handyman. | fiction |
| 1970 | fiction, literary | Hoffman, William | A Walk to the River / troubled (hardware store owner) father, troubled son; excellent | fiction |
| 1970 | poetry | Mason, Jane; Janine Weins | Nichols Hardware Sells... / poem, in honor of deceased hardware store, Lyme, New Hampshire | poetry |
| 1972 | fiction (politics, absurdist) | Tucker, Helen | No Need of Glory / proprietor of a hardware store is selected to be Republican Party candidate for governor | fiction |
| 1972 | fiction, literary | Vonnegut, Kurt | Who Am I This Time? / clerk in hardware store is socially awkward (needs a script) but thrives on stage | fiction / wikipedia |
| 1973 | language, women, feminist | Adams, Florence | I Took A Hammer In My Hand: The Woman’s Build-It and Fix-It Handbook / “...know the name of what you want” | language |
| 1973 | social philosophy | Illich, Ivan (1926-2002) | Tools for Conviviality / “...the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others.” | tools |
| 1975 | language; tools | Salaman, R. A. (1906-93) | Dictionary of Woodworking Tools c. 1700-1970 and tools of allied trades | tools / archive.org |
| 1975 | fiction, redemption story | Targan, Barry | Harry Belten and the Mendelssohn violin concerto / hardware store clerk mortgages house to perform (life’s dream) | fiction |
| 1976 | television (absurdist humor) | Barker, Ronnie (“Gerald Wiley”) | Four Candles, a sketch in BBC comedy The Two Ronnies / hilarious sequence of homophonic misunderstandings | film / youtube |
| 1976 | memoir, sketches | Ewing, Evelyn L. | The Hardware Store, in Larkspurs & Asparagus / author works in father’s hardware store; episode with a loaded gun | history |
| 1976 | art; tools | Tuttle, Edward F. (curator) | The Tool as Object / catalog of exhibit of Anglo-American Hand Tools at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles | art |
| 1977 | poetry | Keesing, Nancy | Old Hardware Store, Melbourne / “I do not wish to return to the honest names... But I value verbs...” | poetry |
| 1977 | art, illustration | Crandall, Sandra D. | cover art, BYTE (“the small systems journal,” March 1977) / “updated American Gothic” | art |
| 1977 | fiction (short story; Caribbean) | Mouttet, Lesley | Love and the Hardware Store / “Mr. Lall — rich with his own hardware store and Ma’s choice for her...” | fiction |
| 1977 ? | poetry; memoiristic essays | Rice, Robert Jefferson (1856-1923) | I’m a Hardware Man, in Gems of Thought and Sentiment | poetry |
| 1978 | fiction, literary (short story) | Vaughn, Stephanie | Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog / WW2 PTSD father, logistics expert, stabilizes in controlled vocabulary of hardware business | fiction |
| 1980 | memoir, reminiscences | Day, H. Kellogg | About Ninety-Seven Years and a Day / once known as Day’s Hardware & Music Store; collections (e.g., 800 key chains) | stores |
| 1980 | fiction, literary | Tyler, Anne | Morgan’s Passing / “A tinkering, puttering sort of man, Morgan Gower works at Cullen’s hardware store” (Baltimore) | fiction |
| 1982 | television | Paris, Jerry, dir. | There’s no business like no business, episode 220 of Happy Days (1974-1984) / competition from shopping mall | film / IMDb |
| 1983 | fiction, literary | Berger, Thomas | Feud / encounters between the Beelers (of Hornbeck) and the Bullards who own a hardware store in Millville | fiction |
| 1984 | poetry, language | Hejinian, Lyn | The Guard / “It’s true, I like to go to the hardware store / and browse on detail. So sociable the influence of Vuillard...” | poetry |
| 1984 | memoir, store history | Love, Mary I. | The Family Hardware Store, Mirror of a Community / centennial of A. D. Naylor Company (Maryland, West Virginia) | stores |
| 1984 | history | Meadows, Cecil A. | The Victorian Ironmonger / apprenticed “in the late 1920s, to one of the last of such ironmongers trading in Norwich” | history |
