Akron Public Library

"The Mob Squad were heroes not so long ago, but even the most heroic kid is still just a kid. The Mob Squad's leader, Mal, is still milking cows and dreaming of the next adventure. Their sharp-eyed archer Lenna is learning everything she can about the Overworld, but the horizon is still far away. Fearless warrior Chug is running a store with his brother, but his reputation for breaking stuff has some folks still calling him a bad apple. And his inventive...

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....

Returning to her hometown on a tiny French island called Le Devin, Madeleine is saddened to realize that the island's decline reflects the deterioration of her increasingly withdrawn father, as she seeks ti=o unite the town's other lost souls to save their home.

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

"The villagers of Greymist Fair know that the woods are a dangerous and magical place, and that they should never set foot off the road. But when a young tailor discovers a body, her search for the culprit reveals even more strange and dark happenings around her town"--

"At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind--she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor...

In an isolated mountain village, nine-year-old Maria and her grandfather rescue and raise a wolf cub, Shadow, and when Shadow eventually leaves to join his own kind, a stranger's words help Maria to accept that this is for the best.

Deciding to restore and run a decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona in a small Central American village, Irene, a troubled yet talented artist, meets a colorful cast of characters who change her life.

"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"--

The eponymous copper beech is a huge tree that shades the tiny schoolhouse in the village of Shancarrig. For generations, graduating pupils have carved their initials on the massive trunk, and the book examines what has become of some of them. Though each of the 10 chapters offers the perspective of a single character, Binchy adroitly indicates the ways in which their lives intersect. Thus, the allegedly stolen jewels that are discovered and stolen...