Akron Public Library

"Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She’s at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant--by the boyfriend she hasn’t told her parents about, because he’s Black, and her parents are racist. Things are hella complicated. Weighed by a...

"One night, with the sound of a young man's scream, high school senior Lorelei discovers that her stern but loving father, who adopted Lorelei and her sisters as infants, is no ordinary man. He has raised his beautiful girls for one purpose: to lure young men into their world of shadows. Like her sisters, Lorelei has been trained in the art of seduction and warned to never fall in love. But when she meets a handsome and charming classmate, she boldly...

Eve has build a good life: a husband who adores her, a daughter she is fiercely proud of, a home with warmth and love at its heart. But things were not always so good, and the truth is that she has done things she can never admit. Then one evening a phone call comes out of the blue. It is a voice from long ago, a man from a past that she has tried so hard to hide....--

Overweight sixteen-year-old Charlie yearned for her first kiss while her perfect best friend, Amelia, fell in love, so when she finally starts dating and learns the boy asked Amelia out first, she is devastated.

" "Lyrical, propulsive, dark and compelling. Joy knows well the grit and gravel of his world, the soul and blemishes of the place."--Daniel Woodrell. In the country-noir tradition of Winter's Bone meets 'Breaking Bad,' a savage and beautiful story of a young man seeking redemption. The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically...

"Jana Rubio and her best friend, Maddy Parsons, have an epic senior year finale queued up: catching their favorite band at the Orchards, an outdoor music festival a two-hour drive away. When a blow-up over Maddy's time-sucking boyfriend exposes a rift that may have already been growing between them, Jana calls off their joint trip and gets a lift to the festival from her church friend Nathan . . . only to realize Maddy and her boyfriend are along...

Amsterdam in the year 1705. It is Thea Brandt's eighteenth birthday. She is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms, but life at home is increasingly difficult. Her father Otto and her Aunt Nella argue endlessly over their financial fate, selling off furniture in a desperate attempt to hold on to the family home. As catastrophe threatens to engulf the household, Thea seeks refuge in Amsterdam's playhouses. She loves the performances, and the stolen...

"Set in Kenya against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion--a strange, intolerant woman--has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching...

"Judy Doenges's first novel is the story of Robin Simonsen, a girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s on the wrong side of a Chicago suburb. After the death of her young mother, Robin is left with her kind but irresponsible father - a junkman turned drug dealer - and her grandmother, a retired Vegas showgirl, both of whom draw local fixers and ex-cons into the Simonsens' increasingly shady home. Bright, wise, and observant, Robin is the quiet outsider...

"Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin...