Great Depression Fiction

“A lump of coal-taking up space,” is how a fourth-grade nun describes ten-year-old William Chamberlain. Despite his struggle with dyslexia, a precocious and rebellious spirit and labeled dumb, William vows to have money one day; he won’t be poor like his parents. As he grows into adulthood, nothing, not his lack of education, The Great Depression, World War II, or a bad marriage can deter him from seeking his dream. William possesses the innocence, naivety, and warmness of heart of a Forest Gump. This story of William and his family spans nearly three decades.

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.

From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins.

Rediscover the magic of Christmas in this heartwarming mystery. A little boy wanders into town and directly into Agnes Hancock’s heart, resurrecting feelings she’d thought long dead when she lost her son during the Great War. No one knows who the child is or where he comes from, but Agnes can’t turn her back on him. As the police begin their investigation, she brings the boy into her home and learns to love again. But will her new found happiness be destroyed when the police finally answer the question What Child Is This?

Jo has a gift. She is a mathematical prodigy—a woman who sees and thinks in numbers. She secures a job as a teller at Central Bank & Trust, where she recreates herself as a modern woman and rises through the professional ranks. While working at the bank, Jo becomes fascinated by Levi Arrowood, the dark and mysterious manager of the Sky Club, an infamous speakeasy and jazz club on the mountainside above town.

The current crisis is not like 2008 or even 1929. The New Depression that has emerged from the COVID pandemic is the worst economic crisis in US history. Most fired employees will remain redundant. Bankruptcies will be common, and banks will buckle under the weight of bad debts. Deflation, debt, and demography will wreck any chance of recovery, and social disorder will follow closely on the heels of market chaos. The happy talk from Wall Street and the White House is an illusion. The worst is yet to come.

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.

The Stoddard girls know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work. And in every small town, their mother, Elizabeth, does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home. But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times.

In depression era America, 1933, three men become unlikely friends on the hobo trail after being accused of crimes they didn't commit.

Birdie Jennings dreams of a big life beyond her small town of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky—beyond her mundane job tying tobacco leaves at Wrights Factory, beyond her position as the baby of the family. Her life changes when she meets smooth-talking Jimmy Walker. Jimmy makes big promises for an exciting life together, and Birdie is quickly swept off her feet. But some short years after they marry, Jimmy disappears without a trace, leaving Birdie hurt and alone with their two toddlers. Out of money and out of options, Birdie moves back home with her overbearing mother.

Best selling author David Johnson returns with a blockbuster sequel to RANSOM’S LAW and Prequel to TUCKER’S WAY. ~ ~ ~ Since the end of WWI, the Ransom family have endured more than their fair share of heartbreak and challenge. Roscoe and Willow have fought hard to build a new family, but life is about to become even harder. Junior Ransom gets lost while exploring a cave and fears he will die there. As Roscoe and Willow become frantic over his disappearance, their new child, Emily suddenly falls gravely ill. When Roscoe and the townsmen begin searching for Junior, tension and danger is ...

On October 24, 1929, the stock market crashed. Stories of suicides abounded. So did murders. Rosalie Fitzwilliam discovered a young couple in an alley in the Financial District. Dead. She acts logically. She runs to her friend, Dr. Tabitha. Together, the two of them and their husbands and Sergeant Johan Klassen engage in the pursuit of justice that could end up going very badly for them. The story is set in New York City, Vermont and Miami after the crash. Many people suffered. A few used the disaster for a grab for power and money. Does what happened back then have lessons for the present ...

Pearl Spence has been through more in her young life than most folks could handle. But through it all, her family has been by her side. They may not be perfect, but they love her, and they all love each other, come what may. That's one thing Pearl no longer questions.

Four sisters, two wars, one epidemic, the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. Beginning in rural Missouri in 1911 and ending in San Francisco during the final days of World War II, this is the story of the four Alexander sisters, all with very different lives. They are the granddaughters of first settlers of the Missouri wilderness and daughters of an iron-willed woman who buried four of her five children before the sisters were born. The eldest sister is a practical and outgoing business woman. Second is the beautiful, selfish and self-righteous farm wife. Third is the main ...

Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.

Millie’s mind is racing and there seems to be no clear line between right and wrong. Either path leads to pain, and she’ll do anything to protect the ones she loves. So she decides to bury the truth and begin again, helping Bump launch a ranch in the wilds of Colorado. But just when she thinks she’s left her old Mississippi life behind, the facts surface in the most challenging way.

Ever since cancer invaded his adoptive mother’s life, Brett feels like he’s losing everything, most of all control. To cope, Brett fuels all of his anxieties into epic fantasies, including his intergalactic Kid Condor comic book series, which features food constellations and characters not unlike those in his own life. But lately Brett’s grip on reality has started to lose its hold. The fictions he’s been telling himself—about his unattractive body, the feeling that he’s a burden to his best friend, that he’s too messed up to be loved—have consumed him completely.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

The New York Times best-selling author of The Roaring 2000s guides listeners through the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The first and last economic depression that you will experience in your lifetime is just ahead. The years 2009 and 2010 will be the initial end of prosperity in almost every market, ushering in a downturn like most of us have not experienced before.

Journey with a horseback librarian into the hidden crevices of Kentucky mountains. Feel her pain as she struggles not only to barely make ends meet, but as she also attempts to connect the pieces of her own life while her mom continues to make selfish decisions. Lena Davis is the daughter her mom never wanted. But she survived. Through stories. Because books didn’t judge. Books weren’t angry she was alive. Books never expected her to be anything but who she was.