NCW Libraries

"Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow took solace in the mystery stories she read with her devoted father--and soon she was writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, violent, complex crime stories that reflected skill and imagination far beyond her years. After her father's early death, at fourteen Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds twenty-six mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and...

Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.

The tale of Kvothe, from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages, you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But this book is so much more, for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's...

Orphaned and maimed, Freckles' bitterness about his fate is lessened when he is hired to guard a stretch of lumber in the wild Limberlost and, after meeting the beautiful "Swamp Angel," he determines to find out about his past.

On the run as suspected murderers, the unlucky Baudelaire orphans find themselves trapped in the Caligari Carnival, where they must masquerade as freaks in order to hide from the evil Count Olaf.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her family in San Antonio.

"On the planet Vespaara lies in the Arena - a series of battlefields where fighters known as Hunters face off in teams to compete in front of roaring crowds. Newest to their ranks is Rieve, a Force-sensitive orphan from Corellia with powers she can barely control and a past she desperately wants to leave behind. But Rieve gets off to a rocky start, struggling with her lack of confidence both inside the Arena and among her fellow Hunters. And when...

In this story inspired by Jules Verne's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' Ana Dakkar, a freshman at Harding-Pencroft Academy--a five-year high school that graduates the best marine scientists, naval warriors, navigators, and underwater explorers in the world--makes astounding discoveries about her heritage and puts her leadership skills to the test against deadly enemies from a rival school.

A simple promise to protect her friend's infant son has turned Allie Chambers' existence upside down. Caring for--and feeding--an orphaned vampire baby has been tricky. When her attempts to steal from a blood bank go awry, Allie wakes up surrounded by doctors, cops . . . and the gorgeous, mesmerizing Magnus, who she can neither trust nor resist. Magnus never expected to find his life mate breaking into a blood bank. Clearly, Allie is already entwined...

Twelve-year old orphan Emma Casey lives by a haunted graveyard in her Tennessee town, giving tours, and helping her brother and Granny Blue with the family bakery, and waiting for the destiny dream of her ancestors--but when it comes it shows her only a key, and she finds that she must solve a ghostly mystery that has haunted her town for generations.