Akron Public Library

"There are killers so savage, so twisted, that they leave a mark not just on their victims, but on everyone who crosses their path. For Detectives Bentz and Montoya, Father John, a fake priest who used the sharpened beads of a rosary to strangle prostitutes, is one such monster. Bentz thought he'd ended that horror years ago when he killed Father John deep in the swamp. But now there are chilling signs he may have been wrong. A new victim has surfaced,...

Forming a partnership with a prostitute, a down-on-his-luck con man recklessly agrees to a friend's request to orchestrate a theft in a Los Angeles apartment, where a crew of soldiers is reputed to have stashed millions in cash smuggled out of Afghanistan. Rumor has it that two million dollars in army money was smuggled out of Afghanistan and is stashed in an apartment in Los Angeles. Rowan Petty, a conman down on his luck, heads south with his sweet-talking...

It is 1880 and the railroad is coming to town. Former President Ulysses S. Grant arrives along with the train to celebrate the event and look into possible investments. Inez is dealing with the problem of her missing husband while trying to maintain ownership of the saloon. She makes a backroom deal with the local madam, Frisco Flo, hoping to gain some money of her own. When the body of one of Flo?s girls turns up, mud starts flying, accompanied in...

Christine Caine offers life-transforming insights about how not only to overcome the challenges, wrong turns, and often painful circumstances we all experience, but also to actually grow from those experiences and be equipped and empowered to help others. Using her own dramatic life story, Caine shows how God rescued her from a life where she was unnamed, unwanted, and unqualified. She tells how she overcame abuse, abandonment, fears, and other challenges...

THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITER OF THE 21ST CENTURY
 
William Johnstone single-handedly shaped the landscape of frontier fiction with his classic Mountain Man series. Now he returns to the West with a gritty, realistic tale of blood struggles, revenge, and honor—the saga of a man whose legend would spread across a brave new land.
 
Rescue
 
In California, Frank Morgan nearly found a home. But now he's pulled...

"In this radiant, highly anticipated debut, a cast of unforgettable women battle for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village. Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis- Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a...

The central plot of "Crimson Petal" involves the efforts of a young hooker (Sugar) to escape a horrendous teen life, and then find her way in a more successful metropolitan society. Her benefactor (or more appropiately , "Sugar" daddy) Rackham, has his own baggage (a mentally disturbed wife, an ill child and a very troubled brother), and his bringing Sugar into the mix both complicates and liberates his life. This isn't a happy ending story, however,...

The Centennial State had its share of working girls and madams like Mattie Silks and Jennie Rogers who remain notorious celebrities in the annals of history, but Jan MacKell Collins also includes the stories of lesser-known women whose roles in this illicit trade help shape our understanding of the American West.

In 1838, Arabella Godwin and her brother, Lewis, are orphaned and sent to live on their aunt's desolate farm in upstate New York. Time and again she will be broken and remade. She will bear a gambler's child, build a fortune, commit murder, leave a trail of aliases in her wake and sacrifice almost everything for the man whose love she cannot bear to lose. Her destiny takes her to Gold Rush California... where she disappears.