Akron Public Library

First published in 1989, this novel tells the story of two friends, John Wheelwright and Owen Meany, who grew up together as boys, but who have different backgrounds and appearances. Owen, for one thing, remains stunted at under five feet tall as an adult. He also believes he has a purpose to accomplish. Themes include the importance of faith, and the concept of fate.

Even the prickliest cactus has its flower...For Susan Green, messy emotions dont fit into the equation of her perfectly ordered life. She has a flat that is ideal for one, a job that suits her passion for logic and an "interpersonal arrangement" that provides cultural and other, more intimate, benefits. But suddenly confronted with the loss of her mother and the news that she is about to become a mother herself, Susans greatest fear is realized. She...

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns. and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While. bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale. by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his. company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the. darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination. his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled. into...

When radio show host Teresa Rae Wood dies, her common-law husband and children, struggling to keep her memory alive, become isolated in grief just when they need one another the most.

"In a new thriller from America's Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to a place she had wanted to leave behind forever - her childhood home. There, at the age of ten, Liza Barton had shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged stepfather, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court rule the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed with Cartwright,...

"Paige Watts is the ultimate stage mother. The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Paige channels her own acting dreams into making her daughter, Emma, a star. By the age of nine, Emma is playing a central role in a hit TV show. Then everything is shattered by unforeseeable tragedy. Now Emma is living with her aunt Whitney, who had chosen a very different path than her sister. Whitney was always the studious older sister, hating the cult of celebrity that...

"Set in North Carolina in 1960 and brimming with authenticity and grit, The Moonshiner's Daughter evokes the singular life of sixteen-year-old Jessie Sasser, a young woman determined to escape her family's past. Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's...

Evan Casher's safe, quiet life in Austin, Tex., begins to unravel when he discovers his mother murdered and barely escapes death himself, the first of dozens of close calls and harrowing twists as he finds himself the prey of a dangerous freelance spy ring known as the Deeps. This shadowy network is led by Jargo, a cunning, brutally efficient point man who believes that Casher has a computer file containing secret information about the organization's...

"Devastated by the sudden death of her mother -- a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel, who overflowed with pearls of Ozarks wisdom but never spoke of her own family -- Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to pack up and head north to the Michigan resort town where she believes she'll find answers to the lifelong questions she's had about not only her mother's past but also her own place in the world. Recalling...

Plagued with unpleasant memories of his mother's death, shy Gerard Freeman is obsessed with the manuscript of a century-old ghost story written by his great-grandmother and entrusted to his care.