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...

Lenora Allbright is 13 when her father convinces her mother, Cora, to forgo their inauspicious existence in Seattle and move to Kaneq, AK. It's 1974, and the former Vietnam POW sees a better future away from the noise and nightmares that plague him. Having been left a homestead by a buddy who died in the war, Ernt is secure in his beliefs, but never was a family less prepared for the reality of Alaska, the long, cold winters and isolation. Locals...

Two years ago, Olivia Martindale left behind her Montana hometown and her husband, Jace, certain it was the best decision for both of them. Back temporarily to protect her almost-adopted daughters from their biological mother, she discovers an old, handwritten cookbook in the attic. Its pages are stained and torn, their edges scorched by flame. Some have been smeared by water . . . or tears. The recipes are written in different hands and in different...

"Late on a summer night in 1985, three teenagers are in a tragic car crash on the quiet, suburban Division Avenue. A girl is killed, and Theo and Sarah Wilf are left with a devastating secret that will haunt their family forever. By the time the Shenkmans move in across the street, the accident has faded into the past, but secrets haunt both families and cause them to become intimately intertwined. When Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant but lonely child,...

Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.

"After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker's entire family is assembling for Nana's 80th birthday party in Nana's crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family...

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss -- a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's...

"Ten years ago, Theodora "Teddy" Angstrom's older sister, Angie, disappeared. Her case remains unsolved. Now--on the anniversary of Angie's disappearance--Teddy's father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark's family, he had been actively investigating conspiracy theories sourced from a Reddit community of true crime fans fixated on Angie, and Teddy soon finds herself falling down that same rabbit hole. After all, if hope dies last, Angie...

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left. As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe's outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold, the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother. Here the author weaves together two tales,...

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and...