Akron Public Library

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...

Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.

Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, there are some missions so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don't exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, a wave of terrorist attacks is set in motion. The goal: the total collapse of the United States. With the CIA's intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists's...

Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.

Investigating allegations about a hit man who lives a life of wealth and secrecy on a remote Wyoming ranch, troubleshooter Joe Pickett discovers two men at the ranch including a ruthless killer and a disturbing person from his past "The electrifying new Joe Pickett novel from the New York Times-bestselling author. Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live...

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer prize-winning novel of a China that is now in a contemporary classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In the Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the...

This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence. The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from the...

Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked creatures as witches, along with kindly strangers and other helpful folk. Based in part on the Grimms' fairy tales Faithful Johannes, Hansel and Gretel, The seven ravens, Brother and sister, The robber bridegroom, and The devil and his three golden hairs.

Due to an administrative mix-up, troublemaker Donovan Curtis is sent to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction, a special program for gifted and talented students, after pulling a major prank at middle school.

A tale set in America and China follows the experiences of three people who in their youth were involved in a mysterious accident that resulted in a friend's fatal poisoning and years later are haunted by the possibility that one of them actually committed a murder.