Washoe County Library System

"In a foster home outside Oslo, a twelve-year-old boy is causing havoc. The institution's steely director, Agnes Vestavik, sees something chilling in Olav's eyes: sheer hatred. When Vestavik is found murdered at her desk, stabbed in the back with an Ikea kitchen knife--with Olav nowhere to be found--the case goes to maverick investigator Hanne Wilhelmsen, recently promoted to chief inspector in the Oslo Police. Could the child be a murderer? As police...

When twelve-year-old Lyndie and her parents must move to her grandparents' home in small-town Tennessee in 1985, having to keep all family problems private only adds to their problems.

"Their foster mother, Carol, has always been fanatical, but with Jazz grown up and out of the house, Carol takes a dangerous turn that threatens thirteen-year-old Joaquin's life. Over and over, child services fails to intervene, and Joaquin is running out of time. Then Jazz gets a blocked call from someone offering a solution. There are others like her--people the law has failed. They've formed an underground network of "helpers," each agreeing to...

Traces the author's unplanned adoption of an abused fifteen-year-old girl who was placed in her care after a community rescue, documenting their steps toward forging a family life that neither knew they needed.

When stay-at-home mom Jude Farraday takes in Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, the girl becomes inseparable from Jude's teenage twins before a shattering accident rips the family apart and sets the stage for a sobering confrontation years later.

"I'm here to take you to live with your father. In Tokyo, Japan! Happy birthday!" In the Land of the Rising Sun, where high culture meets high kitsch, and fashion and technology are at the forefront of the First World's future, the foreign-born teen elite attend ICS-the International Collegiate School of Tokyo. Their accents are fluid. Their homes are ridiculously posh. Their sports games often involve a (private) plane trip to another country. They...

"In this modern graphic novel retelling of Anne of Green Gables from graphic novelist Kathleen Gros, foster kid Anne Shirley finally lands in a loving home and befriends a girl who she may have more-than-friends feelings for. Anne Shirley has been in foster care her whole life. So when the Cuthberts take her in, she hopes it’s for good. They seem to be hitting it off, but how will they react to the trouble that Anne can sometimes find herself...

Regina Calcaterra is a successful lawyer, New York State official, and activist. Her painful early life, however, was quite different. Regina and her four siblings survived an abusive and painful childhood only to find themselves faced with the challenges of the foster-care system and intermittent homelessness in the shadows of Manhattan and the Hamptons. Regina Calcaterra's memoir, Etched in Sand, is an inspiring and triumphant coming-of-age story...

For years, Mr. Meacham has told tales of the fierce dragon deep in the woods. To his daughter, Grace, these stories are little more than tall tales, until she meets Pete. Pete is a mysterious ten-year-old with no family who claims to live in the woods with a giant, green dragon named Elliot.

In this unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation and determination, the author, born to a drug-addicted mother, recounts growing up in foster care, and despite his military career, undergraduate education from Yale and a PhD from Cambridge,he argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments. ''In this raw coming-of-age memoir, in the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, The Other Wes Moore,...