Akron Public Library

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2021

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature
A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between...

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in Belgium between the First and Second World Wars; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; the testament of a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators...

"Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive...

The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around—fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson—a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward—the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major

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In the town of Thirty-Four Corners, Colorado, Matt Jensen rides into a savage blood feud. Thirty years ago two friends came West and built a thriving cattle business. Now, their families have become kill-crazy enemies and the town is awash in a frenzy of killing. Add in hired gunmen on both sides of the fight, and two lovers crossing the dividing line, and the terror will never end.

"As an undergraduate, Melina Green had a rare opportunity to have one of her first plays judged by famous theater critic Jasper Tolle, only to be publicly humiliated by a harsh and biased critique. Ten years later, her confidence as a playwright has never recovered, although she has just completed a work that she thinks is her best yet. It is based on the life of her ancestor Emilia Bassano, the first published female poet in England--and rumored...

Contains ten stories of war, mystery, romance, crime, and punishment, from the wide-open range of the American West to the frozen seas of the Siberian coast.

A propulsive novel of World War II espionage by the author of New York Times best seller The Glass Room.
Barely out of school and doing her bit for the British war effort, Marian Sutro has one quality that makes her stand out—she is a native French speaker. It is this that attracts the attention of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive, which trains agents to operate in occupied Europe. Drawn into this strange, secret...

A stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener could bring to stunning life. From the Native Americans, the migrating white men and women, the cowboys, and the foreigners, it is a story of trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters--all caught up in the dramatic events and violent...

An ancient feud between two frontier families is inflamed when one of the families takes up cattle rustling. In the grip of their relentless code of loyalty, they fight a war in Tonto Basin, desperately, doggedly, neither side seeing the futility of the conflict. Surrounded by this volatile environment, young Jean finds himself hopelessly in love with a girl from whom he is separated by an impassable barrier.