Central Kansas Library System

This is the story of the coon dog, Sounder, and his devotion to his master. It is also a story of humans: the father, a black sharecropper, who must feed his children, the timid mother fighting for survival, and the son who grows to maturity through his father's prison term and the devotion of Sounder.

In Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein's second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife. Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments, and bittersweetness. The best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer hilariously destroys the cultural myths and impossible...

Three female students from Ashbury High write to three male students from rival Brookfield High as part of a pen pal program, leading to romance, humiliation, revenge plots, and war between the schools.

Kathleen Cheng has gone through a humiliating breakup, dropped out of her graduate program, and left everything behind. Now she's back in her childhood home in Oakland, wondering what's next. She finds her mother has been transformed by love: the new Marissa Cheng is sporty, perky, and planning a wedding to a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. Kathleen takes a job at a start-up that specializes in an unconventional form of therapy based on touch. An...

"Steve Stevenson is a jerk. That might not be a cool thing to say about someone with cancer, but it's true. Yeah, he throws legendary parties and is the most popular guy in school, but he also loves humiliating pranks and Cardi B, and he doesn't recycle. Worst of all, he's dating Kaia - the girl of nice guy Cam's dreams. But when a desperate Kaia asks Cam to help her raise money to pay for Steve's experimental treatment, Cam offers to organize the...

From the time it was written back in 1868, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women has enchanted young readers, who identify with the realistic and lively personalities of the four March sisters. Growing up as the Civil War rages, Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy face the challenges and difficulties of life--and, sometimes, each other. Francesca Rossi's wonderful illustrations are perfect for the contemporary audience.

Maggie Walther feels like her world is imploding. Publicly humiliated after her husband, a local councilman, is arrested for bigamy and her subsequent divorce, she has isolated herself from the world. When her only friend insists that Maggie climb out of her hole and embrace the season to get her out of her funk, Maggie decides to put up a Christmas tree and heads off to buy one--albeit reluctantly. She is immediately taken by Andrew, the kind, handsome...

The good: New York's Lombardo's Steak House is famous for three reasons, the menu, the clientele, and now, the gruesome murder of an infamous mob lawyer. Effortlessly, the assassin slips through the police's fingers, and his absence sparks a blaze of accusations about who ordered the hit. The bad: Seated at a nearby table, reporter Nick Daniels is conducting a once-in-a-lifetime interview with a legendary baseball bad boy. In the chaos, he accidentally...

"After a chance encounter, Penny and Sam become each other's emergency contacts and find themselves falling in love digitally, without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other"-- When Penny Lee heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it's seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can't wait to leave behind. Sam is stuck, literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works...

A colorful cast of residents and visitors to Miami go about their daily activities, both legal and illegal. This is a big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by the author of the way we live now. The police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay with officer Nestor Camacho on board. Into the feverous landscape of the only city in the world where people from a different country with a different language and a different culture have taken...