| 1985 | craft; tools | Inax (sanitaryware maker) | 職人 の ミクロコスモス / “The Microworld of the Craftsman : Workplace and Tools” / exhibition catalog | art / Lixil |
| 1985 | fiction (conduct-of-life form) | Moore, Lorrie | How, in Self-Help / Begin by meeting him in a class, in a bar, at a rummage sale. Maybe he... Manages a hardware store. | fiction |
| 1986 | fiction, relationship | Hill, Rebecca | Among Birches / pair run hardware store; she has the brains & judgement, wants out of the business & the marriage. | fiction |
| 1987 | language, specialized | Bradbury, Ray | The Great American “What am I doing here, and why did I buy that?” Hardware Store / HARDWARE SPOKEN HERE | history |
| 1987 | paeans; language | Martin, Guy | Nails. Nuts... Bits. Bolts... Hallelujah! All hail the hardware store! in Esquire (June 1987) / photos by Neil Slavin | language |
| 1988 | fiction, romance | Greene, Jennifer | Lady of the Island | fiction |
| 1988 | art, illustration | Schmelzer, J. P. | pen and ink drawing of store interior for Marti Attoun, “The Nuts and Bolts of Gift Giving” in Ford Times | art |
| 1989 | art, tools as | Hechinger Company | Annual Report, images from upcoming Tools As Art exhibition; curated by Carolyn Laray, and essay by Jane Livingston | art |
| 1989 | fiction, romance | Evanovich, Janet | Manhunt / Alexandra Scott leaves banking career in NYC, goes to Alaska, buys hardware store; seeks husband. | fiction |
| 1989 | fiction, gender | O’Connor, Kathleen | The Way It Happens In Novels / “relief yesterday at walking into a hardware store almost completely staffed by women” | fiction |
| 1989 | fiction (short story, Texas) | Zigal, Thomas | Recent Developments / flashback to inadequate hardware store-owner father; compare with Vaughn (1978) | fiction |
| 1989 | fiction, literary | Bradfield, Scott | The History of Luminous Motion / Pedro, one of boy’s mother’s partners, reflects on his life owning a hardware store | fiction |
| 1990 | fiction, mystery | Borthwick, J. S. | Bodies of Water (a Sarah Deane mystery) / “Actually, my front is a hardware store, but at heart I’m a rolling stone.” | fiction |
| 1990 | memoir | Howlett, Tom | A History of Century Old Howlett Hardware Store (Gregory, Michigan) / | stores |
| 1990 | story, psychoanalytic | Weinberg, George | Unfinished Symphony, in The Taboo Scarf, and Other Tales / frustrated hardware store owner, music lover | language |
| 1990 | fiction | Wood, Jane Roberts | A Place Called Shrub / Texas, Arkansas. personal growth, social observations. hardware store emblematic of decline | fiction |
| 1991 | art | Russell, Bill | scratchboard illustration for frontispiece, Stephen King, Needful Things (illustration shows Castle Rock Hardware) | art / fiction |
| 1991 | television (coming-of-age drama) | Topolsky, Ken, dir. | The Hardware Store, episode 72 of Wonder Years (1988-1993) / “...stuff on the cutting edge of obsolescence.” | film / wiki / IMDb |
| 1992 | fiction, literary (magical) | Cohen, Jon | The Man in the Window / “To a certain kind of person, a hardware store is a holy place.” | fiction |
| 1992 | fiction, literary | Marius, Richard | After the War, and An Affair of Honor (2001) / Douglas Kinlaw’s and (later) Tommy Fieldston’s stores / great novels | fiction |
| 1992 | fiction, romance | Randal, Jude (Jude Wilner) | Just One of the Guys / “Dana Morgan was more comfortable with a hammer and nails than with a hairbrush.” | fiction |
| 1993 | fiction, lesbian romance | Calhoun, Jackie | Friends and Lovers / English professor takes (& enjoys) hardware store job while waiting for teaching position to start. | fiction (great blurb!) |
| 1993 | fiction, literary | Hood, Hugh | Be Sure to Close your Eyes / Codrington Hardware figures in this and several other of Hood’s novels | fiction |
| 1993 | poetry | Reut, Tita | Vis cachées. Avec deux gravures d’Arman et deux sérigraphies de César / 44 poems, each describing a different tool | poetry / wikipedia |
