Akron Public Library

Visiting his dad's hometown in Japan four months after his father's death would be hard enough for Ben. But one morning the pain turns to fear. First, a massive earthquake rocks the quiet coastal village, nearly toppling his uncle's house. Then the ocean waters rise and Ben and his family are swept away by a terrible tsunami. Now Ben is alone, stranded in a strange country a million miles from home. Can he fight hard enough to survive one of the most...

Is it possible that behind what is taking place in America and the world lies a mystery that goes back to the gods of the ancient world ... and that they now have returned?

In 1995, Iowa native Bill Bryson took a motoring trip around Britain to explore that green and pleasant land. The uproarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, is one of the most acute portrayals of the United Kingdom ever written. Two decades later, Bryson-now a British citizen-set out again to rediscover his adopted country. In these pages, he follows a straight line through the island-from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath-and shows us every...

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption....

After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

"Parallel stories of a woman who falls in love with an Armenian soldier during the Armenian Genocide and a modern-day New Yorker prompted to rediscover her Armenian past"--

When thirty-eight jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland, on September 11, 2001, due to the closing of United States airspace, the citizens of this small community and surrounding towns were called upon to care for the thousands of distraught travelers.

"Over the last eighteen years, much has been written and said about the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the profound impact they had on America and the world. But those names, stories, and memories have never before been collected in one place to tell the full, 360-degree story of what happened that day, and in the days after." --

A new history of how Putin and his conflicts have inexorably reshaped Russia, including his devastating invasion of Ukraine.

"Richly detailed. . . an intimate portrait of a diplomat." —New Yorker

From the seven-time New York Times bestselling author and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright—among history's most admired and tireless public servants—a revealing, funny, and inspiring reflection on the challenge of continuing one's career far beyond the normal age of retirement

In 2001, when Madeleine

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