Frank Carlson Library

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom....

At the age of 12, Astrid has her world blown away when her mother is sentenced to life in prison for murdering her lover. Sharpened by harsh foster home environments, Astrid remakes herself as a survivor, and ultimately, an artist.

Now a major motion picture from Warner Independent starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale In Stewart O'Nan's Snow Angels, Arthur Parkinson is fourteen during the dreary winter of 1974. Enduring the pain of his parents' divorce, his world is shattered when his beloved former babysitter, Annie, falls victim to a tragic series of events. The interlinking stories of Arthur's unraveling family, and of Annie's fate, form the backdrop of this intimate...

Young, bright Taylor Greer leaves her poverty-stricken life in Kentucky and heads west, picking up an abandoned Native American baby girl whom she names Turtle and finds a new home in Tucson with Mattie, an old woman who takes in Central American refugees.

As graduation day approaches, eighteen-year-old Virginia Simpson is more than ready to head off to college, reunite with her childhood sweetheart, and finally be allowed to embrace the freeedom of adulthood. But when a family crisis forces her to abandon her carefully laid plans, Virginia learns the deeper meaning of "growing into adulthood." - Back cover.

If the Truth is Revealed, Will She Lose All She's Grown to Love? An orphanage in the slums of London is the only home Sarah Matthews has ever known. When she is suddenly whisked away to a wealthy widow's home in the prestigious Mayfair district, Sarah can't fathom what has happened. Why would this elderly woman, a stranger, want her company? But Dorothea Blake has reasons she isn't revealing. As Sarah blossoms into a young woman, the secret Mrs. Blake...

Mary Wesley's bestselling final novel is a heartrending, beautifully told story of a woman who discovers her self-worth-and finds unexpected love Caught in the middle of an air raid, seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe is rescued by a frail, elegantly dressed man. His name is Evelyn Copplestone, and he offers Juno shelter and a letter of introduction to his family's Cornwall estate. When Evelyn dies suddenly, Juno, with nowhere else to go, travels to...

Novelist Sheri Reynolds weaves lyrical prose and folksy dialogue into her spellbinding tales. The Rapture of Canaan, a New York Times best-seller, is the moving story of a teenaged girl clashing with her harshly controlled world. Growing up in a closed religious community deep in the rural South, 15-year-old Ninah Huff painstakingly and obediently follows her church's many rules-she knows that public humiliation follows the smallest transgression....

"In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all--beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be, but they make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable....