Central Kansas Library System

"An unforgettable novel about the power of friendship and kindness by the New York Times bestselling author of Pay It Forward. In the summer of 1969, fourteen-year-old Lucas Painter carries a huge weight on his shoulders. His brother is fighting in Vietnam. His embattled parents are locked in a never-ending war. And his best friend, Connor, is struggling with his own family issues. To find relief from the chaos, Lucas takes long, meandering walks,...

While duck hunting one morning, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. To his shock, the child--wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat--is still alive. To his wife's shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy...but the child's grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she'll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him.

"Thirteen-year-old Abby Hubble lives in an unhappy home in the Sierra Nevada foothills where her father makes life miserable for her and her mother, Mary. One day Abby witnesses a man dump a litter of puppies into the nearby river. Diving in to rescue all seven, she knows she won’t be able to bring them home. Afraid for their fate at the pound, she takes them to an abandoned cabin, where all she can offer is a promise that she’ll be...

"Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn't belong. Not with his mother's new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father's wife. Not at school, where he's an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he's tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who's introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez? Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly...

Fourteen-year-old Angie and her mom are poised at the edge of homelessness... again. The problem is her little sister, Sophie. Sophie has an autism-like disorder, and a tendency to shriek. No matter where they live, home never seems to last long. Until they move in with Aunt Vi, across the fence from a huge black Great Dane who changes everything. Sophie falls in love immediately, and begins to imitate the "inside of the dog, " which, fortunately,...

Bea has barely been scraping by since her husband died. After falling for a telephone scam, she loses everything and is forced to abandon her trailer. With only two-thirds of a tank in her old van, she heads toward the Pacific Ocean with her caton a mission to reclaim whats rightfully hers, even if it means making others pay for what she lost.When fifteen-year-old Allies parents are jailed for tax fraud, she's sent to a group home. But when her life...

"While on a hunting trip, forty-year-old cattle rancher Aiden Delacorte rediscovers his ability to feel the pain of others, a trait he's buried since childhood. When he falls in love with a single mom who has a troubled son, he will help him sift through his past to find empathy and compassion"--

"Ruth and her little brother, Aubrey, are just teenagers when their older brother ships off to Iraq. When Joseph returns, uninjured, only three and a half months later, Ruth is happy he is safe but also deeply worried. How can it be that her courageous big brother has been dishonorably discharged for refusing to go out on duty? Aubrey can't believe that his hero doesn't have very good reasons. Yet as the horrifying details of the incident emerge,...