Akron Public Library

"Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to 'fragile'...

"Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College--Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet's already wondering how she'll get through. It's not just that it's grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it's designed to stretch the riders' capacity for pain beyond endurance....

Darby Thorne is a college student stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere. She's on the way home to see her sick mother. She'll have to spend the night in the rest stop with four complete strangers. Then she stumbles across a little girl locked inside one of their parked cars. There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, no way out because of the snow, and she doesn't know which one of the other travelers is the kidnapper....

Ira Levinson is in trouble. At ninety-one years old, he finds himself stranded on an embankment after a car crash. Suffering multiple injuries, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes and comes into focus beside him: his beloved wife, Ruth, who passed away nine years ago. A few miles away, at a local bull-riding event, Sophia Danko meets a young cowboy named Luke. Through Luke, Sophia is introduced to a world in which...

"Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together,...

"College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Iverson is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has...

"Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line-- getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle...

"At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers— one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found...

From Booklist: The third and concluding volume in Grossman's epic Magicians trilogy finds former High King Quentin ejected from the magical kingdom of Fillory and, in short order, given the boot from a too-brief teaching stint at his old alma mater, Brakebills. What is Quentin to do? At loose ends, he joins a ragtag group of magicians-including Plum, an expelled Brakebills student-on a quest to find a mysterious case, contents unknown but presumed...

"Friends Daniel, Six, Holder, Sky, and Breckin are planning to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with a Friendsgiving dinner at Sky's parents' house. But things have been off within the tightknit group and when Daniel reaches out to Six to ask the hard questions he hasn't dared to bring up since they last spoke about their shared secret, he's dismayed to learn that it's this very secret bringing a cloud over the holiday. Suddenly, Daniel...