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A Patch of Blue
by Elizabeth KataSelina is blind and strings beads to make money to contribute to her household. She is eighteen years old and lives with her mother and grandfather in a single room apartment. One day she goes to the park to work and meets a man with whom she falls in love. What she doesn't know is that he is a black man. The man wants to help Selina escape the sheltered and crippling life that she is living. In the end, Selina's ignorance and unthinking acceptance of her family's poor values cause Selina to do harm to a person who has done nothing but kindness to her.
The Living Wilderness
by Rutherford MontgomeryRutherford G. Montgomery, one of the most widely-read and best-loved nature-writers in the country, has written well over a hundred books of fiction, most of them involving his favorite "friends of the wilderness." The Living Wilderness is a distillation of his personal experiences with wild-life, a recapitulation of the breadth and depth of his observation and knowledge of the wild creatures which we seldom see--unless we look for them.
O the Red Rose Tree
by Patricia BeattyHere is the story of a warm and lively friendship that grows among four young teen-age girls and a life-battered old lady. When thirteen-year-old Amanda Barnett and her three cohorts meet Mrs. Hankinson, they discover that she is an accomplished quilt maker. Her dream is to make the beautiful quilt named O the Red Rose Tree, but to do so she needs seven shades of red in materials that will not bleed. The four resourceful girls resolve to find the scarce cloth, and their search leads them into one hilarious escapade after another. Whether they are scheming to get their hands on the local doctor's red flannel chest protector or a glamorous opera singer's red petticoat, their energy and determination never flag. Patricia Beatty has created a vivid picture of a small town in the mid-1890's on the west coast of Washington. The novel, rollicking and touching in turn, gains added depth from its underlying theme that frequently the young and the old have much in common. The book cover is described.
Freshman Choices (Freshman Dorm #14)
by Linda A. CooneyFaith can't say no to wild man Scott Sills. She's already on probation because of one outrageous night, but that's nothing compared to the disaster she's headed for now! Fame-hungry Liza is up for the lead role in a big campus play, but the only road to stardom leads right past the director's casting couch. And Will parents from two different worlds destroy the happiness Melissa and Brooks finally have found?
Blue Heron
by Avi"... people did not understand magic properly. Magic was not to change things. No, magic was a way of keeping things the way they were." At least, that's what Maggie believes at the start of a month-long vacation with her father. But why is he acting so strangely, making secretive phone calls and giving way to angry outbursts? And why does Maggie's stepmother turn to her for help? Then, in the marsh, there is the majestic, solitary heron that so captivates Maggie. It appears to have a magic all its own. But someone else, Maggie discovers, has been watching the heron. And this person wishes to kill it. As Maggie struggles to find a way to save her father and the heron, she begins to sense a connection between all these events. Knowing proves not enough; Maggie must share this new kind of magic, a magic she can only receive right from the great blue heron itself.
Lydia Jane and the Baby-Sitter Exchange
by Natalie HoneycuttFor two months, Mrs. Humphrey had said no to everything Lydia Jane wanted to do that was interesting or fun. As far as Lydia Jane could tell, "no" was Mrs. Humphrey's favorite word. Lydia Jane, who is eight, is interested in raccoons and stars and parachutes and... well, lots of things. Mrs. Humphrey, Lydia Jane's after-school sitter, is interested in just three things: cleanliness, safety, and peace and quiet. This means that during the long hours at the sitter's house, Lydia Jane can't do anything she wants. Can Lydia Jane find a way to exchange Mrs. Humphrey for the kind of baby-sitter who doesn't think noisy is the same thing as dangerous? Find out in this funny book!
Juliet Fisher and the Foolproof Plan
by Natalie Honeycutt[From The Front Flap] "Juliet knew that Mrs. Lacey needed her help. She knew Mrs. Lacey wanted Lydia Jane to sit next to someone who could set a good example. And Juliet was the person who could do it." Or could she? No two students in Mrs. Lacey's third grade class could be more different than Juliet Fisher and Lydia Jane Bly. Juliet keeps her mind on her work, which is always excellent. Lydia Jane is interested in lots of different things, and she likes to talk about them. During spelling. During math. Despite Juliet's best efforts, Lydia Jane doesn't reform. In fact, she doesn't even realize she has a problem! Juliet's stumped until friends Granville Jones and Jonah Twist enter the picture. They have a plan, and according to Jonah, it's foolproof..."
