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 | 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
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.
30 June 2024