Frank Carlson Library

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing...

YA-YAS IN BLOOM reveals the roots of the Ya-Yas' friendship in the 1930s and roars with all the raw power of Vivi Abbott Walker's 1962 T-Bird through sixty years of marriage, child-raising, and hair-raising family secrets.y

When Pauline walked into his mother's store in the Polish neighborhood of Baltimore, Michael felt she was the one. Both young and good-looking - with the uncertainty and fervor of World War II only adding to their passion - Pauline and Michael seemed to be made for each other. Hastily married, the two soon after discovered just how mismatched they really are. Pauline's impulsive and impractical hit-or-miss approach to life is nothing like Michael's...

Penny and her friends have always taunted an eccentric old gypsy whom they call the Queen of Sheba. When a teacher assigns a history project, Penny interviews her grandmother, who tells her about her youth and about the Queen of Sheba, whom she once knew. When Penny's grandmother has a heart attack and dies, the woman comes to pay her respects.