Akron Public Library

"Laura and her family find a new home in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where the nearby creek and swimming hole lure Laura with dangerous, yet thrilling adventures. Too soon, their life is threatened when prairie fires and other strange events jeopardize their crops."

From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a darkly comedic novel about family. Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul-the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's...

"Following the turn of the seasons, eleven-year-old Eldon traces the daily routines of his life on a farm and his relationship with his older brother, Wayne. During the winter, with little work to be done on the farm, Eldon and Wayne spend the quiet hours with their family, listening to their uncle David's stories. But Eldon soon learns that, although he has lived on the same farm, in the same house with his uncle for eleven springs, summers, and...

Having been abducted at age seven, abandoned, a foster child, and homeless, Ethan, now sixteen, is happy to be home until his brother's suspicion and his own inability to remember something unspeakable from his early childhood begin to tear the family apart.

Grace Divine, almost seventeen, learns a dark secret when her childhood friend--practically a brother--returns, upsetting her pastor-father and the rest of her family, around the time strange things are happening in and near their small Minnesota town.

Ten-year-old Julia Gillian's best friend is keeping secrets, their beloved lunch lady was replaced by a tyrant, and trumpet lessons prove difficult, making it hard for her to follow the music teacher's advice to "look for the joy."

When Liam, a fourteen-year-old graffiti artist, can't keep his grades up and is threatened by a local gang in the projects of Minneapolis, his mother sends him to Lake Michigan for the summer.

When her divorced parents start living together again, Rianne finds herself questioning her future, her relationship with Luke, and why she's gotten stuck with an "easy girl" reputation for doing the same exact things as guys without any judgment.

Nine-year-old Julia Gillian learns a lot about facing fear as she and her St. Bernard, Bigfoot, take long walks through their Minneapolis neighborhood one hot summer, and she seeks the courage to finish a book that could have an unhappy ending.

Tom and his family experience many changes during the last year that their Minnesota farm is in operation.