Akron Public Library

Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers...

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small...

"After her community in the awe-inspiring Montana mountains is suddenly consumed by a raging wildfire, one young Amish woman finds herself in a new town where she's introduced to the Native culture of the Kootenai people. When the Mast family is forced to evacuate their home in the West Kootenai region of Montana, Christine chooses not to move with her family to her father's childhood home in Kansas. Instead, she wants to stay closer to home and to...

"Jason Reynold. Jason Griffin. One a poet. One an artist. One Black. One white. Two voices. One journey. To move to New York, and make it in New York. Best friends willing to have a hard life if it meant a happy life. All they needed was a chance. A reissue of a memoir of a moment in time within a lifetime of friendship"--

On the verge of having a shot at the heavyweight boxing championship, nineteen-year-old Sonny Bear finds himself with conflicting loyalties when trouble erupts on his reservation over the construction of a new gambling casino. Sequel to "The Brave.".

In 1940s New Orleans, Fish Elliot is a polio-survivor with a knack for inventing and building things, and his African American neighbor Olympia is a girl with a talent for messing things up, but they are united in an effort to save a starving stray dog they call Liberty--and when Liberty is caged by a nasty farmer, they find an unlikely ally in a German prisoner of war, Erich, who is not much older than the two children.

"Dean and Dre, the seventeen-year-old sons of the Republican and Democratic candidates for president of the United States, fall in love on the sidelines of their parents' presidential campaigns"--

"Set in 1982, in rural, racially divided Ricksville, Mississippi Wade in the Water tells the story of Ella, a black, unloved, precocious eleven-year-old, and Ms. St. James, a mysterious white woman from Princeton who appears in Ella’s community to carry out some research. Soon, Ms. St. James befriends Ella, who is willing to risk everything to keep her new friend in a town that does not want her there. The relationship between Ella and Ms. St. James,...

"Bianca is Keira's best friend. At school, they are inseparable. But Keira questions their friendship when she learns more about the meaning of the Confederate flag hanging from Bianca's front porch. Will the two friends be able to overlook their distinct understandings of the flag? Or will they reckon with the flag's effect on yesterday and today? In That Flag, Tameka Fryer Brown and Nikkolas Smith graciously tackle the issues of racism, the value...

In racially charged 1962 Baltimore there are changes in the air. Plus-sized teen Tracy Turnblad, with big hair and even bigger heart, has only one passion, to dance. She wins a spot on the local TV dance program, "The Corney Collins Show" and is transformed overnight from outsider to irrepressible teen celebrity. The trendsetting Tracy aims to win the heart of teen-dream Link Larkin and stand up for what she believes in.