Washoe County Library System

Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line, getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle...

"Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Severely dyslexic and wanting to know more, he took it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's...

"Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled seventeen-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She's lonely until she meets Judy Peabody...The girls become unlikely friends...drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher...When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows...Days later, her teacher returns to school altered: a dark shell of herself. On the...

Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl's face appears above the students' desks -- ''a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora's body -- the kind of raw terror you feel when...

"From NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly comes a heart-pounding story about fear, family secrets, and one woman's hunt for answers about the murder of her parents. Caroline Cashion, a professor of French literature at Georgetown University, is stunned when an MRI reveals that she has a bullet lodged near the base of her skull. It makes no sense: she has never been shot. She has no entry wound. No scar. When she confronts her parents, they initially...

"Eva Santos Moon is a burgeoning Chicana artist who practices the ancient, spiritual ways of brujeraia and curanderisma, but she's at one of her lowest points-suffering from disorienting blackouts, creative stagnation, and a feeling of disconnect from hermagickal roots. When her husband, a beloved university professor and the glue that holds their family together, is taken into custody for the shocking murder of their friend, Eva doesn't know whom...

"Welcome to Sugarcreek, Ohio, where the Amish schoolteacher has a determined admirer. Tragically losing her parents as a child, Lisa Miller has grown up being afraid of loving and losing. She dedicates herself to teaching at an Amish schoolhouse and helping the grandparents who raised her, all the while avoiding the advances of newcomer Paul Herchberger. Paul enjoys antiques and meets Orley Troyer while looking for unique old milk bottles at yard...

"Ellen Walsh has done something very, very bad. If only she knew what it was . . . Teacher, mother, wife, and all-around good citizen Ellen is juggling nonstop commitments, from raising a teen and two toddlers to job-hunting to finally renovating her dream home, the Meadowhouse. Amidst the chaos, an ominous note arrives in the mail, declaring: People have to learn there are consequences, Ellen. And I’m going to teach you that lesson. Right under...

Eleven years ago, Honor thought she had the perfect home, the perfect love, the perfect life. Then her husband, brilliant photographer and sculptor John Sullivan, broke her heart--and tore their little family apart. Now, hearing of Regis's impending marriage, John has ended his self-imposed exile and returned to the family he's always loved more than anything on earth. What he finds is one daughter still hurting over his abandonment, another who barely...

Returning to Austin for a job, Summer Graves is surprised to discover a former classmate, Aiko Holt, on the architectural team redeveloping the town and the still-vivid memory of the passionate kiss they shared senior year. After years away from home, Summer Graves is back in Austin, Texas, to accept a new teaching position. Of all the changes to the old neighborhood, the most dispiriting one is the slated demolition of the high school her grandmother...