Depression Historical Fiction

In the heart of the Great Depression, Rancho Las Moras, like everywhere else in Texas, is gripped by the drought of the Dust Bowl, and resentment is building among white farmers against Mexican Americans. All around town, signs go up proclaiming “No Dogs or Mexicans” and “No Mexicans Allowed.” When Estrella organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos in their town of Monteseco, Texas, her whole family becomes a target of “repatriation” efforts to send Mexicans “back to Mexico”—whether they were ever Mexican citizens or not.

This is the first installment of the action and adventure-packed historical fiction book series, The Boloney Trail Trilogy. The novel tells the remarkable true events of the Hornbeck family, who struggle to survive The Great Depression, only then to become key players in the birth of the feared Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.

After twenty years in a loveless marriage, Evelyn Henderson will do anything to escape her stifling suburban life. She boards a train for Reno, Nevada, a former frontier town that’s booming thanks to “six-weekers”: women from all walks of life who take up residence there just long enough to secure an uncontested divorce—a right they don’t yet have in their home states.

Captain Scott Williams was a fisherman by birth, a devoted husband and became a hero to many during the Great Depression. During the fall of the stock market, millions were left with nothing, millions had lost hope. After losing his wife, Williams set out on his last fishing trip only to find comfort, not only on the open waters of the Atlantic, but in those he helped along the way. This is his story.

The place: rural Vermont. The time: the Great Depression. Henry Talcott's beautiful wife, Irene, has recently left him. He and their two young children, Thomas and Margaret, are spending the summer in a tent on the edge of Black Pond. It's a bittersweet idyll.

Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: Her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes, people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: In the picture, Abbi (aka "Baby Hope") wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing.

When the skies dried up, Gloria thought it was temporary. When the dust storms rolled in, she thought they would pass. But now the bank man’s come to take the family farm, and Pa’s decided to up and move to California in search of work. They’ll pick fruit, he says, until they can save up enough money to buy land of their own again.

A wonderful period piece, set in the time of the Great Depression. This audiobook follows two youths, as they struggle to cross the now-broken country to find their estranged family in rural California. In the process, they discover their own strengths and inevitable weaknesses. In the end, there are many lessons of life, survival, and respect for their fellow brethren.

Chloe Lorraine Kimball is born at the estate of Ivy Manor in the wee hours of the twentieth century. Becoming a young woman, and having a home filled with everything a young girl could desire, she still lacks the one thing she wants above all else: unconditional love from her parents. With the help of friends, Chloe strikes out on her own, determined to stand apart from her family. She embraces marriage and a career, but not even motherhood brings her what she longs for.

Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates ("Hey, Olive Oyl, where's Popeye?"), the lonely girl finds solace in artistic pursuits. Only when she's hired by the town's sole feminist to work the night shift in the local thread factory does Violet come into her name, and bloom.

From the critically acclaimed author of Bloodroot, a gripping, wondrously evocative novel of a family in turmoil, set against the backdrop of real-life historical event—the story of three days in the summer of 1936, as a government-built dam is about to flood an Appalachian town, and a little girl goes missing.

When Elizabeth Lavenza enrolled at Ingold as its first female medical student, she knew she wouldn't have an easy time. So when she stumbles across what appears to be a faulty Bio-Mechanical - one of the mechanized cadavers created to service the school - she jumps at the chance to fix it and get ahead in the program. Only this Bio-Mechanical isn't like the others. This one seems to have thoughts, feelings...and self-awareness. Soon Elizabeth realizes that it is Victor Frankenstein - a former student who died under mysterious circumstances.

It's a boring, hardscrabble life for three sisters growing up on a Michigan farm in the throes of the Great Depression. But when young Nellie, digging for pirate treasure, discovers the tiny blue-black hand of a dead baby, rumors begin to fly. Narrated by Nellie and her two older sisters, the story follows the girls as they encounter a patchwork of threatening circumstances and take it upon themselves to solve the mystery.

When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother's stolen his girlfriend and car, and the nightmares of his best friend getting killed keep him completely spooked. But when he runs into Harper, a girl who despises him for rumors Travis started back in middle school, life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he falls deeper in love with her and begins to find his way through the family meltdown and the post-traumatic stress.

Bobby Lassiter has some important secrets - but it’s not as if anyone’s paying attention. It’s the middle of the Depression, and while Bobby’s mother and older sister knit all day to make money, Bobby explores the California desert around their home. That’s how Bobby finds Boots. He’s under their one half-dead tree, half dead himself. Right away he’s a secret, too - a secret to be fed and clothed and taken care of, and even more of a secret because of what he can do. Sometimes Boots is a man. Sometimes he’s (really, truly) a horse.

Murder. One of the Allerdon sisters has been charged with a pre-meditated killing and taken to jail. It doesn't seem possible - but it's happening. What was supposed to be a typical summer is anything but for this seemingly ordinary family. Shortly after they arrive at their cozy family cottage on the river, Lander meets and is smitten with a handsome young man, and they begin to date. Miranda has a bad feeling about her sister's new boyfriend. And when the family must deal with an unimaginable nightmare, Miranda can't help feeling that the boyfriend has something to do with it.

Carolyn Meyer's historical fiction, such as Marie, Dancing, is popular for its unique perspectives. Loving Will Shakespeare is the tale of Agnes Anne Hathaway. There are few details known about the girl who - though eight years his senior - would eventually become wife to the Bard. Meyer's imagining of her story will inspire listeners to learn more.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

Rick Ward wants to go to war. And he's not sure why. Maybe he's running from his dad and his crazy temper. Maybe he's running from his girl, who seems to think he's more of a joke than a man. Or maybe he's just running - to find himself. After basic training, Rick enlists with the Charlie Rangers, a special unit that ambushes the enemy in secret jungle raids. It is the most dangerous front line duty, and Rick's six-man team will experience everything from horrifying enemy encounters to mourning the death of a comrade.

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching autobiographical novel destined to become a classic American coming-of-age story.