Lester's Turn
by Jan SlepianIn the stunning sequel to Jan Slepian's critically acclaimed first novel, The Alfred Summer. Everything has changed and none of it good as far as 16-year-old Lester is concerned. Worst of all is watching his retarded friend Alfie waste away in the hospital. Lester, himself a cerebral palsy victim, is desperate to save Alfie, and from this desperation is born the daring-- but disastrous--kidnapping attempt. Still determined to rescue Alfie somehow, Lester enlists the aid of his old friend Claire who awakens his desire to love a girlfriend, Claire's new neighbors, Lena, who seems like a movie star, her musical prodigy son Alex; and a young hospital volunteer, generous, endearing, impossibly romantic Tillie-Rose. But even their combined efforts cannot save Alfie. In the ensuing tragedy, Lester is forced to examine the real motives behind "The Alfred Fund" and is finally able to turn to his own future with hope. With honesty and sensitivity, Jan Slepian confronts the problems of disabled youngsters in this witty, powerful coming-of-age novel that explores the many ways we need, use and love others. She shows how teens cling to unrealistic fantasies of their future and of how reality forces them to look at their lives differently. Bookshare has "The Alfred Summer," the tale of Alfie and Lester one happy, challenging, summer when they adventure together to build a boat. Check it out to read more of Lester's story.
Ah, Sweet Mystery
by Celestine SibleyKate Kincaid Mulcay has a tranquil life in her country log cabin and a pleasant routine of writing thrice-weekly columns for an Atlanta newspaper. All that is shattered when she discovers that Miss Willie Wilcox, a beloved eighty-five year-old neighbor, has calmly confessed to the brutal murder of her stepson, Garney. But Kate knows Miss Willie too well to believe she could kill anyone, and a little investigation shows that the facts don't add up. Soon she's off on the trail of the real murderer, a dangerous chase that leads her from the drug deals of downtown Atlanta to the wealthy new subdivisions of her own hometown. Kate finds herself attending three funerals related to the case and she and two little girls she is sheltering are threatened. Set in big city Atlanta and the remnants of rural Georgia, and featuring many colorful characters from disappearing and emerging cultures, this is an engrossing mystery with heart.
Blind Bloodhound Justice (Bloodhound #4)
by Virginia LanierThis is the fourth in the series featuring Jo Beth Sidden and the bloodhounds that she trains.
Coming to Terms
by Anna MurdochThree generations of a family learn to value and understand each other. Joelene Mathieson has been abused by her lover in California. She escapes to rural upstate New York to care for her aging uncle, hoping she has left her problems behind-and hoping for a strength she never had before. Uncle Percy is a reluctant patient. An irascible and seemingly immovable old man, he hides a soft side, a terrible secret, and a keen yearning to find inner peace before he dies. His life's work is building a beautiful wooden ark in his back yard. George, Joelene's pot-smoking teenage son, is a bit of a rebel. He needs a male role model and a positive cause into which to channel his considerable energies. Don Diamond, Joelene's jilted lover, has criminal connections. With the mob on his heels, he sets after Joelene and George with violence on his mind. As the suspenseful plot evolves, Joelene, Percy, and George come to terms with each other and with their pasts, finding love and meaning in family ties that they have never known before. Coming to Terms examines the spirit with a fresh and distinctive style. It is a story to be cherished--one that is at once uproariously funny and tender.
Blood and Guile
by William Hoffman[From the front flap:] "From the award-winning author of Tidewater Blood comes a story of lifelong friendships, valor, and betrayal that unfolds with deadly calm. It begins on a hunting trip in the mountains of West Virginia. Walter, Drake, and Cliff have known one another for a lifetime. Blood brothers who have gone their separate ways over the years, they have gathered together again for a weekend of conviviality and the chance to shoot ruffed grouse. During the first morning in the woods, they are confronted with a tragedy. The fourth member of the hunting group--an invited newcomer--is shot and killed by Cliff. This seemingly accidental death is a problem for the local sheriff, and Cliff is called back to the mountains. His story doesn't fit the facts. Determined to help him, and standing in as Cliff's lawyer, Walter finds himself drawn into the investigation, even as he struggles to comprehend the changes in his friends. As the authorities build their case, Walter can no longer deny that all is not what it seems, and his trust in his friends slowly erodes. They have secrets they will not share--secrets that will ultimately tear their friendships apart and set them on a course to disaster. Evocative and suspenseful, Blood and Guile builds with a subtle force to expose the deepest desires buried in the hearts of men."
