Akron Public Library

Many things change for twelve-year-old Rabble Starkey, her mother, and her best friend, Veronica Bigelow, when Veronica's mother becomes mentally incapacitated and the Starkeys move in with the Bigelows.

Avery, the police chief's daughter, risks her life to uncover the truth about the murder of a friend, Adam, who disappeared during a hike in the woods with his neighbor, Fletcher, whom she later found covered in blood and with no memory of what happened.

Pet owners know that a cats loyalty is not easily earned. Boo, a resourceful young feline with a keen eye and inquiring mind, has nonetheless grown intensely devoted to her human companion, Carrie. Several days ago, Carrie-or Mother, as Boo calls her-suddenly went away, leaving her family, including Boo, in disarray. Carries husband, Tommy, is distant and distracted even as he does his best to care for Boos human siblings, especially baby Finn. ...

"Newly reissued as a Picador Modern Classic, Marilynne Robinson's brilliant, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning first novel Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake...

Seventeen-year-old Kidd Ellison runs away to work for the summer at a beach campsite in California where his hard work and good looks lead to friendship and love but painful past memories surface in menacing ways.

The acclaimed author of The Color Purple presents a provocative story of a young tribal African woman who lives most of her adult life in America. Tashi submits toher people's custom of genital mutilation. Severely traumatize d by the experience, she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying to regain the ability to recognize her own reality

Explains the psychological disorder of self-mutilation, using case studies and interviews to present a portrait of the self-mutilator, and offering advice on how to overcome the affliction.

Speaking from a mental hospital, a teenage girl recounts the tremendous media pressure that preceded the breaking scandal of her father's unethical business dealings.

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he's told was spread by a mysterious "Army of the Twelve Monkeys") and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately...

After her mother's suicide, fifteen-year-old Leigh travels to Taiwan where she will finally meet the grandparents she never knew and come to terms with her mother's death. As she immerses herself the culture, she finds signs and hidden meanings all around her, and begins to believe that her mother has been reincarnated as a giant red bird.