American Depression Fiction

"This magical audiobook echoes the desire to truly understand yourself and be seen as you are, and the twist ending will leave listeners stunned." -AudioFile Magazine This program is read by the author. A debut YA novel-in-verse by Amber McBride, Me (Moth) is about a teen girl who is grieving...

Since Shelbi enrolled at Windward Academy as a senior and won’t be there very long, she hasn’t bothered making friends. What her classmates don’t know about her can’t be used to hurt her—you know, like it did at her last school. Andy Criddle’s had far too much to drink. Again. Which is bad. And things are about to get worse. When Shelbi sees Andy at his lowest, she can relate. So she doesn’t resist reaching out. And there’s no doubt their connection has them both seeing stars . . . but the closer they get, the more the past threatens to pull their universes apart.

Maleeka Madison is a dark skinned African-American girl. She feels uncomfortable and wishes she had lighter skin. When her teacher, Miss Saunders, who suffers from a rare skin condition, shows that there is more to people than the color of their skin, Maleeka learns to appreciate and accept who she truly is.

With a strong family, the best friend a guy could ask for, and a budding romance with the girl of his dreams, life shows promise for Teodoro "T" Avila. But he takes some hard hits the summer before senior year when his nearly perfect brother, Manny, returns from a tour in Iraq with a devastating case of PTSD. In a desperate effort to save Manny from himself and pull their family back together, T's fiery sister, Xochitl, hoodwinks her brothers into a cathartic road trip.

From the author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Lords of Finance, another magnificent and timely reckoning with the first truly global financial calamity through the prism of the famous banking family at the center of the whirlwind Over the course of the 1850s and 1860s, during the first era of...

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.

When Sabine Zhang is picked for Hotel California, a teen reality show with an all-Asian cast, she jumps at the opportunity. As one of few Asians at her high school in the Midwest, she’s always felt as if she was playing a side character in someone else’s story. But on this show, she’ll finally have a chance to step into the spotlight.

Motivational speaker Jermaine Hill seems to have it all: celebrity, money, women, even a Cadillac Escalade. But one thing he doesn't have is the will to keep on living. Will he find the one true path to happiness?

The New York Times bestselling author of Rainy Day Friends and Lost and Found Sisters returns to Wildstone, California, where two completely opposite sisters—who are still nursing wounds from the past—realize they need each other more than they think. When Brooke’s older sister, Mindy...

A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace...

Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their...

What if the last hope to save your family is the person who broke it up to begin with? Michelle and her little siblings Cass and Denny are African-American and living on the poverty line in urban Baltimore, struggling to keep it together with their mom in jail and only Michelle’s part-time job at the Taco Bell to sustain them. Leah and her stepbrother Tim are White and middle class from suburban Maryland, with few worries beyond winning lacrosse games and getting college applications in on time.

Mann is only 13, yet he has already had to deal with more than most go through in a lifetime. His family is still reeling from the tragic shooting death of his little brother, Jason, each person coping with grief in his or her own way.

A poignant young adult graphic memoir that follows one teen's year abroad in Japan, as she seeks to reconcile both sides of her biracial identity. Christine has always felt she is just half: Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US...