Central Kansas Library System

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more. Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side of Cleveland, where apartments are small and parents suffer addiction to the white rocks. Yet there is magic everywhere. Every day Echo travels between worlds, attending a rich white school on the West Side. But there are dangers...

In her Bangladesh village, ten-year-old Naimi excels at painting designs called alpanas, but to help her impoverished family financially she would have to be a boy--or disguise herself as one.

"Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Lucy Wilson arrives in Rowan County, Kentucky, in the spring of 1911 to work for Cora Wilson Stewart, superintendent of education. When Cora sends Lucy into the hills to act as scribe for the mountain people, she is repelled by the primitive conditions and intellectual poverty she encounters. Few adults can read and write.Born in those hills, Cora knows the plague of illiteracy. So does Brother Wyatt,...

"Jin and Suja meet and fall in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She is a young journalist from a prominent family, while he is from a small village of little means. Outside the school, North Korea has fallen under great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Meanwhile,...

Twelve-year-old Rory and his friend Izzy try to foil the plans of Lord Foxglove, for whom Rory works as a valet, and his inhuman accomplices from taking over the world.--

Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River, a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth. They are pursued by local drug kingpin John Curtis and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, and keeping tabs on everyone is the Thin Man, a silent assassin. As their final paths collide and all are forced to come to terms with their choices, their circumstances, and their own definition of God.

"Sabine's scholarship to a prestigious art school was a dream come true, but one desperate decision might bring her new life crashing down"-- When Sabine Reye wins a scholarship to California's most prestigious art school, she longs for a place where she belongs. But the cutthroat world of visual arts is nothing like what she had imagined. Faculty member Colin Krell seems to take merciless delight in tearing down her best work-- and warns her that...

After Amerley is raped by her employer's son she realizes she has two choices--stay quiet and keep her job or live her truth and speak up for herself and for justice. Ghana. Eldest of four girls, Amerley is offered a job working for one of her mother's old school friends. She has to accept: her wages will feed her family, help her sisters stay in school, and ensure that her mother won't have to worry about them. Amerley's move to Accra isn't easy,...

"The accidents are not a matter of chance. They are deliberate. As English gentleman William Kensley becomes aware of the danger at Rosenleigh Manor, he pleads for the truth of his past from the only man he can trust--until that man is murdered. As the secrets unfold into scandal, William's world is tipped into destitution, leaving him penniless and alone. His only comfort is in the constant friendship and love of Isabella Gresham. If he does not...

Bullied at school and neglected by her poor, self-absorbed, single mother at home, high school junior Noelle finally reaches the breaking point after a classmate commits suicide.