In 1934, eleven-year-old Terpsichore's father signs up for President Roosevelt's Palmer Colony project, uprooting the family from Wisconsin to become pioneers in Alaska, where Terpsichore refuses to let rough conditions and first impressions get in the way of her grand adventure.

In the mid- to late-1930s, Risky Chance grows from a spirited colt to a winning racehorse, but an injury and the Great Depression bring hardship that only a special little girl can help him overcome.

A modern-day girl finds herself in 1933 Cincinnati, Ohio, and as she and Kit experience life during the Great Depression, the reader is invited to choose how Kit might help her family and others who are less fortunate.

When Kit's family has to take in boarders, it seems as if they may be able to keep their house although her father lost his business, but the changes put a strain on Kit's friendship with Ruthie, especially as Kit spends her days helping cranky Uncle Hendrick.

"Beatrice Carraway has dreams. Although she's aged out of the childhood pageant circuit, she's intent on carrying her talents all the way to the big screen--if only she can escape the poverty of West Dallas first. But as the Great Depression drags the working class further and further under, Beatrice struggles just to keep herself, her mother, and her younger sister afloat. After a string of failed auditions, she feels defeated.And then in walks Jack...

"Street-savvy, almost-thirteen-year-old Aaron Broom is guarding his father's car when he witnesses a robbery gone wrong in a jewelery store across the street. To Aaron's shock, his father, a traveling watch salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Despite seeing the real killer flee the scene, Aaron can't do much to help in the moment--no one will take a kid's word for it. Undaunted, Aaron enlists...

1934. Businesses went under by the hundreds, debt and foreclosures boomed, and breadlines grew in many American cities. In the midst of this misery, some folks explored unscrupulous ways to make money. Angel-faced John Partlow and carnival huckster Ginger LaFrance are among the worst of this lot. Joining together they leave their small time confidence scams behind to attempt an elaborate kidnapping-for-ransom scheme in New Orleans. In a different...

"On the run after committing a crime and deserting the Civilian Conservation Corp in 1935, Harlan Jensen has been riding the rails and living in fear that someone will recognize him. Hunger causes him to jump off a train at the Meyer farm in rural West Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where he plans to work just long enough to earn a square meal and then be on his way. Elsie Meyer, the farmwife who feeds him, knows more about God's plan for his life than...

Never in a million years did Lauren Greenwood think she would be destitute and without a penny to her name. But when her father mercilessly disowns her in the depths of winter, that is her fate. Now homeless, Lauren finds America in the devastating grip of the Great Depression--children run wild in the icy streets, endless queues for soup kitchens line frosty sidewalks, and desperation hangs in the air. All alone in the world, Lauren finds an orphanage...

Phoenix, 1933: A young city with big dreams and dark corners. Great War veteran and rising star Gene Hammons lost his job as a homicide detective when he tried to prove that a woman was wrongly convicted of murder to protect a well-connected man. Now a private investigator, Hammons makes his living looking for missing persons -- a plentiful caseload during the Great Depression, when people seem to disappear all the time. But his routine is disrupted...