Akron Public Library

Morrison's eagerly awaited new novel--her first since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993--is extraordinary for its breathtaking drive, stylistic panache, and enlivening moral gravitas. Spanning the time from the Reconstruction to the 1970s, this powerful work deftly manipulates past, present, and future as it reveals the interior lives of the citizens of a fictional, all-black town called Paradise.

Dunant revisits 16th-century Italy, where the convents are filled with the daughters of noblemen who are unable or unwilling to pay a dowry to marry them off. The Santa Caterina convent's newest novice, Serafina, is miserable, having been shunted off by her father to separate her from a forbidden romance. She also has a singing voice that will be the glory of the convent andmore importantly to somea substantial bonus for the convent's...

"It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church"--Provided by publisher.

When Mary-Margaret Fischer met Jude Keller, the lighthouse keeper's son, she was studying at a convent school on a small island off Chesapeake Bay. Destined for a life as a religious sister, she nevertheless felt a pull toward Jude--gorgeous, rebellious, promiscuous Jude. But Jude, driven by demons no one really understood, disappeared into Baltimore's seamy red-light district. Mary-Margaret moved on with her life, preparing to serve God with her...

"From Mark Lawrence, the international bestselling author of the Broken Empire Trilogy, comes the second novel in a dazzling fantasy series set in a dying world. The searing tale of a young woman on the path to becoming the empire's fiercest warrior"-- "From Mark Lawrence, the international bestselling author of the Broken Empire Trilogy, comes the second novel in a dazzling fantasy series set in a dying world. The searing tale of a young woman on...

Abby Northrope has everything a woman could want. A wonderful home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a wealthy lawyer husband, a wide circle of friends and a secure place in the community. She has everything...until Marti Bright, Abby's best friend from school days, is brutally murdered -- crucified on a hill overlooking Carmel. But Abby lives with a secret of her own: her ailing marriage, so fairy-tale-like to outsiders, is crumbling. As Abby turns all her energies...

In 1535, England is hardly a wellspring of gender equality; it is a grim and oppressive age where women-even the privileged few who can read and write-have little independence. In The Butchers Daughter, it is this milieu that mandates Agnes Peppin, daughter of a simple country butcher, to leave her family home in disgrace and live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But with her great intellect, she becomes the assistant...

"The second pulse-pounding novel in an epic fantasy series set in the same world as the wildly popular Red Sister. Yaz must fight for survival in this thrilling novel set on the unforgiving planet of Abeth"--

On a retreat in St. Theresa's, a convent in Texas, sleuth China Bayles observes nuns fighting over a legacy worth millions of dollars. One lot wants the money for more contemplation, the other for commerce.

Margaret has lived on the Island for as long as she can remember, and she loves every inch of it, from the mysterious stone circle left by the Old People to the windswept beach where she and the Elysian sisters await the ship that brings supplies to their remote convent home. But everything changes when two new arrivals appear on the Island: first William, who will become her dear friend, and then Eleanor, who will upend her peaceful existence. Regal,...