Frank Carlson Library

"Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block--her neighbor Theo But...

"Blackwood, there's trouble in the old neighborhood! Murder in the sanctuary of the Church!" The church in question is St. Lucy's, a humble edifice at the heart of a venerable Chicago neighborhood now suffering the throes of gentrification. St. Lucy's has long stood as a bulwark against evil and change, which some in the community have often seen as much the same thing. Now three dead bodies have been left in the sanctuary, stripped, mutilated,...

"Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she's been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother Kenny. Portland's housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it's their last best chance to own their own home - and obtain the security they've never had. While she...

All it takes is the right book to turn a Book Hater into a Book Lover. That was Elliott's belief and the reason why he started The Book Haters' Book Club, a newsletter of reading recommendations for the self-proclaimed "nonreader." As the beloved co-owner of Over the Rainbow Bookstore, Elliott's passion and gift was recommending books to customers. Now, after his sudden death, his grief-ridden business partner, Irma, has agreed to sell Over the Rainbow...

"In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. When Loraylee Hawkins hears rumors that the city plans to bulldoze her neighborhood, claiming it's dilapidated and dangerous, she searches for a way to keep her family together in this novel that explores the conflicts of gentrification"-- 1961, Charlotte, North Carolina. The predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling...

Thanks to her Ye-Ye's epic scavenger hunts, thirteen-year-old Ruby Chu knows San Francisco like the back of her hand. But after his death, she feels lost, and it seems like everyone--from her best friends to her older sister--is abandoning her. After Ruby gets in major trouble at school, her parents decide she has to spend the summer at a local senior center, with her grandmother, Nai-Nai, and Nai-Nai's friends for company. When a new boy from Ruby's...

"An exhilarating debut novel about members of a Dominican family in New York City who take radically different paths when faced with encroaching gentrification, for readers of Such a Fun Age and Dominicana. The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a predominantly Dominican part of the city, for over twenty years. When the crash of a wrecking ball signals the demolition of an old neighboring tenement, Eusebia, an elder of the community, quietly devises...

The likeable, magnetic, bodega owner Usnavi saves every penny from his daily grind as he hopes, imagines, and sings about a better life. Meanwhile, his tight-knit community faces the challenge of gentrification, losing their homes while trying to better themselves and hold on to their cultures.

Naomi has always loved her vibrant neighborhood but things are changing quickly so, inspired by Mr. Ray, she paints murals to preserve her favorite memories.

Chinelo is all about her neighborhood Ginger East, but when her friend Kate's parent's store is vandalized and the vandal still at large, Nelo and her beloved Ginger East are shaken to their core. Chinelo, 'Nelo' as her best friend Kate calls her, is all about her neighborhood Ginger East, but it isn't what it used to be though. After a deadly incident at the local arcade, most of her friends' families moved away. Kate, whose family owns the local...