Akron Public Library

Jack, terminally ill and preparing to say goodbye to his family, has a miraculous recovery after his wife is killed in a car accident and struggles to reunite his family at her childhood home on the South Carolina oceanfront.

Chicago celebrity and successful pitchman Charles James is supposed to be dead. Everyone believes he was killed in a fiery plane cash. But thanks to a remarkable twist of fate, he's very much alive and ready for a second chance at life - and love. Narrowly escaping death has brought Charles some clarity: the money, the fame, the fast cars - none of that was making him happy. The last time he was happy - truly happy - was when he was married to his...

Lily Thomas is an aspiring young ski champion training for the Olympics, a young woman with her heart set on winning the gold. But in one moment, Lily's future is changed forever, her hopes for the Olympics swept away in a tragic accident. Her father Bill has pinned all his hopes on his only daughter, and his dreams are now destroyed. Dr. Jessie Matthews, the neurosurgeon who operates on Lily that night, endures a tragedy of her own, and other brave...

If not for her loving but controlling parents, Beth Prudhomme might never have taken charge of her life and moved from her native Chicago to Portland, Oregon, where she has reconnected with her spirited Aunt Sunshine and found a job as a high school music teacher. If not for her friend Nichole Nyquist, Beth would never have met Sam Carney, although first impressions have left Beth with serious doubts. Sam is everything Beth is not -- and her conservative...

In the wake of an earthquake that interrupts a celebrity-studded charity dinner dance at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco, the lives of four strangers are transformed by the tragedy.

This book is a a powerful tale of patriotism, undying love, and the true power of sacrifice. In this moving sequel to Even Now, Emily Anderson, now twenty, is attending college on a soccer scholarship when she meets the man who changes everything for her: Army reservist Justin Baker. Their tender relationship, founded on a mutual faith in God and nurtured by their trust and love for each other, proves to be a shing inspiration to everyone they know,...

"While gathering material for a photography book about Edinburgh, Alexander McCall Smith found himself inspired to create stories about the people captured in a number of particularly striking photos. A smiling girl leading a younger girl astride a pony, and a boy in a kilt on a tricycle beside them, gives rise to a story of a lifelong romance between the two riders. A dapper, roguish-looking man perching on a lady's knee sparks the story of a ventriloquist...

A stunning debut novel about a teenage girl and her mother as they grapple with first love, family secrets, and tragedy. Maddy is sixteen. Smart, funny, and profound, she has loyal friends, a mother with whom she’s unusually close, a father she’s never met, devoted grandparents, and a crush on a boy named Jack. Maddy also has cancer. Living in the shadow of uncertainty, she is forced to grow up fast. All the Water in the World is the story of...

When Nora Banks goes to answer the doorbell very early one November 1st, she thinks it must be a group of teen pranksters still out trick-or-treating. But, it's no prank-it's the Feds, who have come to arrest her husband Evan for a white collar crime. Nora's enviable, privileged life in the eighteenth-century house she'd quit her job to renovate to museum-quality perfection, is upended in an instant. The Bedford wives close ranks against Nora and...

"Eliza Barnes, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, returns to her hometown in coastal Maine when her father is injured in a boating accident and finds herself pondering the age-old question of what could have been"--