| 1993 | fiction; crime, romance | Robards, Karen | One Summer / Rachel Grant (English teacher, poet) manages her ailing father’s hardware store... | fiction |
| 1994 | fiction, romance | Bell, Ann | Contagious Love / “...to save the family hardware store from bankruptcy only to watch it go up in flames” | fiction |
| 1994 | memoir | Ellis, Helen | “...later said she had always dreamed of running a hardware store or a bookstore, and the bookstore won out.” | stores |
| 1994 | fiction | Morgan, Speer | The Whipping Boy / set in 1894, Oklahoma Territory; story involves a Dekker Hardware and a land-grab scheme | fiction |
| 1995 | art | Hamill, Pete | Tools as Art : The Hechinger Collection / great illustrated catalogue; afterword “Artists and Tools” by Carolyn Laray | art / link |
| 1996 | personal essay, anecdote | Gornick, Vivian | On the Street, originally The New Yorker (19960909) / woman intimidated by plumbing, hardware store | language / google |
| 1996 | film (stop-motion animation) | Elliot, Adam | Uncle / “A few months later he retired, after selling his one millionth nail...” | film / youtube |
| 1996 | retail, “store image,” nostalgia? | Joyce, Mary L. & David R. Lambert | Memories of the way stores were and retail store image, in International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management | language |
| 1996 | poetry | Willard, Nancy (1936-2017) | A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God, in Swimming Lessons | poetry / google |
| 1996 ? | language | Yutang, Lin (林語堂, 1895-1976) | On Shopping / Whenever I pass a stationery or hardware store, it’s all I can do to keep from going in.... | language / wikipedia |
| 1997 ? | poetry | Flanagan, Bob | because hardware stores give me hard-ons, because of hammers, nails... / cystic fibrosis | poetry |
| 1997 | tools | Glaser, Milton; S. Abercrombie | Work, life, tools : The things we use to do the things we do... / (50) people and their favorite tools | tools |
| 1997 | fiction, literary | Inman, Robert | Dairy Queen Days / Trout Moseley has three job offers in one day: the family mill, hardware store, Dairy Queen. | fiction |
| 1997 ? | poetry | Neruda, Pablo | Prologues: The House of Odes / “...I want everthing / to have / a handle, / that all be / a cup or tool” | poetry |
| 1997 | fiction, romance, disability | Smith, Karen Rose | Kit and Kisses / male protagonist cares for a “special needs” sister | fiction |
| 1997 | memoir, anecdotal; women | Stern, Jane | Hardware Store Doppelgänger, The Paris Review / only in hardware store is author mistaken for (famous) others | history / direct |
| 1998 | fiction, science fiction | Di Filippo, Paul | Lost Pages / Parallel world stories, e.g., Phil(ip K) Dick works at Ronstadt’s True-Value Hardware Store | fiction |
| 1998 | fiction (unsolved murder) | McColley, Kevin | Praying to a Laughing God / “Both the town and the way of life Clark has known for the past 70 years are dying...” | fiction / recent |
| 1998 | fiction | Meyers, Kent | The River Warren / Rashomon-like accounts by seven characters, including Angel Finn, hardware store owner | fiction |
| 1999 | fiction, literary | Burnard, Bonnie | A Good House / Canadian WW2 vet, missing fingers, returns to wife, children and hardware store; life happens. | fiction / summary |
| 1999 | memoir, anecdotes | Everitt, Charles | My Hardware Store: A Memoir of Years Spent in His Family’s Store in Concordia, Ks, “as told to Thelma Workman” | stores |
| 1999 | fiction, literary | McMurtry, Larry | Duane’s Depressed / “...a good psychiatrist. She can figure out what kinds of things ought to sit next to one another...” | fiction / google books |
| 1999 | language, philosophy, tools | Morabito, Fabio | Toolbox / philosophical essays on file & sandpaper, sponge oil pipe knife string bag screw scissors spring rag hammer | amazon / wikipedia |
