Abandoned by his beautiful wife, Irene, Henry spends the summer in a tent on the edge of Black Pond with their two young children. Henry, a butcher, often must leave them alone as he travels the country in search of work. A prosperous neighbor begins to woo the children as companion for their strange housebound son. Henry must weigh an unusual proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything.

The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath...

This Edgar Award winner is "equal parts morality tale and page-turning thriller" (Denver Post)-classic American storytelling in its truest, darkest, and most affecting form, with echoes of William Faulkner and Harper Lee. It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in...

Eliza, a widowed mother of three, desperately struggling to run the family orchard in the midst of the Great Depression, finds herself drawn to, yet fearful of, the stranger who arrives asking to work for food. This successful follow-up to Wings of Refuge and Eve's Daughters combines a strong spiritual story line with endearing, believable characters during the Great Depression. "How's a scrawny young thing like you, with three little kids to raise,...

""A portrait of Depression-era America so searingly authentic that the topsoil practically blows off each page."--Louis Bayard, author of Jackie & Me Already suffering the privations of the 1930s Dust Bowl, an Oklahoma town is further devastated when a passenger train derails--flooding the hospital with the dead and maimed. Most of the dead are Black; scalded to death in a flimsy segregated car at the front of the train. Among the seriously wounded...

"'Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say.' From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is a friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her...

Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past. Over the summer she pieces together his story. Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it's just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers...