Central Kansas Library System

Valentine Roncalli struggles to save her decades-old family business, finding love and the life she wants along the way.

As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death. It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in...

For Big Al and Connie, their move from New Jersey to Hilton Head, South Carolina, has been fraught with complications, especially for their daughter Grace, a thirty-one-year-old single, Catholic woman struggling for independence.

For most of his life Dominick Birdsey has been living in the shadow of his schizophrenic identical twin, Thomas, but when Thomas commits a violent act that affects both their lives, Dominick decides to leave his home and search for his true identity.

Lawyer Mary DiNunzio's new case is a mystery-the strange suicide of an Italian fisherman interned during a dark, unspoken chapter in American history. Armed only with the puzzle pieces of a lock of hair, an old photograph, and a paper covered with indecipherable doodles, Mary digs deep into the case and suspects betrayal-and murder. Meantime, Mary's friends worry that her investigation is becoming an obsession, so they set her up on a series of truly...

"Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that...

"A captivating debut novel about the tangled fates of two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn itself"-- Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, a loud, untamed thing. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends from birth, their homes share a brick wall and their fathers are part of an unspoken community that connects them all: the Family. Sunday dinners...