| 2000 | fiction, romance | Carroll, Marisa | Last-Minute Marriage / hardware store owner “Mitch Sterling has a lot on his plate...” | fiction |
| 2000 | fiction, romance, feminist | Thompson, Jean | Up-Hill All the Way / set in 1950, thoughtful widow runs store successfully, observes others, seeks to avoid “drift” | fiction |
| 2001 | fiction, romance, disability | Anderson, Catherine | Phantom Waltz / female protagonist is paraplegic | fiction |
| 2001 | poetry; nails | Scattergood, Amy | The Grammar of Nails / “You hammer the stars into place, watch as they drop, shatter against the consonants of cities ” | poetry |
| 2003 | tools, profiles of | The Believer | series on tools, actual and fanciful, by various literary writers (ran 2003-04, 2008) | tools |
| 2004 | fiction, “Ages 12+” | Butcher, Kristin | Zee’s Way / Zee (artistically talented) paints graffiti on the wall of Feniuk Hardware; later paints a door... | fiction |
| 2004 | memoir | Chown, Frank | Chown Hardware : Memoir of a Family Business : Portland, Ore. (and Bellevue and Seattle, Wash.); founded 1879 | stores |
| 2004 | poetry | Follain, Jean | Quincaillerie / “till everyone has got enough, / great nails, in flames.” | poetry |
| 2004 | poetry; nails; ubi sunt | Hamby, Barbara | Ode to Hardware Stores / “If there’s a second coming, / I want angels... gathered / around a bin of nails” | poetry |
| 2004 | poetry | Kasischke, Laura | Hardware Store in a Town Without Men / “...wrenches, gleaming, / and no reason / to lock the door. / No door.” | poetry |
| 2005 | fiction, speculative | Gardner, James Allen | Hardware Scenario G-49 / (in Gravity Wells collection), from Amazing Stories (1991) / holodeck hardware store... | fiction |
| 2005 | fiction, romance, Christian | Jeffers, Sunni | The Start of Something Big / traditional store achieves equilibrium with big-box DIY, thanks to Jane and her faith | fiction |
| 2005 | fiction (Providence, RI) | Pezzelli, Peter | Every Sunday / “Nick wasn’t much for personal relationships... He was a hardware man.” / narrated after death. | fiction |
| 2005 | poetry | Story, Julia | Pretend Hardware Store / “Somewhere in the darkness / is someone sorting. Sort of piling / or maybe sort of stacking.” | poetry |
| 2005 | fiction, clutter | Turner, Harry | Retail Romance, in Urban Legends / guy with “crippling shyness” amasses hardware in non-relationship with clerk | poetry |
| 2006 | fiction, apocalypse | Brannon, Jason | Winds of Change / hardware store a refuge / “ark” from cataclysm outside, people turning to dust; speaking in tongues | fiction |
| 2006 | fiction, romance, disability | Jacobs, Anna | The Corrigan Legacy / ME/chronic fatigue syndrome | fiction |
| 2006 | fiction, romance | Galloway, Shelley | Finding Love Again / she returns to small town, where he runs the hardware store. | fiction |
| 2006 | television | Simon, David and Ed Burns | Boys of Summer at The Wire (Season four, ep. 38) / Snoop buys a Hilti DX460 (from sales associate Paul L. Nolan) | film / youtube |
| 2007 | poetry | Lawson, Valerie | Hardware Store / “...saw horse brackets, and a two ton floor jack. / I don’t need these things every day, but I might.” | poetry |
| 2007 | poetry | Limón, Ada | After her Husband Left Her, She Went to Work at the Hardware Store / and others, in this big fake world | poetry |
| 2007 | fiction (Toronto, Jewish milieu) | Rakoff, Alvin | Baldwin Street / “Our store was called Abelson’s Hardware. Not a good name. A misnomer. Wrong.” / 1920s-30s | fiction |
| 2007 | art, participation; tools; memory | Šedá, Kateřina | It Doesn’t Matter / What’s That For? / grandmother (who worked entire life in hardware store) draws and remembers | art |
| 2007 | paeans | Wilde, Barbara | Why I love my quincaillerie / once at L’Atelier Vert / Paris Postcard | stores / wayback |
| 2008 | poetry (on writing poetry) | Barnett, Catherine | A Brief Poetics of the Hinge / looking for “...the kind of hinge I think of when I write, revise and read poems” | poetry |
