Central Kansas Library System

"Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow took solace in the mystery stories she read with her devoted father--and soon she was writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, violent, complex crime stories that reflected skill and imagination far beyond her years. After her father's early death, at fourteen Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds twenty-six mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and...

Twenty-seven-year-old Joanna Kurtz has made several trips to the altar, but never as a bride. The single young Amish woman is a closet writer with a longing to be published something practically unheard of in her Lancaster County, Pennsylvania community. Yet Joanna's stories aren't her only secret. She also has a beau who is courting her from afar, unbeknownst even to her sister, Cora, who, though younger, seems to have suitors to spare. Eben Troyer...

When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

Narrates the tale of twelve-year-old Charles Dickens who, despite poverty and long hours of factory work, still has time to discover and share the stories of other residents of 1824 London. Includes author's note about Dickens' life and some of the books he wrote.

Living on her family's gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. One midsummer's eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace. What follows is a tragedy that tears the family apart, leaving their estate...

A romance between a priest and a nun-in-training leads to her pregnancy and his suicide. She is Gabriella Harrison, daughter of parents who abandoned her to a convent. The affair leads to her expulsion and she becomes a writer.

On falling in love with a woman half his age, novelist Michael Noonan of Maine is drawn into a custody battle for the woman's daughter. The father-in-law, a nasty millionaire, is trying to take the girl away and to complicate matters malevolent spirits are at work. Part love, part ghost story.

In pursuit of an author who could help get her brother published, Rebecca Lane stays at Swanford Abbey, a grand hotel rumored to be haunted. It is there she encounters Sir Frederick--the man who broke her heart. When a mysterious death occurs, Rebecca is one of the suspects, and Frederick is torn between his feelings for her and his search for the truth.

An elegant, page-turning thriller in the vein of Night Film and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, this tautly crafted novel is about stories: the ones we tell, the ones we keep hidden, and the ones that we'll do anything to ensure they stay buried. When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his...