Central Kansas Library System

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.

"In late 1970, Oliver Desmarais drops dead in his front yard while hanging Christmas lights. In the year that follows, his widow, Virginia, struggles to find her place on the campus of the elite New Hampshire men's college where Oliver was a professor. While Virginia had always shared her husband's prejudices against the four outspoken, never-married women on the faculty - dubbed the Gang of Four by their male counterparts - she now finds herself...

The all-too-human individuals who live within this extraordinary first novel are: Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's biggest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Sam, two Long Island teenagers seduced by downtown's nascent punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter; his spunky, West Coast-transplant neighbor; and the detective trying to figure out what they all have...

Miranda's world is turning upside down. Her best friend Sal shuts her out of his life when he's punched by a new kid for no apparent reason. Her mom is about to be a contestant on a TV game show. A key goes missing, then a pair of shoes. And Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny piece of paper: I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own. I ask two favours. First, you must write a letter. Then she finds other notes left in strange...

"In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all--beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be, but they make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable....

"Sunny's just made it to middle school . . . and it's making her life very confusing. All her best friend Deb wants to talk about is fashion, boys, makeup, boys, and being cool. Sunny's not against any of these things, but she also doesn't understand why suddenly everything revolves around them. She's much more comfortable when she's in her basement, playing Dungeons & Dragons with a bunch of new friends. Because when you're swordfighting and spider-slaying,...

Sunny is starting to understand the ins and outs of middle school... but she still feels more out than in. It's about classes or homework, really. No, it's the fact that most kids have a thing they do outside of class. Like football or track or cheerleading. Sunny isn't quarterback material, and her cheer attempts are... not the best. So what can she do? When Sunny's friend Arun says he wants to start a debate club, she's not really sure what he...

Discusses the political, economic, and cultural life of the United States in the 1970s, including Vietnam, race relations, feminism, the environment, fashion, music, television, and film.

Set in the 1970s in a run-down, industrial town, [this book] centers on a police force struggling to shed an incessant drug problem. Duncan, the chief of police, is idealistic and visionary, a dream to the townspeople, but a nightmare for criminals. The drug trade is ruled by two drug lords, one of whom--a master of manipulation named Hecate--has connections with the highest in power, and plans to use them to get his way. Hecate's plot hinges on steadily,...