NCW Libraries

"Young Andrew was autistic and bilingual. He spoke English-and Chicken. He would sit on the front porch deep in conversation with his best friend, an Araucana chicken named Frightful. It was a two-way dialog consisting of secrets told and secrets kept between boy and fowl. His feathery friend became his voice; his only way to communicate in a confusing world. But one day, Andrew confided to Frightful: 'I think my body is trying to kill me.' That single...

Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.

"Grace, Maya, & Joaquin are siblings who are unaware of one another's existence, until Grace gives up her own child for adoption-and feels compelled to seek out her biological family. Maya, Grace's loudmouthed younger sister, is quick to search for traces of herself among her bio siblings. But she's not quite sure where it is that she belongs. And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, never found a family. In Joaquin's life, there are no heroes,...

The relatives come to visit from Virginia and everyone has a wonderful time.

After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather.

Whether at home getting ready for the day, enjoying the beach, or at bedtime, Olivia is a feisty pig who has too much energy for her own good.

To Elodee, eleven, things seem a little too perfect in Eventown when she moves there with her parents and identical twin, Naomi, especially since forgetting the past is so highly valued.

Being a cop runs in Billy Harney's family. The son of Chicago's Chief of Detectives whose twin sister, Patty, also followed in their father's footsteps, there's nothing Billy won't give up for the job, including his life. Left for dead alongside his tempestuous former partner and a hard-charging assistant district attorney out for blood, Billy miraculously survives. But he remembers nothing about the events leading up to the shootout. Charged with...

"In this brave and beautiful memoir...a woman chronicles how her marriage devolved from a love story into a shocking tale of abuse--examining the tenderness and violence entwined in the relationship, why she endured years of physical and emotional pain, and how she eventually broke free."--

"Elizabeth, Veronica, Rachel and Emily met at Camp Birchwood as girls in 1985, where over four summers they were the Clover Girls--inseparable for those magical few weeks of freedom--until the last summer that pulled them apart. Now approaching middle age, the women are facing challenges they never imagined as teens, struggles with their marriages, their children, their careers, and wondering who it is they see when they look in the mirror. Then Liz,...