Akron Public Library

Esperanza believed her life would be wonderful forever. She would always live on her family's ranch in Mexico. She would always have fancy dresses and a beautiful home filled with servants. Papa and Abuelita would always be with her. Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers...

Kinsey Millhone's grit is tested to its utmost as the private detective unearth's the gruesome truth about a long buried betrayal and in the process comes face-to-face with the grisly fact of her own mortality.

Loonie Kingman is in a bind. He's smack in the middle of assembling a civil suit, and the private investigator who was doing his pretrail legwork has just dropped dead of a heart attack. In a matter of weeks the court's statue of limitations will put paid to his case. Five years ago David Barney walked when a jury acquitted him of the murder of his rich wife, Isabelle. Now Kingman, acting as attorney for the dead woman's ex-husband and their child...

"Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King was sent to prison. But now, he's served his sentence and is returning to his hometown. The hometown where his childhood best friend, Walk, is now the chief of police. The town where his childhood sweetheart, Star Radley, still lives. The same Star Radley whose sister he killed. Duchess, Star's daughter, is a self-proclaimed outlaw. She needs to be. Who else is going to take care of her and her five-year-old...

It was the silly season and a Monday at that, and Kinsey Millhone was bogged down in a preliminary report on a fire claim. Something was nagging at her, but she couldn't pin it. The last thing she needed in the morning mail was a letter from her bank recording an erroneous $5,000 deposit in her account. Kinsey had never believed in Santa Claus and she wasn't about to change her mind now. Resigning herself to a morning of frustration, she phoned the...

"Escaping New York City and the espionage case that made her question everything, recently widowed Lina returns home to sell the house she has inherited in tony Greenfield, California. With her teenage son Rory, Lina hopes to reassemble her life, reevaluate her career, and find a clear way forward. Adrift and battling insomnia, she discovers that her father's sleepy hometown has been transformed into a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with...

A seemingly straightforward assignment to "babysit" Reba Lafferty, a wealthy and spoiled young woman just out of prison on probation from the California Institution for Women for embezzlement, turns unexpectedly dangerous for Kinsey Milhone when one of Reba's former associates is suddenly very much back in the picture.

With motive, access, and opportunity, Nikki Fife is the cops' number-one suspect when Laurence Fife, a prominent divorce attorney, is murdered; eight years later, out on parole, Nikki hires Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed her husband.

The Valley of the Moon (1913) is a novel by American writer Jack London. Inspired by his experiences as a working-class man and dedicated socialist, London incorporates aspects of his own biography-his interest in sailing, his life on a ranch in Sonoma County-to tell a story of hardship, hope, and perseverance. Having grown disillusioned with the labor movement, London uses the novel to advocate for sustainable agriculture and other alternatives to...

The only hope that Eileen Mulkerin and her sons have of saving their ranch lies in finding a hidden cache of gold whose location was known only to her dead husband.