Akron Public Library

"The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds...

When their son Jacob, who died tragically at his 8th birthday party in 1966, arrives on their doorstep, still 8 years old, Harold and Lucille Hargrave must navigate a strange new reality as chaos erupts around the world as people's loved ones are returned from beyond.

"Descent, the story of a family undone by the disappearance of a daughter who went out for a morning run and didn't come back, marks the adult fiction debut of a remarkable young writer. Stunning in its emotional impact, Descent is a compulsively readable page-turner with a strong literary sensibility. The girl's vanishing--on a sunny, late-summer vacation morning--all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning the family's harrowing journey...

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.

"Gus Hollister owes all his success to his feisty grandmother, Rose, and her two sisters, Iris and Violet. They raised him, sent him to the best schools, and helped him start his own accounting business. Rose even bought the house Gus lives in with his wife, Elaine. Now, Gus stands to lose everything--his home, his car, and his business. Worse, he's alienated his beloved grandma, who tried to warn him about Elaine's greedy ways. Heartsick and remorseful,...

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss -- a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's...

Alan Christoffersen's wife was thrown from a horse and paralyzed from the waist down, and in just a few weeks, died of complications. On her deathbed, Alan promised his wife he would live. Alan decided to set off on an extraordinary cross-country walk. Carrying only a backpack, he plans to walk from Seattle to Key West, the farthest destination on his map. Now nearly halfway through his trek, this book takes him from South Dakota to Memphis, Tennessee....

Ruthie Swain, the bedridden daughter of a dead poet, tries to find her father through stories -- and through generations of family history in County Clare.

A successful executive finds he has lost his wife, his home, and his business quite suddenly. He starts walking cross-country to Key West, but he is stabbed and confined to a hospital for a long, difficult recovery. A mysterious woman invites him into her home, and he soon finds that to complete his journey, he must help her with her own.

A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent...