Akron Public Library

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesnt know her mother? Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya,...

In the winter of 1919, a young mother named Mathilda Neumann drowns beneath the ice of a rural Wisconsin lake. The shock of her death dramatically changes the lives of her daughter, troubled sister, and husband. Told in the voices of several of the main characters and skipping back and forth in time, the narrative gradually and tantalizingly reveals the dark family secrets and the unsettling discoveries that lead to the truth of what actually happened...

Eliza Spalding Warren was just a child when she was taken hostage by the Cayuse Indians during a massacre in 1847. Now the young mother of two children, Eliza faces a different kind of dislocation; her impulsive husband wants them to make a new start in another territory, which will mean leaving her beloved home and her departed mother's grave--and returning to the land of her captivity. Eliza longs to know how her mother, an early missionary to the...

In a moment of desperation, Devon McAllister takes her daughter and flees a place where they should have been safe and secure. Her plan is to escape to somewhere she can be invisible. Instead, an offer of assistance leads her to Thunder Point, an Oregon town with a willingness to help someone in need. As the widowed father of a vulnerable young boy, Spencer Lawson knows something about needing friendship. But he's not looking for anything else. Instead,...

Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife, and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it's been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment . . . or worse. Still Jenna--now thirteen years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief--steadfastly refuses to believe in her mother's...

"Eileen Jackson was happy to set aside her own dreams to raise a family with her husband, Paul. Together they built an ordinary life in a Connecticut town, the perfect place for their kids to grow up. But when Eileen discovers that Paul's late nights in the city are hiding an affair with a younger woman, she begins to question all those years of sacrifice and compromise. On the brink of forty and wondering what she's going to do with the rest of her...

Originally written as a children's song, Wonky Donkey has a daughter, cute and small, and prone to mischief.

"When Tabitha Brown's son makes the fateful decision to leave Missouri and strike out for Oregon, she refuses to be left behind and hires her own wagon to join the party along with her reluctant daughter and her ever-hopeful granddaughter to travel the deadly and enticing Oregon Trail"--

""A first-rate storyteller who creates believable, sympathetic characters who seem as familiar as your neighbors," (The Boston Globe), Barbara Delinsky presents a captivating new novel about a woman whose unexpected reunion with her estranged family forces her to confront a devastating past. One phone call is all it takes to lure Mallory Aldiss back to her family's Rhode Island beach home. It's been twenty years since she's been gone-running from...

Deeply wounded by her embittered mother's lack of sympathy for her aspirations, Elnora finds comfort in the nearby Limberlost Swamp, whose beauty and rich abundance provide her with the means to better her life.