Bent Northrop Memorial Library

"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, a novel about the power of family to harm--and to heal. Within the walls of a tasteful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, young Zane Bigelow feels like a prisoner of war. Strangers--and even Zane's own aunt across the lake--see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children's ballet recitals and baseball games. Zane and his...

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same...

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and...

Sheila McGann is estranged from her complicated family. But when her older brother Art, pastor of a large suburban parish, finds himself at the center of a scandal, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him. Her strict mother lives in a state of angry denial; her younger brother Mike has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila's questions and refuses to defend himself....

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize... A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown,...

In March of 1887, Rocco, an eleven-year-old from an Italian village, arrives in New York CIty where he is forced to live in squalor and beg for money as a street musician, but he finds the city's cruelty to children and animals intolerable and sets out to make things better, whatever the cost to himself.

Raised by parents so intentionally isolated that they speak their own hybrid dialect, abused youth Marjorie witnesses her parents' submission to a sadistic cult leader before she is rescued by another abuse survivor who teaches her stoneworking skills.

"A provocative new novel from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars--a moving father-son story that is also a taut courtroom drama and a bold examination of privilege, power, and how to live a meaningful life. In a small rural town outside Seattle, Joanna, an Ethiopian girl adopted by a white fundamentalist Christian family, is found dead of hypothermia in her own backyard--setting in motion a gripping journey into the complexities of...

Depending on an older sister who protected her when their mother went to prison and their mother's boyfriend committed a terrible act, 10-year-old Della tries to figure out what to do when her older sister attempts suicide.

"It thrills us and torments us. It controls our thoughts, destroys our lives, and it's all we live for. Yet we almost never speak of it. And as a buried force in our lives, desire remains largely unexplored--until now. Over the past eight years, journalist Lisa Taddeo has driven across the country six times to embed herself with ordinary women from different regions and backgrounds. The result, Three Women, is the deepest nonfiction portrait of desire...