Life Fiction

Chief of Police Ed Kapenash is about to retire. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce. But when a 22-million-dollar summer home is purchased by the mysterious Richardsons—how did they make their money, exactly?—Ed, Sharon, and everyone in the community are swept up in high drama. The Richardsons throw lavish parties, flirt with multiple locals, flaunt their wealth with not one but two yachts, and raise impossible hopes of everyone they meet. When their house burns to the ground and their most essential employee goes missing, the entire island is up in arms.

Nora Gallagher can begrudgingly admit that she and Gray Ferris are both stellar Philadelphia real estate agents, but that's the beginning and the end of the similarities between them. But when the two women begin to learn that maybe they're not as different as they think, they may finally figure out the most important thing they have in common when it comes to finding a life worth living.

10-year-old Johnny's toymaker father has volunteered for service in the British Army of World War I. At first, his spirits are high as he completes basic training, but his tone becomes grim once he reaches the front. To ease his son's worries, Johnny's dad carves him little figurines that reflect his experiences in the war. Comprised of letters from his father, followed by Johhny's feelings, Lord of the Nutcracker Men is a haunting and poignant tale.

Trey knows how the trick works: His dad gets him into a school full of kids with rich parents. Trey makes friends, and his dad makes connections. Soon, there’s the con, where Trey’s dad suckers the other parents into giving him money for one of his schemes. Once the money’s in the bank, Trey, his sister, and their dad go on the run … until they set up somewhere else and start again.

Everything has led up to this moment in Lizzie Glick's life. All of her curiosity, concern, and dreams have pointed to this time when she must make some very big decisions. Will she join the Church? Will she continue teaching? Will she marry Stephen? Questions and indecision as well as answers and certainty enter Lizzie's life in Big Decisions, the third and final novel in this series written by an Amish author and based on true-life experiences.

In the highly anticipated continuation of the Land of Stories series, Conner learns that the only place to fight the Masked Man's literary army is inside his own short stories. When the twins and their friends enter worlds crafted from Conner's imagination, the race begins to put an end to the Masked Man's reign of terror. Can the twins finally restore peace in the fairy tale world?

After a summer spent trying to prevent a catastrophic war among the Greek gods, Percy Jackson finds his seventh-grade school year unnervingly quiet. His biggest problem is dealing with his new friend, Tyson, a six-foot-three, mentally challenged homeless kid who follows Percy everywhere, making it hard for Percy to have any "normal" friends.

For decades, Donald J. Sobol’s kid detective Encyclopedia Brown has thrilled amateur sleuths of all ages with his uncanny knack for solving the most difficult mysteries. Sobol was even honored with a special Edgar Award for this timeless series. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia, the son of Idaville’s police chief, investigates all sorts of curious cases for kids around the neighborhood—all for 25 cents a day, plus expenses.

Winning the lottery is the biggest ticket to freedom Greer Hawthorne's ever had. Until her best friend's brother comes to town.

When snow shuts down Greg Heffley’s middle school, his neighborhood transforms into a wintry battlefield. Rival groups fight over territory, build massive snow forts, and stage epic snowball fights. In the crosshairs are Greg and his trusty best friend, Rowley Jefferson. It’s a fight for survival as Greg and Rowley navigate alliances, betrayals, and warring gangs in a neighborhood meltdown.

Morgan (McFactoid) McCracken spews random (but fascinating) facts whenever he gets flustered. As if that's not enough to warrant getting picked on, Morgan actually has to shave! And that's too much for Brad Buckholtz, a witless bully who constantly beats up Morgan. As an aspiring inventor, Morgan figures if he can just come up with a product that will stop his facial hair from growing, then Buckholtz will no longer have a reason to pummel him.

Zeg leads a dinosaur parade through Axle City. But when some of the dinosaurs get lost, it’s up to Blaze and his truck friends to save the day!

Welcome to the School for Good and Evil, where best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she'll earn top marks at the School for Good and join the ranks of past students like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil.

Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz's gothic novel in the grand Victorian tradition, Spledors and Glooms, is set in London and centered around the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl, who goes missing. Two children realize it is their guardian, a Venetian-born puppeteer and magician, who has kidnapped her and used his dark powers to imprison her mind and body in the form of a puppet and strive to return her to human form.

Dr. Cyrus Mills returns to his hometown after inheriting his father's failing veterinary practice. Cyrus intends to sell the practice and get out of town as fast as he can, but when his first patient - a down-on-her-luck golden retriever named Frieda Fuzzypaws - wags her way through the door, life suddenly gets complicated. Cyrus gets caught up in a new community and its endearing residents, both human and animal. Sensing he may have misjudged the past, he begins to realize it's not just his patients that need healing.

In December 1850, the dark hours before dawn make 12-year-old Patrick O’Connell shiver. He lives with his mother and older sister in a wet and drafty shack. Patrick has been the man of the family ever since Da, his father, sailed from Ireland to America. But now he has a problem he can’t solve: there isn’t enough money to pay the rent.

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.

The Grey sisters had only each other when their mother died years ago. Their father provided for them physically on Water's Edge, the ranch that had been in their family for three generations, each of them however, longed for their father's love.

Meri's family has been producing doctors for so many generations that no one remembers why, so when she flunks out of medical school, she runs as far from her parents as she can get. In the small mountain town of Canyon Mines, Colorado, she takes a job at the Inn at Hidden Run B&B. And waits. It's only a matter of time. What she doesn't count on is genealogist Jillian Parisi-Duffy and her father, Nolan, having her back when it takes everything she has not to bolt again but to stay and face the truth that only unfolding her family's history will reveal....

One unbearable mistake at the edge of the forest. In a moment of crisis, Ellis Abbey leaves her daughter, Viola, unattended - for just a few minutes. But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola’s abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well - into grief, guilt, and addiction. Convinced she can only do more harm to her family, Ellis leaves her husband and young sons, burying her desperate ache for her children deeper with every step into the mountain wildernesses she treks alone.