Borrowed Summer
by Marion Walker Doren[From The Front Flap] Ages 8-12 Sometimes Jan feels more like a live-in baby-sitter than a real member of the family. The oldest of three children (and a fourth is on the way), Jan has long since stopped receiving the hugs that now seem reserved only for the little ones. The one person who makes her feel special and loved is Gram, her great-grandmother, who lives upstairs in the family house. When Gram falls and breaks her hip, Jan's fervent wish is that she'll mend quickly and come home soon. But when Gram is then put away in a nursing home and begins acting more and more like a little old lady who has given up on life, Jan refuses to stand by and watch her die of a broken heart. With the help of some friends, and driven by a desperation that seems to reflect her own sense of abandonment, Jan manages to find another home for Gram to live and thrive in. Movingly told in Jan's own words, this exceptionally poignant and tender novel takes a hard look at the lengths to which a lonely child will go in order to secure love in a world that often neglects its old as well as its young.
Arthur's Funny Money (I Can Read Book #Level 2)
by Lillian HobanThis story is fun and very easy to read. Through all of the silliness it teaches many things about money, counting it, earning it and spending it. Children will see why it helps to know how to count and add and subtract. Arthur and his sister are in for a day filled with surprises from a soap eating dog to a bunch of children demanding to have their toys cleaned for free. Arthur and Violet are a good sister and brother team. Violet has many ideas for her brother and willingly helps him. At the end she plays a little number trick on him and he gives her a sweet reward. Early elementary grade children will learn in an enjoyable way about saving, counting, doing story problems, negotiating, compromising, advertising, getting along with customers and prices that go up and come down. A few pictures have been described by the validator.
Buddy Love: Now on Video
by Ilene CooperBuddy Love comes from an average sort of family, gets average kinds of grades, and is the type of guy who is, basically, average. Even Buddy's friend Ron seems to think Buddy's only talent is helping Ron look good, and Ron's just come up with his best idea ever of how to do that. Everything changes for Buddy with the arrival of a brand-new camcorder. When Buddy decides to tape his family and friends for a school project, he is in for a few surprises. Through the cameras lens, Buddy suddenly sees that there is more to his family than he had ever realized-maybe they aren't quite so average after all. And Buddy begins to think perhaps he doesn't have to agree to every humiliating scheme Ron dreams up, because it just may be that there is more to Buddy Love too.
Escape to the Forest
by Ruth Yaffe RadinWhen the Nazis invade Poland, nothing is safe anymore. Ten-year-old Sarah and her family must leave their home and live in a Jewish ghetto surrounded by barbed wire. There, life is a nightmare of cold and hunger where Nazi soldiers kill Jews at will. But Sarah still hears stories that give her hope-stories about a man who lives in the nearby forest, fighting the Nazis and sheltering other Jews, Sarah's brother thinks they should try to escape to the forest. Her parents think they will be safer where they are, Sarah doesn't know who is right. But as life in the ghetto grows worse and worse, the forest may be their only hope. Based on a true story of life during the Holocaust, this is a heartrending novel of one family's struggle to survive.
How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
by Sara NickersonMargaret always knew that her family was a little strange. Not that she was exactly normal herself After all, she did do her sixth-grade science report on a pack of killer Chihuahuas. Even stranger was the fact that Margaret's mother never seemed to talk about anything anymore -- not since the mysterious drowning death of Margaret's father three years earlier. Then Margaret's mother takes her and her little sister, Sophie, to an old abandoned mansion and places a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign in the front yard. But who could have lived there? And why was her mother keeping it all such a secret? Convinced that her father's death, her mother's silence, and the mansion are somehow related, Margaret returns to the spooky old house alone, determined to make sense of three clues: a swimming medal, a key, and a strange, handwritten comic book about a boy who turned into a rat. With the help of Boyd, the lonely, comic-book-obsessed boy next door, she discovers that truth can be stranger than fiction -- depending upon who's telling the story. An offbeat mystery about coincidence, fate, and the many different ways to tell the same story, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found is the unforgettable tale of a twelve-year-old girl who discovers just how terribly beautiful and wonderfully bizarre the world and the people around her can be.
