Elmer Gantry is a novel that presents aspects of the religious activity in America during the fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the 1920s. The story follows the rise of Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, a man initially attracted to the ministry for all the wrong reasons - booze, money, and women.

Despite his hypocritical nature and numerous scandals, Gantry becomes a successful Methodist minister, navigating his way through various religious and political landscapes. His journey is marked by both failures and successes, as he charmingly manipulates those around him.

Originally published in 1927, Elmer Gantry was met with controversy, denounced by religious communities, and even banned in some areas. However, its biting satire and critical examination of religious hypocrisy made it a bestseller and an enduring classic in American literature.

This novel offers a window into a particularly important aspect of American history, showcasing the interplay between religion and society with a sharp, satirical edge.

In Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law to marry him.

Little did they know how difficult their first year of marriage would be, in a faraway place with little money and few friends. But Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles and uncertainty of poverty and hardship can be overcome by the strength of a loving, loyal relationship. An unsentimental yet uplifting story, Joy in the Morning is a timeless and radiant novel of marriage and young love.

Legs, the inaugural book in William Kennedy’s acclaimed Albany cycle of novels, brilliantly evokes the flamboyant career of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond’s attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the more elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.

William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period.