Akron Public Library

In 1933, when twelve-year-old Hallie Turner and her brothers, Tom and Benny, take to the road seeking whatever work they can get, they find kindness in small-town Kansas.

"At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older...

After the ice cream stand where she works is robbed, seventeen-year-old Minerva Gutiérrez plans to get revenge on her predatory boss while navigating grief, anger, and dreams of escape from her dead-end hometown.

This is a tough and tender novel about an orphaned mountain family and the courageous fourteen-year-old, Mary Call, who keeps them together and alive.

In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve and against his father's wishes, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Facing the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, Fingal still manages to box and play rugby - and romance a fetching nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan. But Dublin is a city of slums, tenements, and brutal poverty. Can Fingal harden himself to the suffering all around him? (Bestseller)...

Ian Gray isn't supposed to have a dog, but a lot of things that shouldn't happen end up happening anyway. And Gather, Ian's adopted pup, is good company now that Ian has to quit the basketball team, find a job, and take care of his mom as she tries to overcome her opioid addiction. Despite the obstacles thrown their way, Ian is determined to keep his family afloat no matter what it takes. And for a little while, things are looking up: Ian makes friends,...

Living out her days in a remote part of her South American homeland, Violeta finds her life shaped by some of the most important events of history as she tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt,...

Ten-year-old Rupert, from a very large, very poor family, accidently becomes part of an eccentric rich family's life beginning at Christmas, and soon sees that wealth is not everything.

With her mama recently dead and her pa sight unseen since birth, fourteen-year-old Amelia is suddenly in charge of her younger brother and sister--and of the family gas station. Harley Blevins, local king and emperor of Standard Oil, is in hot pursuit to clinch his fuel monopoly. To keep him at bay and keep her family out of foster care, Melia must come up with a father--and fast. And so when a hobo rolls out of a passing truck, Melia grabs opportunity...

The story weaves a vivid and engrossing tale of one man's search for love and his struggle to come to terms with a childhood of poverty and neglect. As he journeys from the Hispanic barrio in Los Angeles to the killing fields of Vietnam to the frenetic life of a lawyer in San Francisco, Gregory Reeves loses himself in an illusory and wrongheaded quest. Only when he circles back to his roots does he find the love and acceptance he has been looking...