Frank Carlson Library

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Cyril's son Danny and his older sister Maeve are exiled from...

"My mother," Joy Shapiro Krushelevansky writes in her diary late one night, "is the most embarrassing person to have ever been born." It's been almost thirteen years since we've last seen Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, whose journey toward happily-ever-after, and peace with her fractured family and plus-size body, made millions of women the world over laugh, cry, and see themselves on the page. The last decade of Cannie's life has brought...

"1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride...

"A talented 16-year-old artist slowly discovers the history of domestic violence behind why her brother left the family years earlier and why she suddenly cannot make art"--

Recently promoted to sergeant and assigned to the homicide department, detective Matt Payne finds more than his share of challenges in three assignments involving a fast-food shooting, a guru murderer, and a police movie star.

At The Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, fundraiser Eleanor "Nell" Pratt solicits donations-and sometimes solves crimes. When a collection of George Washington's letters is lost on the same day that an archivist is found dead, it seems strange that the Society president isn't pushing for an investigation. Nell goes digging herself, and soon uncovers a long, rich history of crime.

Adam and Whitney find themselves trapped in an arcade during a snowstorm, and the tension between them seems to melt away, leaving something else in its place. The pinball arcade is the only piece of his dad that Adam Stillwater has left. Philadelphia's newest tech mogul wants to turn it into another one of his cold, lifeless gaming caf̌s. Whitney Mitchell's parents split up, she lost all her friends, her boyfriend dumped her... and now she's spending...

The boy was born and raised on the tony Main Line. But he vanished on Philadelphia's mean streets. For Myron Bolitar, his client, golf superstar Linda Coldren, comes first--and that means unraveling the mystery of her son's kidnapping. But when Myron goes after the missing boy, he crashes through a crowd of lowlifes, blue bloods, and liars on both sides of the social divide. And as Linda's golf-pro husband suddenly makes a run at the U.S. Open championship,...