Frank Carlson Library

When a drought tests the commitment of a mail-order bride from Maine to her new home on the prairie, her stepchildren hope they will be able to remain a family.

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

Princess Winter, admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, teams up with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, to defeat Queen Levana and find their happily ever afters.

"Florence has shocked everyone. She's not allowed home, or near the orchard. Her stepmother has disturbing news that even alienates her best-behaved daughter. How will Florence feel when she sees all the fruit on her beloved apple trees rotting?Why won't they take her advice, and why is her stepmother being so stubborn?Florence's younger half-sister is oblivious to the turmoil around her and is only worried about the useless caretaker looking after...

"In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous reimagining of a classic tale, told from the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella's "evil" stepmother. We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we? As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story. A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated...

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers--Owen's sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah's increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen's boss, as...

In this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully's Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval...

Three years after one secretly backed out of a plot to kill Raven's abusive stepmother, former friends Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna are drawn back together when one of them is arrested for the stepmother's murder. Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. When they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her...

In 1810, Lucy Bluecrowne, twelve, is bored living ashore with her stepmother and half brother until two nefarious strangers identify her little brother as the pyrotechnical prodigy they need for their evil plan.

"At sixteen, Mina's mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone--has never beat at all, in fact, but she'd always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king's heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know...