The Hard Way (Rachael Alexander and Dash Mystery #9)
by Carol Lea Benjamin[From the Dust Jacket:] "A lifelong New Yorker, Rachel Alexander has seen her city change shape through the years. But while New York has never been cleaner and crime is rapidly in decline, a vestige of grittier days remains. When wealthy business owner Eleanor Redstone approaches Rachel to ask if she can investigate her father's murder--a brutal slaying that occurred when he was pushed onto the subway tracks--Rachel takes the case, plunging herself into parts of the city only its poorest residents have ever known. Because to solve Gardner Redstone's murder, Rachel must disguise herself as a homeless woman and live on the streets, searching for the dispossessed man witnesses say made the fatal push. In one of the coldest winters New York City has seen in years, Rachel is helped by a homeless Iraq War veteran, a man whose sad circumstances leave Rachel pondering her own fortunate life. This is a once-in-a-lifetime case that, before it's over, will engulf Rachel in a dangerous new world and change the way that she sees her city forever. In her previous eight critically acclaimed mysteries, Carol Lea Benjamin has explored some extremely difficult subjects. Private investigator Rachel Alexander's cases have led her from an encounter with a troubled child accused of murder to the shadows where the Twin Towers once stood. But in her newest case, the stalwart Alexander must inhabit a world that few New Yorkers would care to explore--a world that most think should be left alone, out of sight and out of mind." All of the books in this absorbing, sensitively observed series which will appeal to fans of dogs, mysteries and books that explore current social issues are in the Bookshare Collection. They are: #1 This Dog for Hire, #2 The Dog Who Knew Too Much, #3 A Hell of a Dog, #4 Lady Vanishes, #5 The Wrong Dog, #6 The Long Good Boy, #7 Fall Guy and #8 Without A Word.
The Game of Their Lives: The Untold Story of the World Cup's Biggest Upset
by Geoffrey Douglas<p>In the summer of 1950, a most unlikely group was assembled to represent its country in the first soccer World Cup since World War II. The Americans were outsiders to the sport, the underdogs of the event, a 500-to-1 long shot. But they were also proud and loyal men -- to one another, to their communities, and certainly to their country. Facing almost no time to prepare, opponents with superior training, and skepticism from the rest of the world, this ragtag group of unknowns was inspired to a stunning victory over England and one of the most thrilling upsets in the history of sports. <p>Written by critically acclaimed author Geoffrey Douglas, and now a film directed by David Anspaugh ( Hoosiers ), <i>The Game of Their Lives</i> takes us back to a time before million-dollar contracts and commercial endorsements, and introduces us to the athletes -- the Americans -- who showed the world just how far a long shot could really go.
Witch Way to Murder (Ophelia and Abby Mysteries #1)
by Shirley DamsgaardOphelia Jensen wishes she was just your typical, thirty-something librarian. Unfortunately, she's been burdened with psychic powers-an unwanted "gift" she considers inconvenient at best and at worst downright dangerous. Her kindly old grandmother Abby, however, has no compunctions about the paranormal, being a practicing witch with unique abilities of her own. And sometimes the otherworldly arts do come in handy-like when the arrival of a mysterious, good-looking stranger to their normally tranquil corner of Iowa seems to trigger an epidemic of catastrophes, from the theft of bomb-making materials to a murdered corpse dumped in Abby's backyard. Luckily Ophelia and Abby are on the case and determined to make things right. But it'll take more than magick to get out of the boiling cauldron of lethal trouble they're about to land themselves in.
Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland
by Mark KreidlerSomewhere beyond the circle of money, glitz, drugs, and controversy that characterizes professional sports in America, remnants of an ideal exist. In Iowa, that ideal survives in the form of high school wrestling. Each a three-time state champion, Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere have a chance in their senior year to join the sport's most elite group: the "four-timers," wrestlers who win four consecutive state titles. For Jay, a ferocious competitor who feeds off criticism and doubt, a victory would mean vindication over the great mass of skeptics waiting for him to fail. For Dan, who carries on his back the burdens of his tiny farming community, the dreams of his hard-driving coach and father, and his own personal demons, another title is the only acceptable outcome. Four Days to Glory is the story of America as told through its small towns and their connection to sport the way it was once routinely perceived: as a means of mattering to the folks next door.
The Last Wilderness (Seekers #4)
by Erin HunterThe bears' journey continues in this fourth book in the "New York Times"-bestselling series from the author of "Warriors."
No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories
by Gabriel García Márquez J. S. BernsteinThese stories are told in spare, unpretentious but picturesque prose, compassionate of human frailty, but also rich in wit and irony. The characters are all too human, alternately humorous and tragic.-- Library Journal. Translated from the Spanish by J. S. Bernstein.
The House on Bloodhound Lane (Bloodhound #2)
by Virginia LanierJo Beth is back. Her ex-husband is out of prison far sooner than expected and is stalking her again. And her most promising new tracking dog is totally blind. Her business is thriving, and her personal life is a mess.
A Brace of Bloodhounds (Bloodhound #3)
by Virginia LanierJo Beth is back with her bloodhounds to catch bad guys. This time it's a respected judge.