| 2008 | fiction (humorous sketches) | Crick, Mark | Sartre’s Sink : The Great Writer’s Complete Book of DIY / e.g., Bleeding a Radiator with Emily Bronte | fiction |
| 2008 | robotics and neuroscience | Hayward, Vincent | “A Brief Taxonomy of Tactile Illusions and Demonstrations that Can Be Done in a Hardware Store” | Brain Research Bull |
| 2008 ? | poetry | Kociemba, Alice | Death of Teaticket Hardware / “Boarded up windows stare like a zombie / whose soul’s been stolen by Wal-Mart.” | poetry |
| 2008 ? | poetry | Jones, Vivien | Hardware Shop / “that used to sell nails / in ones and twos / and had a cat that dozed / in a curl on a cardboard box...” | poetry |
| 2008 ? | art, tools, philosophy | Lewandowski, Simon | 100 Things with Handles / absurdist handled devices : indexicality or directionality; indicate a thing’s Platonic status... | wild pansy press |
| 2008 | fiction, literary (Chekhovian) | Strout, Elizabeth | Olive Kitteridge / “Starving” is hardware store chapter, and signals spiritual situation of Harmon, its owner | fiction |
| 2009 | poetry | Curdy, Averill | Hardware, in Poetry (June 2009) / “You lean disconsolate on your stool, / Sullen and certain” | poetry |
| 2009 | fiction | Legans, B. C. | Cerro / could be Jemez Pueblo, N. M. interesting characters, attention to detail. Cerro Hardware Store matters. | fiction |
| 2009 | fiction, mystery | Noel, Bill | Washout (A Folly Beach Mystery) / “The ‘hardware store bloodbath’ was the topic of the morning at the Lost Dog Cafe.” | fiction |
| 2009 | fiction, romance, Christian | Pleiter, Allie | Bluegrass Courtship / “‘You don’t see too many female owners in the hardware business,’ he offered...” | fiction |
| 2009 | fiction (literary; epistolary) | Savage, Sam | The Cry of the Sloth / Dahlberg Flint, “who told those tough little stories about his life as a hardware store clerk?” | fiction |
| 2009 | art | Thurner, Sherry | Ace Hardware (Janesville, Wisconsin). / 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas board | art / link |
| 2009 | poetry (memoiristic) | Troost Avenue (pseudonym) | Hardware Store / 23 5-line stanzas. Descriptive, about the shelves and what was on them, in boxes | poetry |
| 2010 ? | poetry; gender; smell | anonymous | I like the man-smell of a hardware store / on a sign, Moody’s Hardware Store... Montgomery, Alabama | poetry |
| 2010 | fiction, mystery | Block, (Brett) Ellen | The Language of Sand / lexicographer | fiction |
| 2010 | fiction, literary | Greene, Amy | Bloodroot / too rich to quote. great novel. | fiction |
| 2010 | fiction, romance (Australia) | Mayberry, Sarah | Her Best Friend (Harlequin Super Romance 1626) / works in her parents’ hardware store... dreams of owning a theatre | fiction |
| 2010 | fiction, literary | Norton, Katie | A Buddhish [sic] Monk at Home Depot / “Right in front of your wife, I drank you in... You don’t want me.” | fiction / wayback |
| 2011 | fiction, “small-town” romance | Cornelison, Beth | Trust in Me / eBook only / Kevin manages store, Claire a Duke graduate in English, applies for job... | fiction |
| 2011 | fiction (women’s history) | Edwards, Kim | The Lake of Dreams / hardware business (founded in 1919) falls out of family; discovery of suffragette history | fiction / overview |
| 2011 | fiction, erotic | James, E. L. | Fifty Shades of Grey / unlikely that a PhD candidate would be working at HomeDepot-like Clayton’s; but whatever. | fiction |
| 2011 | fiction (child witnesses; murder) | Morris, Mary McGarry | Light from a Distant Star / Benjamin Peck of Peck Hardware, “an impractical man caught in the most practical of lives” | fiction |
| 2011 | art (photography, store interior) | Opie, Catherine | Bravo / portrait of store keeper, behind counter; pipe fixtures, tools, examples on display | art |
| 2012 | poetry (gender, identity) | Barton, Elo (now Ebo) | Hardware Store / “I’m at the hardware store. / and I know that I am not supposed to be here...” | poetry |
