Akron Public Library

Discovering a cache of valuable Native American artifacts while appraising an estate in New Hampshire, Faye Travers investigates the history of a ceremonial drum, which possesses spiritual powers and changes the lives of people who encounter it

"Twelve-year-old Lalani Sarita takes on the impossible task of traveling to the legendary Mount Isa, towering on an island to the north. Generations of men and boys have died on the same quest--how can a timid young girl in a tiny boat survive the epic tests of the archipelago?"--

After his grandfather dies, Andrew Hope inherits a house and surrounding land in an English village, but things become very complicated when young orphan Aidan shows up and suddenly a host of variously magical townsfolk and interlopers start intruding on their lives.

"The mayor of the noisy city of La Paz institutes new laws forbidding all singing, but a brave little rooster decides he must sing, despite the progressively severe punishments he receives for continuing to crow. The silenced populace, invigorated by the rooster's bravery, ousts the tyrannical mayor and returns their city to its free and clamorous state"--

Pinion, Minnesota: a huge city of all of seven hundred folks who define the phrase 'small town'. Nothing has ever happened in Pinion and nothing ever will ... until the mayor of sorts (campaign promise: "I'll Do What I Can") comes up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. He's heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of curious people and making the townsfolk rich overnight....

"After twenty years, Leo Pizzola has come back to his native village of Santo Fico, still single and still looking for a way to get rich. Sitting high above the sea in a remote part of Tuscany, the town is as poor as it was on the day Leo left. No tourist buses stop there. No guidebooks mention the Miracle and the Mystery of their blessed little church, which once held so much promise as a tourist attraction. Instead the broken fountain in the center...

Blackwood Bay. An ordinary place, home to ordinary people. It used to be a buzzing seaside destination. But now, ravaged by the effects of dwindling tourism and economic downturn, it's a ghost town--and the perfect place for film-maker Alex to shoot her new documentary. But the community is deeply suspicious of her intentions. After all, nothing exciting ever happens in Blackwood Bay--or does it?

When Scotland is hit by the recession, Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices that the Highland people are forced to come up with inventive ways to lure tourists to their sleepy towns. The quaint village of Braikie doesn't have much to offer, other than a place of rare beauty called Buchan's Wood, which was bequeathed to the town. The savvy local tourist director renames the woods "The Fairy Glen," and has brochures printed with a beautiful photograph...

Parveen Shams, a college senior in search of a calling, feels pulled between her charismatic and mercurial anthropology professor and the comfortable but predictable Afghan-American community in her Northern California hometown. When she discovers a bestselling book called Mother Afghanistan, a memoir by humanitarian Gideon Crane which has become a bible for American engagement in the country, she is inspired. Galvanized by Crane's experience, Parveen...