Central Kansas Library System

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet...

"The Girls with No Names pulls readers into the gilded age of New York City in the 1910s, when suffragettes marched in the street, unions fought for better work conditions--and girls were confined to the House of Mercy for daring to break the rules. Not far from Luella and Effie Tildon's large family mansion in Inwood looms the House of Mercy, a work house for wayward girls. The sisters grow up under its shadow with the understanding that even as...

Obsessively following the edicts of the Girl Scouts Handbook in spite of her lack of a troop, young Rory longs to escape the Reno trailer park where she lives with her bartender mother.

Enraged by her parents' joint-custody arrangement after she expressed a preference to live exclusively with her mother, eleven-year-old Willow struggles to make sense of her changing world and loneliness when her mother's demons begin to surface and overtake her. Eleven-year-old Willow is enraged by her parents' joint-custody arrangement after she expressed a preference to live exclusively with her mother, Rosie. She adjusts to life with her father,...

"In the vein of The Virgin Suicides, a dazzling debut novel about four girls inexplicably named Guinevere, all left by their parents to be raised by nuns"-- "To four girls who have nothing, their friendship is everything: they are each other's confidants, teachers, and family. The girls are all named Guinevere--Vere, Gwen, Ginny, and Win--and it is the surprise of finding another Guinevere in their midst that first brings them together. They come...

The story of Margery Williams Bianco, author of the beloved children's book The Velveteen Rabbit, and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother's. But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela's dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft...

Bailey Flanigan leaves Bloomington after winning an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway musical in New York City. In order to be closer to his mother in jail, Cody takes a coaching job in a small community outside Indianapolis. But new friends, distance, and circumstances expose cracks in his relationship with Bailey.

The first in an epic two-book saga, this sweeping story explores the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters as each woman is forced to confront her faulty but well-meaning desire to help her daughter find her God-given place in the world. "Ambitious, strong-willed Marta Schneider leaves her home in rural Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century. She's determined to flee her abusive father, loving but weak mother, and...

During their first summer apart, four teenage girls, best friends since earliest childhood, stay in touch through a shared pair of secondhand jeans that magically adapts to each of their figures and affects their attitudes to their different summer experiences.

"Keith Weston nearly lost his life in an act of arson. He survived--but with devastating physical and emotional scars. Without his mother, he has no one to help him heal, no money, nothing to live for but the medications that numb his pain. Isolated and angry, his hatred has one tight focus: his half-sister, Maggie Lockwood. Nineteen-year-old Maggie spent a year in prison for the acts that led up to the fire. Now she's back home. But her release cannot...