| 2013 | fiction (self-published romance) | Wilder, Beverly | That November Weekend / Kelly (22, student, works at bakery), Mark (24, opening hardware store), bond. unreadable. | amazon |
| 2014 | fiction (self-published) | Danker-Dake, Joshua | the retail : a novel / “...with an English degree, he can’t find a job anywhere except at the local big-box hardware store.” | fiction |
| 2015 | language; genre | Frow, John | Genre / “Other shops have a much less clearly defined core... Some shops are more miscellaneous still...” | language |
| 2015 | art (pataphysical?) | Neidhardt, Jim | Nuts & Bolts : Fifteen Clues to Life | art |
| 2015 | history; stores | Olson, Walter H. | Old-Fashioned Hardware Stores : Descriptions, stores and advice | history |
| 2016 | fiction, regional | Hawthorne Grace | Crossing the Moss Line / set in Geechee community (Georgia), New York City... involves “God, the conjure man, a Jewish mother, and an assortment of uniquely Southern characters” “I never wanted to be mayor, as a matter of fact, I never wanted to be a banker. I wanted to own a hardware store...” |
amazon / author |
| 2016 | film | Tanada, Yuki (dir) | お父さんと伊藤さん (My Dad and Mr. Ito) / great hardware store moment (nuts and bolts section) at 0:37 (youtube) | wikipedia / IMDb |
| 2017 | essay, grief | Geier, Elisabeth | Pedestrian, subtitled “The Nostalgia of the Neighborhood Hardware Store” / visit to hardware store, post breakup | language |
| 2017 | fiction, romance (1st of 10 vols) | Lageschulte, Melanie | Growing Season / Melinda Foster returns to home town (& family hardware store) from success in big-city ad agency... | amazon |
| 2017 | fiction, “psychological” | Van De Yacht, Bernie | A Man Walks Into A Hardware Store / “free-spirited beauty... as tough as the nails she sells out of her family business” | fiction / amazon |
| 2017 | fiction, erotic | Ricardo, Ben | The Way Forward / “a hardware store clerk becomes intertwined with a married couple who desire much more from him than just help fixing up their house.” | amazon |
| 2017 | fiction, adult romance | Wells, A. Wilding | Sunshine Bleeds A Black Edge (The Wild Things) / she : returns from “glamorous life in Paris as a world-famous model;” he : “here I am, still running my successful hardware store, and claiming the title of the most eligible bachelor in town...” | amazon |
| 2018 | history, language, materiality etc. | Mattern, Shannon | Community Plumbing : How the hardware store orders things, neighborhoods, and material worlds | history / Places Jrnl |
| 2019 | memoir | Katz, Jeff | Once Upon a Time in West Hollywood : L. A. Through the Lens of a Teenager in the 70’s / store in East L.A. (pp 61-74) | amazon / instagram |
| 2019 | fiction, romance | Ashley, Jennifer; Ray | Riding Hard no. 7; “Drew Paresky runs smack into [Ray Malory] at the hardware store where she’s buying supplies...” | amazon; author |
| 2019 | fiction, adult romance | Katrina Marie | Shoot Down the Stars (“I have dreams of doing something with myself. Something more than working at the local hardware store. I might as well face it. There’s no chance of leaving this small town or my alcoholic father. Until I see Amelia, my childhood friend and Tonya’s cousin, at a wedding...” | amazon |
| 2020 | fiction | Karla, A. K. (B. A. Cibulskas) | Mr Gupta’s Hardware Store / “a migrant’s tale, set in 70s suburban London...” | author bio / publisher |
| 2020 | fiction, horror | James, Russell | The Portal / “Former lovers Scott Tackett, family hardware store owner, and Allie Layton, flamed-out Hollywood actress, are about to reconnect after years apart, until they discover the evil growing in town. Only they can stop Oates’s awful plan and save the world from the living nightmares standing ready to crawl out of Hell.” | amazon / author |
