Frank Carlson Library

Anna McNichol knows how to take charge. Raised by a single mother, she's worked to ensure her three children have every advantage she didn't. And while her marriage has its problems, she values commitment and believes in "till death do us part." Now an empty nester, she's at the peak of her career and ready to seize the opportunity to focus on her future. But life can change in an instant, and when her husband dies suddenly, Anna's carefully constructed...

During the holiday season, a family of three, missing someone very dear to them, find their house filling up with unexpected guests, making Christmas memories to last a lifetime. After their mother's death on Christmas Day five years ago, Will and Ella Sullivan, and their father, Henry, come to a family agreement: Christmas is a holiday for other people. At their brownstone in Harlem, stockings go unstuffed, tinsel unstrewn, gifts unbought, mistletoe...

Leopold Bloom King, the narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death. Eventually he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe,...

After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it...

"Two years have passed since the terrible car accident that took the life of John Baxter's daughter, Erin, along with her husband and three of their four daughters. Prompted by grief, and missing his daughter, John has invited a stranger for Christmas Eve dinner-Kendra Bryant, the transplant recipient who now has Erin's heart. But Ashley and her brother Luke are worried that this new dinner guest might be not be the best idea. They want to protect...

Annie Dawson's discovery of a diary in the attic of Grey Gables has set her on a mission. The diary reveals a poignant love story from World War II, a story cut short when young Peter Lambert goes off to the European Theater, leaving his young girlfriend, Lilly Pryce, with a promise: He will come back to her. But that promise is smashed when Peter's mother receives notice from the War Department that Peter is missing and presumed dead while on a mission...

"Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances--in their house, on the roadway, in the market. Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron has spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, independent young woman, she is like a breath...