Books like the ballad of the sad café

The Ballad of the Sad Café, first published in 1951, is a book by Carson McCullers comprising a novella of the same title along with six short stories: "Wunderkind", "The Jockey", "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland", "The Sojourner", "A Domestic Dilemma", and "A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud".

The first edition of the book also included McCullers' previously published novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and The Member of the Wedding.

The American playwright Edward Albee adapted the novella as a stage play in 1963, which itself was adapted into a 1991 film of the same name starring Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine.

"The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" opens in a small, isolated town in the Southern United States. The story introduces Miss Amelia Evans, strong in both body and mind, who is approached by a hunchbacked man with only a suitcase in hand who claims to be her kin.