| 2021 | fiction (southern noir, crime) | Cosby, SA | “I was working 60 hours a week as a manager at a hardware store. Now I’m writing full time.” | fiction / interview |
| 2021 | fiction, romance; Australia | Scott, Eva; Meet Me in Bendigo | “Annalisa Cappelli has returned to Wongilly to take over her family’s hardware shop while she heals from a tragic loss...” | source (preview) |
| 2021 | fiction, romance, Christian | Spencer, Julie L. | The Refusal / Mormon her, Mennonite him... | amazon |
| 2021 | fiction, romance (gay) | Parrish, Roan | Best Laid Plans / Charlie takes care of things brother, father’s hardware store; now, Rye Janssen comes into his life | author / book |
| 2021 | fiction, romance, Christian | Bellemore, Kat | Building on Love (Starlight Ridge) / “owner of a small-town hardware store... enjoys fixing what is damaged — his life excluded. Attempting to escape his demons, he visits his family where they are volunteering in Thailand...,” meets Chloe Rodgers, who “has lived in Thailand for the past fifteen years. As the director of a service organization...” | amazon / author (IG) |
| 2021 | fiction, romance, Christian | Harrel, Lindsay | All Because of You (Walker Beach Small Town Romance) / “instead of working in an Oregon library, she’s back in Walker Beach, California—a town full of painful memories—running her late aunt’s hardware store and falling for the gorgeous bad boy from high school. Again.” | amazon / author |
| 2022 | fiction | Barker, Ellen | East of Troost / “...promising, both for my own convenience and for what I imagine it says about the neighborhood.” | fiction / author |
| 2022 | fiction | Otsuka, Julie; The Swimmers | “‘Do we need further proof that our planet is bursting at the seams?’” asks Ace Hardware store owner Bob Esposito” | source |
| 2022 | fiction, romance, paranormal | Roberts, Wendy | Burning Hope / Red Hooper learns to master her gift of pyromancy; finds ally in Noah Adams, hardware store owner | amazon / author |
| 2023 | stores; history | Fort, Tom | Rivets, Trivets & Galvanized Buckets : life in the village hardware shop / fine book, including index and bibliography | stores |
| 2023 | memoir, store history | Nies, Ray (Holland MI; 1877-1950) | Village Talk : A Country Merchant’s Memoir and Folk History / Michael J. Douma and Robert P. Swierenga, eds. | informative review |
| 2023 | fiction, romance | Grace, Alanna | 183 Reasons : “...Jackson Christianson... while she loads the bed of her truck in the lot of the local hardware store” | author’s website |
| 2024 | fiction | Barker, Ellen | Still Needs Work / “I’m all about data management. Data management in a Midtown Hardware cap.” | author’s website |
| 2024 | fiction, historical romance | Brindley, J. F. | It Happened in Aliceville / “...World War II. Norma Fleming, a dedicated nurse, finds herself returning to her family home to support her aging parents and manage their farm and hardware store, as her brother volunteers for the war. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she starts working at the local prison hospital, housing German soldiers captured during the war.” | amazon |
| 2024 | fiction, Amish romance | Blackburne, Anne | Lucy’s Christmas Sunbeam / “When her parents suddenly died, Lucy stepped into the mother role for her infant sister with Down’s Syndrome. But Lucy’s boyfriend wasn’t interested in a readymade family. Living in the dawdi house on her brother’s farm, Lucy is happy with life — until she literally runs into the hardware store owner and desire for romance returns.” | amazon |
| 2025 | stores (quincaillerie, France) | Shetterly, Caitlin; Camille McOuat | “These French Hardware Stores, Or ‘Quincailleries,’ Have a Little Bit of Everything;” The New York Times | NYTimes (unlocked?) |
June-July 2023 —
this and other pages within this hardware literature project are in midst of renovation : format/navigation made consistent, “link rot” attended to, items (new and old) added.
14 April 2026