Frank Carlson Library

"Fern and her mother have lived as servants in Wyndemere House, the old gothic mansion of the Davenport family, for as long as she can remember, and her friendship with Dr. Davenport's son Ryder was never a problem . . . until they came of age. An intimate encounter following a high school prom brings the pair near-tragic consequences, and the forces of fate, arrogance, and class prejudice gather to crush their warm relationship. Still, the real threat...

Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter in this riveting true story of a modern-day homesteading family in the deepest reaches of the Alaskan wilderness—and of the chilling secrets of its maniacal, spellbinding patriarch.
 
When Papa Pilgrim, his wife, and their fifteen children appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of McCarthy, their new neighbors saw them as a shining example

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Marie, the only black girl in the eighth grade willing to befriend her white classmate Lena, discovers that Lena's father is doing horrible things to her in private.

After Christie Longchamp's parents die in a fire, she and her brother go to live with her uncle where more trouble begins.

At her grandmother's beach cottage, Annie reveals her father's sexual abuse of her to a dove who helps her heal and learn to trust again. Lists guidelines for adults to help sexually abused children.

In 1987, obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Claireece 'Precious' Jones lives in Harlem with her dysfunctional family. She has been raped and impregnated twice by her father, Carl. She suffers constant physical, mental and sexual abuse from her unemployed mother, Mary. After getting pregnant for the second time, Precious is suspended from her school. Her principal arranges to have her attend an alternative school where her new teacher, Ms. Rain,...

The story of a jinxed family, a catalog of rape, incest and death. James Piper abuses his daughter, atones by sending her to New York to study singing while he goes to war, she returns pregnant, dies in childbirth when her mother opens her to save her twins. One of the twins dies, mother commits suicide, the second twin contracts polio while being baptized in a creek by an aunt, the aunt is raped by James. A first novel set in Nova Scotia early this...

A self-portrait of a black teenage girl, big, fat, unloved, with a father who rapes her and a jealous mother who screams abuse. For Precious, as she is called, hope appears when a courageous teacher, a young black woman, bullies, cajoles and inspires her to learn to read. By the author of American Dreams.

A boy whose manic-depressive mother has always told him that his father won a Nobel Prize, spends his time taking care of her and searching for clues to the identity of the Nobel Prize-winning sperm donor, eventually finding a truth he must learn to accept.