Central Kansas Library System

Sarah Laden is a widow with two sons, Nate and Danny, and a thriving catering business. Her best friend, Courtney, helped her through the horrible days after her husband's death and is always there when she's needed. Her son, Jordan, is even Danny's best friend. Then one day all that changes. In a nightmare chain of events, Sarah discovers that she really didn't know Courtney at all and poor, odd Jordan has been living a hell no one could imagine....

"For decades the suburbs have been where art happens "despite": despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. The familiar story is one of gems formed under pressure, creative transcendence fueled by suburban resentment. But what if the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Frank and April Wheeler are a bright, beautiful, talented couple in the 1950s whose perfect suburban life is about to crumble in this "moving and absorbing story” (The Atlantic Monthly) from one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century.
"The Great Gatsby of my time...one of the best books by a member of my generation." —Kurt Vonnegut, acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five
Perhaps...

Ivy and David Rose, happily married high school sweethearts and expecting their first child, are plunged into a growing web of suspicion when a young, pregnant high school classmate disappears and David's past is exposed in this tale of obsession.

"At night, down-to-earth Las Vegas socialite, Stacy Troy, dreams that everyone is dead. Nosebleeds and head-splitting alarms only she can hear become a regular occurrence. In her nightmares, Stacy dismembers bodies, stuffs them into a shopping cart, then takes them two at a time to the pile where she will burn them and say her last goodbyes. Waking nightly to her own screams, Stacy is convinced she's on the brink of a mid-life crisis and begins secretly...

"There's something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it's not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives. The six couldn't be more different. Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch. Kelly, the bookworm next door. James, a cynical burnout. Casey,...

"Teacher, mother, wife, and all-around good citizen Ellen is juggling nonstop commitments, from raising a teen and two toddlers to job hunting to renovating her dream home, the Meadowhouse. Amid the chaos, an ominous note arrives in the mail, declaring: People have to learn there are consequences. Why would someone send her this? Ellen has no clue. She's no angel -- a white lie here, an occasional sharp tongue there -- but she's done nothing to incur...

What would you do if you found an alligator in your garage? Or if you spotted a mountain lion downtown? In cities and suburbs around the world, wild creatures are showing up where we least expect them. Not all of them arrive by accident, and some are here to stay. As the human population tops seven billion, animals are running out of space. Their natural habitats are surrounded and sometimes even replaced by highways, shopping centers, office parks,...

Griffin is a happy man. Settled comfortably in a Chicago suburb, he adores his eight-year-old daughter, Zoe, and his wife, Ellen - shy, bookish Ellen, who is as dependable as she is dependent on him for his stability and his talent for gently controlling the world they inhabit. But when he wakes one morning to hear of his wife's love affair with another man and her request for a divorce, Griffin's view of life is irrevocably altered. Overnight he...

Two former groupies used to get it on with every late 60's music legend with a guitar and a Y-chromosome. Decades later, Suzette is still her brassy, sassy self and Lavinia is now a proper suburban wife and mother. When Suzette loses her job, she seeks out her "sister". Once they get together, their two world's collide.