Frank Carlson Library

Follows three mothers, each at a crossroads, and their potential involvement in a riot at a school trivia night that leaves one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but which evidence shows might have been premeditated.

Dan Mercer stands accused of being a sexual predator thanks to the ambush journalism of Wendy Tynes, a tabloid TV reporter, who must cope with her husband's death caused by a drunken driver as well as reckon with the possibility of Mercer's innocence. When Tynes finds a link between a father of one of Mercer's alleged victims and others felled by scandal, she could become a killer's next victim.

Struggling with the demands of her job, distant husband, spoiled daughter and Alzheimer's patient father, Allison becomes addicted to painkillers and lands in rehab, where amid fellow inpatients she confronts incompatible recovery techniques, barely trained counselors and her own denial. "Allison Weiss has a great job...a handsome husband...an adorable daughter...and a secret. Allison Weiss is a typical working mother, trying to balance a business,...

Sarah Laden is a widow with two sons, Nate and Danny, and a thriving catering business. Her best friend, Courtney, helped her through the horrible days after her husband's death and is always there when she's needed. Her son, Jordan, is even Danny's best friend. Then one day all that changes. In a nightmare chain of events, Sarah discovers that she really didn't know Courtney at all and poor, odd Jordan has been living a hell no one could imagine....

Couples is the book that has been assailed for its complete frankness and praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrait of love, marriage, and adultery in America. But be it damned or hailed, Couples drew back the curtain forever on sex in suburbia in the late twentieth century. A classic, it is one of those books that will be read--and remembered--for a long time to come.--Publisher.

Three women who are neighbors share their struggles with unfaithful men, rebellious children, and parental expectations while taking long walks near their homes on Wildwater Way.

"For decades the suburbs have been where art happens "despite": despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. The familiar story is one of gems formed under pressure, creative transcendence fueled by suburban resentment. But what if the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés...

"After a newly divorced mother of two moves to an affluent Atlanta suburb with her children, she becomes involved in the secrets and scandals lurking behind the fa�cades of the seemingly perfect families who live there ... secrets that someone would kill to keep hidden"-- "From the New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns comes a stunning new novel about a young single mother who discovers that the nature of friendship is never what...

Griffin is a happy man. Settled comfortably in a Chicago suburb, he adores his eight-year-old daughter, Zoe, and his wife, Ellen - shy, bookish Ellen, who is as dependable as she is dependent on him for his stability and his talent for gently controlling the world they inhabit. But when he wakes one morning to hear of his wife's love affair with another man and her request for a divorce, Griffin's view of life is irrevocably altered. Overnight he...