Akron Public Library

Bryon and Mark have been inseparable best friends from childhood, but now, at sixteen, they both sense they are growing apart. When Byron discovers that Mark is pushing dope to young kids, he must fce a decision that might destry their longtime friendship.

A powerful and courageous work of fiction, Hard Times looks at working conditions in a Victorian factory town in the industrial north of England. It's an extraordinary novel that considers how enslavement to systems at the expense of imagination and feeling can wreck human lives. This edition celebrates Charles Dickens' most openly campaigning novel, through which the author said he aimed to 'strike the heaviest blow in my power'. Hard Times explores...

As a world-ending war surges to life around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions, questioning all they have ever known as they try to step back from the darkness and find the best way to achieve peace.

As the interminable case of 'Jarndyce and Jarndyce' grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but...

As the Wanteds, Unwanteds, and Necessaries struggle to adjust to changes in their society, Mr. Today begins training fourteen-year-old Alex to replace him as Artime's leader one day while Alex's disgraced twin, Aaron, connives to take over Quill.

The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society. When it was first published in 1967, The Outsiders defied convention with its immediate, deeply sympathetic portrayal of Ponyboy and his struggle to find a place for himself in a difficult world. Thirty years later, it speaks to teenagers as powerfully as ever. Puffin is proud to publish...

Changing the world means changing the story, the names, and the language with which we describe it. Calling things by their true names cuts through the lies that excuse, disguise, avoid, or encourage inaction, indifference, obliviousness in the face of injustice and violence. In this powerful and wide-ranging collection, Solnit turns her attention to battles over meaning, place, language, and belonging at the heart of the defining crises of our time....

Fired from her job, reporter Ann Mitchell invents a fictitious "John Doe" to write an idealistic letter threatening suicide in protest of social ills. The public response to the letter is so enormous that Ann's newspaper rehires her and hires an out-of-work baseball player, John Willoughby to play the part of John Doe. He enters into the hoax for the money but ultimately rebels against the evil, self-serving despots who attempt to further their own...