Books for reading by a composition class

I am looking for relatively short books (100-200 pages) suitable for reading by a beginning composition class that meets intensively for 1 month and has a large number of potentially at risk African-American students.

What age and reading level?

College/Adult Education with a significant amount of remedial needs.

You might look at some young adult fiction titles. That terms tends to encompass mid-teen years to early-twenties, the reading level is tenable, and many recent titles are wonderfully written and complex. They aren't childish in a way that turns off adults - in fact, the titles I'm listing are popular with well-educated adults I know. Skellig by David Almond is really wonderful. I also like a lot of Walter Dean Myers' work - he has a great Vietnam War novel called Fallen Angels. how i live now by Meg Rosoff is another war story, but it is an unnamed future war. It might be a little longer than you want, though. Same holds true for Sherman Alexie's novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. A very short book that I am very fond of is Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman.

I don't know how you feel about graphic novels. I've found that many of my students enjoy them and they say that they don't feel like they are reading for school. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is wonderful, as is American Born Chinese by Gene Yang.