Central Kansas Library System

"Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades. As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing...

"Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside--traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win's troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his "movie money" for her safe return. But what they don't know is ... his movie money is long gone. Unable to go to the police for fear the kidnappers...

"Max Van Doren has a wish list, and a great career and a girlfriend are at the top. But despite being pretty good at her job as an assistant to one of Hollywood's fastest rising talent agents, she has no idea how to move up the ladder. And when it comes to her love life, she's stuck in perpetual lust for an adorably perfect bartender named Sadie. Her goals are clear--and Max has everything but the self-confidence to go for them...Tired of the sponcon...

"The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In...

"Every family is complicated, and the Benedettos are no exception. A few years after a reality show skyrocketed them to pop culture notoriety, the five twenty-something sisters are living in their parent's crumbling McMansion, semi-famous and almost broke. The family's teetering towards rock bottom when Charlie Bingley, star of Captain Fantastic, moves into the neighborhood with his insufferable friend Will Darcy in tow. Charlie immediately falls...

While visiting a movie set in Hollywood, the Thea sisters set out in search of a thief who has stolen an important reel of film from the studio.

"In February of 1926, private detective Ted Oliver is hired by a mysterious client to investigate the death of Graham Peyton, a man known for recruiting high-class prostitutes for the studios until his disappearance five years ago. Thanks to a ferocious Pacific storm, Graham's skeleton is uncovered from its hiding place, under rocks beneath a cliff. As Oliver investigates the final days leading up to Graham's demise, he stumbles across a connection...

Sara Rosario Gonzl̀es is a restorer of rare books and manuscripts at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When Sara restores a sixteenth-century manuscript about an Aztec princess enslaved by Cortš and sent to Europe to entertain the pope and Emperor Charles V, she doesn't realize the power of the tale she's about to immerse herself into. The princess, we find, is determined to avenge the slaughter of her people, and Sara is determined to prove that...

Told in their separate voices, six Muslim teens are falsely accused of an alleged attack on a Los Angeles beach and must trust or turn their backs on each other to prove their innocence. "As fireworks pop off at a rowdy Fourth of July bonfire party, an explosion off the California coast levels an oil rig—resulting in chaos and worse, murder. At the center are six Muslim teens – six patriots, six strangers, and six suspects. An old soul...

"There's never a dull moment for amateur sleuth Molly Pink. Without warning, her infant granddaughter has been dumped in her lap for babysitting duties, her son has reluctantly enlisted her help investigating a potential investor in his business, and now she has to manage a high-profile bookstore event for a former Hollywood columnist who's dishing the dirt in a juicy tell-all. And when the author collapses and dies in the store just as she's about...