Central Kansas Library System

"A can't-miss title for fans of chick lit and modern women's fiction."—Library Journal, STARRED review

An unlikely friendship between two stubborn, lonely souls anchors this big-hearted book and dares us all to ask for more.

When her life falls apart on the eve of her 40th birthday, Kate Parker finds herself volunteering at the Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies. There she meets 97-year-old Cecily

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Saki (pseudonym of H. H. Munro), English author, is best known for his witty, sometimes whimsical, often cynical and bizarre short stories; they are collected in Reginald, The Chronicles of Clovis, Beasts and Super-Beasts, and other volumes. Contents of The Chronicles of Clovis include: Esme, The Match-Maker, Tobermory, Mrs. Packletide's Tiger, The Stampeding of Lady Bastable, The Background, Hermann the Irascible, The Unrest-Cure, The Jesting of...

"Ben survived freshman year of college, but he's feeling more stuck than ever. His classes are a slog, his part-time job working with his father is even worse, and his best friend Dylan's been acting weird for weeks. Ben's only real bright spot is his writing partner Mario, who's been giving him a lot of Spanish lessons and even more kisses. Mario's big Hollywood dreams make Ben start to dream bigger--and the choices he makes now could be the key...

A vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets--beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s. On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's...

Written when women-and workers generally-had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteenth century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess's life. At the Bloomfields and later the Murrays, she suffers under...

Patty and her two best friends Conny and Priscilla are appalled when they find out they've been separated as roommates for their senior year at Saint Ursula's boarding school. Patty will not let it stand and the girls come up with schemes to go back to rooming with one another. The book follows Conny, Priscilla, Patty and their schoolmates (but mostly Patty) through their senior year. It's a series of vignettes about friendship, mischief and growing...

This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea-if you gazed intently, enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About...

After the sudden death of her father, sixteen-year-old Valerie Chu, who is hiding an eating disorder from her friends and family, reevaluates her life, her choices and her own body as she tries to find the strength to seek help. Valerie Chu is quiet, studious, and above all, thin. No one, not even her best friend Jordan, knows that she has been binging and purging for years. But when tragedy strikes, Val finds herself taking a good, hard look at...

Holden Harris is an autistic eighteen-year-old who is bullied at school. Ella Reynolds is the head cheerleader who befriends Holden but has problems of her own at home.

Sixteen-year-old Olive Alexander has lived on a ranch in the Jornada del Muerto region of southern New Mexico her entire life. But when World War II begins, the government seizes her family's land for the construction of a new, top secret Army post. While her mother remains behind, Olive is forced to live in nearby Alamogordo with her grandmother and find a place in a new school. When Jo Hawthorne crosses her path, Olive sees a chance for friendship--until...