Akron Public Library

On a cold dark night in February, as a blizzard shrieks through Cedar Valley, police officer and new mother Gemma Monroe responds to an anonymous report of a prowler at the local private high school, The Valley Academy. In her idyllic Colorado small town, Gemma expects the call was just a prank by a bored teenager. But there in the snow lies the savaged body of a man whose presence in town was meant to be a secret. And a disturbing message left by...

One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best-seller from coast to coast-and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority. When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they'd taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them-and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter....

Dallas transports listeners to 1930s Kansas, where a club of quilters welcomes a new member--and then must turn to each other for support when a startling secret comes to light.

As snowflakes slowly come down, one by one, people in the city ignore them, and only a boy and his dog think that the snowfall will amount to anything.

In a small town in 1928, a twelve-year-old boy savors the magic of childhood and the wonders of summer. Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is...

"When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on...

'Salem's Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets, and solid church steeples. That summer in 'salem's Lot was a summer of homecoming and return; spring burned out and the land lying dry, crackling underfoot. Late that summer, Ben Mears returned to 'salem's Lot hoping to cast out his own devils and found instead a new, unspeakable horror. A stranger had also come to the Lot, a stranger with a secret as old as...

October first, the air is still warm, but fall is rolling in. Thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding, his younger brother Tom, and their friends do their best to take advantage of these last warm days, tormenting the girls... and declaring war on the old men who run Green Town, IL. For the boys know that Mr. Quartermain and his cohorts want nothing more than to force them to grow up. If only, the boys believe, they could stop the clock atop the courthouse...

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker, pairing readers with that perfect book. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city; now the job she loved is no more. Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village, buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile. She drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. Along the way Nina discovers there's plenty of adventure,...

The story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest miracle ever or a massive hoax? Sully Harding, a grief-stricken single father, is determined to find out.