In 1931, Lily Dane is dragged along to a college football game by her best friend Budgie Byrne, where Lily instantly becomes smitten with Nick Greenwald. Despite the fact that Budgie is generally the popular one, Nick quickly falls for Lily as well. There is one major stumbling block to their happily-ever-after, however--Nick is Jewish, and while Budgie warns Lily that this will be unacceptable to their high society friends and family, Lily refuses to believe it. She concedes that her mother might be a problem, but Lily is convinced that even she can eventually be brought around.
What a sad, sick, powerful story. Three runaways desperately attempt to flee from the ugliness they've always known. These kids are both awful and sympathetic. Custis, a homeless boy, narrates most of the story. When strangers ask how old he is, his reply is always just, "old enough". Custis never mentions his parents or any permanent caregivers. He has recently fled a pedophile who, in exchange for “owning” Custis, had been letting him sleep on the floor in a room that smells like dog.
This is the memoir of Aaron Hartzler, a writer and actor currently living in Los Angeles. The story covers his growing up years right here in the Kansas City metro.
As he does for everyone in the end, Death has come for Granny Weatherwax. The finest leader the witches never had, indisputably first amongst equals, Granny bequeaths her legacy to young Tiffany Aching. Tiffany struggles to do the job in front of her when she has to manage her own steading, Granny's steading, train a new apprentice (and never before has a boy wanted to be a witch!), and stop the elven incursion into her world. Not to mention reining in the Nac Mac Feegle clan. Crivens!
Molly Murphy flees 1901's rural Ireland to avoid police scrutiny after she kills a man in self-defense. With all the bad luck the title Murphy's Law implies, she finds herself at the other end of her transatlantic journey in New York suspected of a second man's death. To clear her own name and that of a friend she made on the voyage over, who is another suspect, Molly decides to investigate the murder herself.
There are monsters in the desert. They came from the sea and fought with man, but now they wait, picking off their victims one at a time until they see fit to rage against the world of man once more.
As Lo-Melkhiin rides the storm into Her (there are no names in the book except for Lo-Melkhiin) village, She knows that he is coming to claim a new bride and her beautiful sister will most likely be his pick. Lo-Melkhiin has had three hundred brides already, and each one has met a swift death.
Set in 1986 in Nicaragua, Night of the Jaguar drops the reader into the turmoil of Nicaragua after the Sandinistas have won and are struggling to govern. Ajax Montoya, a former guerrilla, now a police captain, is literally haunted by the ghosts of his victims. He is assigned a case where a man is murdered in the same way that the Contras kill people. Nicaraguan State Security has also involved itself in the case, as has an American reporter, the American Ambassador, and an American senator.
The Read Local committee is pleased to announce Elizabeth Uppman has won Johnson County Library’s #IHeartU Essay contest with her entry Lucia's War. Uppman's essay was chosen for its response to the theme of love, and the juxtaposition of "war" in the title with Lucia's ultimate triumph. We also love the evolution of Lucia's attack, how her "storming the beaches of Normandy" approach slowly transitions to a blunt and irrefutable request.
Leonora (Nora/Lee/Leo) Shaw's past has come back to visit her. With a mysterious invitation to a hen-do (British bachelorette party) in the English countryside for a friend she hasn't seen or spoken to in years, she is forced to get out of her apartment and shed her closed-off personality for a weekend. She doesn't, however, quite know why she is invited and when she begins to ask around, no one else seems to know why they have been invited either. The hostess, Flo, is crazy about the bride, Clare, and puts all of the guests ill-at-ease.
