Central Kansas Library System

"Ruby McKee is a miracle. Found abandoned on a bridge as a newborn baby by the McKee sisters, she's become the unofficial mascot of Pear Blossom, Oregon, a symbol of hope in the wake of a devastating loss. Ruby has lived a charmed life, and when she returns home after traveling abroad, she's expecting to settle into that charm. But an encounter with the town's black sheep makes her question the truth about her mysterious past. Dahlia McKee knows it's...

In the wake of the Allies' victory in North Africa, 1,000 Italian soldiers have been sent to a remote island off the Scottish coast to wait out the war. Their arrival has divided the island's community. Nerves frayed from three years of war and the constant threat of invasion, many locals fear the enemy prisoners and do not want them there. Where their neighbors see bloodthirsty enemies, however, orphaned sisters Dorothy and Constance see sick and...

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up...

Michael Oher is a homeless African-American teenager who is from a broken home. Mike is taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher's presence in the Touhys' lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own. Living in his new environment, Mike faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome-- as both a football player and student. Mike works hard and, with...

"It is September 1940-a year into the war-and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan-loyal, intelligent, beautiful-but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from...

The first edition of Khatyn was censored and the reader outside USSR never saw the original. Forty years later Glagoslav Publications releases the unaltered version of the novel as was the author's intent. Based on previously sealed war archives and rare witness records of the survivors, Khatyn is a heart wrenching story of the people who fought for their lives under the Nazi occupation during World War II. Through the prism of the retrospect perception...

The world is ending. The fight for survival has only begun. Good and evil have vanished, leaving only power and death in the outside world. As fire and blood rain down on the city, a new foe appears amongst the flames. One who will stop at nothing to create the future the domes have dreamt of. Those who have managed to survive beyond the reach of the domes, are left with a terrible choice: to hide in safety, or fight against the monsters, who slaughter...

Some battles cannot be won. The time has come to fight. There are no allies left. There is nothing but flames ahead. The end has arrived. Prepare for the final installment in the Ena of Ilbrea series.

"The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, the relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism. Anthony and Gloria are young and gorgeous, rich and leisured and they dedicate their lives to the pursuit of happiness and we follow the intimate story of their marriage as it disintegrates under the weight of their...

In the spellbinding and suspenseful Let Me Die in His Footsteps, Edgar Award-winner Lori Roy wrests from a Southern town the secrets of two families touched by an evil that has passed between generations. On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 exactly halfway between her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran crosses into forbidden territory. Everyone knows Hollerans don't go near Baines, not since Joseph Carl was buried two decades before,...