Orem Library

In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels...

A 12-year-old girl sees trouble threatening her black community in Texas in 1921, when families are pressured to relocate to accomodate a white park.

While growing up in the Ozark Mountains of northeastern Oklahoma, Billy Colman raises two coonhound pups, bringing victories and tragedies to his life.

During the Great Depression six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother find a tarpaper shack in the woods and, over the course of a year, turn it into a home. Based on the author's grandmother's childhood; includes historical notes.

Four children witness a confrontation between an elderly black man and a white storekeeper in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.

THE BIG MONEY completes John Dos Passos's three-volume "fable of America's materialistic success and moral decline" (American Heritage) and marks the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" (Time). Here we come back to America after the war and find a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobiles. From New York to...

Jersey Leo is the quintessential outsider. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. When he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money-a potentially fatal mistake-he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in.

Tom and Katrina Callahan's three children have grown up and are making their way in a world that is propelling itself toward World War II. Tess has her heart set on a Hollywood career; PJ is a successful sheep rancher in New Zealand; and Tommy is pursuing his career in the Marine Corps and learning not only about war, but about the perils of romance. Author Gordon Ryan follows Tom and Katrina Callahan into their middle and late years. Living in a...

During the Great Depression, Marshall, an African American boy, uses lessons learned in arithmetic class and guidance from his mother to figure out how many beans are in a jar in order to win her a new sewing machine in a contest.

"In 1920s New York, the price of a woman's independence can be exorbitant--even fatal. In 1924 Manhattan, women's suffrage is old news. For sophisticated booklover Julia Kydd, life's too short for politics. With her cropped hair and penchant for independent living, Julia wants only to publish books under her own imprint. But as a woman, Julia must fight for what's hers--including the inheritance her estranged half brother, Philip, has challenged,...