Akron Public Library

"Set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond, from the author of Me Before You and The Peacock Emporium. Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a...

"Elizabeth Duncan has nowhere to turn. In charge of her younger brother and sister after their parents die, her options are limited. When she hears that the Shaker community in the next county takes in orphans, she presents herself and her siblings at Harmony Hill. Despite the hard work and strange new beliefs around her, Elizabeth is relieved to have a roof overhead and food to eat. But when she feels a strong attachment to a handsome young Believer...

"As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother's. Here, twelve-year-old Thea can run free and breathe in the smells of pine and fresh bread and Grammie's handmade candles. But as her parents head back to suburban Virginia, they have no idea they're about to cross paths with a ticking time bomb. Back in Kentucky, Thea and her grandmother Lucy both awaken...

Addie Cowherd dreamt of being a novelist and offering readers the escape that books gave her during her tragic childhood. But it's the Great Depression, and when her adoptive father loses his job, Addie is forced to leave college and take the only employment she can find: delivering books on horseback to poor coal mining families in the hills of Kentucky. The community of Boone's Hollow is suspicious of outsiders and steeped in superstitions that...

Can a man burdened by memories of yesterday find hope in the land of tomorrow? Will peace-loving Samuel and Esther fight for their newfound love? How will God manage to untangle these star-crossed lovers before any damage is done?

Charlotte Vance is a young woman who knows what she wants. But when the man she planned to marry joins the Shakers--a religious group that does not marry--she is left dumbfounded. And when her father brings home a new wife who is young enough to be Charlotte's sister, it is more than she can bear. With the country--and her own household--on the brink of civil war, this pampered gentlewoman hatches a plan to avoid her new stepmother and win back her...

It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father slowly slips into alcoholism and his business suffers during the Great Depression. As her mother tries to come to grips with their situation and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to it, it is Kate who must shoulder the emotional load. Who could imagine that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what the Merritts need?

The return of Nealy Coleman to SunStar, the home she fled thirty years earlier with her illegitimate child Emmie, has serious repercussions for Nealy's brothers Pyne and Rhy, as well as all the other Thorntons and Colemans associated with the thoroughbred horse farm, including Nealy herself "Kentucky Rich" launches the "Kentucky" novels and brings together the next generation of Colemans and Thorntons in stories that combine the heady thrills of...

"Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream. Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love." They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for...