Akron Public Library

Emily Aulenbach is thirty-two, a lawyer married to a lawyer, living and working in Manhattan. An Idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse. Now she spends her days in a cubicle talking on the phone with victims of tainted bottled water - and she is on the bottler's side. But it isn't only work. It's her sister, her friends, even her husband, James, with whom she doesn't connect in the way she once did. She doesn't connect...

Marta, who left Switzerland to find her own way in the world, must come to terms with her faulty yet well-meaning desire to help her daughter, Hildie, find her place, as Hildie becomes a nurse and has a family of her own.

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action, life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen...

It's the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam was built by Willa's great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water's heyday. It now stands as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. Willa herself has strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow - no easy task in a town shaped by the well-marked boundaries...

"Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, 'urgent' (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn't seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort. Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall. Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a...

"Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and law school hopeful from D.C.; Summer, a recruited athlete and perfectionist from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner who is content to quietly round out the circle of big personalities. Soon after moving into their shared dorm, they strike up a conversation in a study lounge, and...

In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an idyllic coastal community away from their husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890s' New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her...

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Sound of Glass and coauthor of The Forgotten Room tells the story of a woman coming home to the family she left behind--and to the woman she always wanted to be.... Georgia Chambers has spent her life sifting through other people's pasts while trying to forget her own. But then her work as an expert on fine china--especially Limoges--requires her to return to the one place she swore she'd never revisit.......

Marianne is stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. After forty-one years, she has reached her limit, and one evening in Paris she decides to take action. Following a dramatic moment on the banks of the Seine, Marianne leaves her life behind and sets out for the coast of Brittany, also known as "the end of the world." Here she meets a cast of colorful and unforgettable locals who surprise her with their warm welcome, and the natural ease they all...

"'When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,' begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without 'resources or voice.' Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded...