Search our catalog for a title's availability or download and click and print the APLS Book Cub List below.
A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives. In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley.
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives. As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight.
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century.
Author Bill Bryson is living the quiet life in New Hampshire with his wife Catherine and family. He decides to hike the two thousand two hundred mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Bryson's old friend Stephen Katz volunteers to join him; however, Katz is unfit and seems like he may be a liability in Bryson's endeavors. Nevertheless, the two of them set off on an adventure of a lifetime.
Ted refuses to be an observer of life in rural Alabama of 1949. He's in the middle of the action, looking and listening and thinking. He learns secrets and stirs up dangers that force him to take a courageous stand against long established customs that are unfair and dishonest.
At the home of South America's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Nonny Frett understands the meaning of the phrase "in between a rock and a hard place" better than any woman alive. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men: a husband who's easing out the back door; and a best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. And she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised her right; and the Crabtrees, who won't forget how they were done wrong. Now, in Between, Georgia, a feud that began the night Nonny was born is escalating and threatening to expose family secrets.
A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman's journey from diagnosis to remission and, ultimately, a road trip of healing and self-discovery.
In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He knew more jokes than any man alive. At least that’s what he told his son, William. But now Edward Bloom is dying, and William wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father — this indefatigable teller of tall tales — before it’s too late.
Maura Isles makes her living dealing with death. As a pathologist in a major metropolitan city, she has seen more then her share of corpses every day – many of them victims of violent murder. But never before has her blood run cold, and never has the grim expression “dead ringer” rung so terrifyingly true.
First-century intellectual Ana fights the limitations imposed on women before an encounter with an eighteen-year-old Jesus leads to their marriage, his dangerous public ministry, and her flight to safety in Alexandria.
During the World War 2 near Munich, in a war torn country, a young girl is struggling to survive but at the same time indulging her unavoidable guilty pleasure--stealing books--whenever she has a chance. With the help of her father, she learns to read to read her stolen books, as well as shares them with people around her. One day, everything changes as she witnesses something shocking during a daily train commute.
When a local library club gives her the chance to learn and spend a week at the summer inn Rockport Lodge, Addie encounters a diverse group of girls united by their ambitions to be free young women. The friendships she forges at Rockport Lodge last a lifetime and help her through many difficult periods.
With her library being underfunded and overlooked, young librarian Maura Beth has founded the Cherry Cola Book Club--a last-ditch attempt to boost circulation and save her job. Over potluck dinners featuring treasured family recipes, the book lovers of Cherico, Mississippi come together to talk about literary classics. But soon, it's not just Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee being discussed over chicken gumbo and homemade biscuits with green pepper jelly. Secrets are shared, old dreams rekindled, and new loves slowly blossom.
Set in the fictional town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Burns's novel centers on the charming fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee decides to marry the young Miss Love Simpson a mere three weeks after his wife -- Will's grandmother -- has died, he inspires a whirlwind of local gossip. Young Will suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal, which he gracefully humors and endures; meanwhile, he has his own growing to do and mischief to find
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
In the 1880's, the daughter of a lexicographer devotes her life to an alternative dictionary when she finds the word “bondmaid” on a discarded slip and realizes the term refers to a female slave. She begins her own effort, the “Dictionary of Lost Words,” stowing slips of words deemed unfit for the Oxford English Dictionary in a chest belonging to their servant, Lizzie. The story carries the reader at a rapid pace through Esme’s 20s, when she rubs shoulders with suffragettes, finds romance, and bonds with Lizzie while struggling to get her book of lost words printed.
So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.
The Brock Museum's new $15,000,000.00 Caravaggio painting is as fake as a $3.00 bill. The night Annie makes her shattering appraisal, the janitor on duty in the museum is killed and Ernst disappears. A well-known art dealer has absconded with multiple Old Master drawings, leaving forgeries in their places. Finding the originals and pocketing the reward money will help Annie get her landlord off her back. A close encounter with a fickle art thief could draw her into the underworld of fakes and forgers she swore she left behind...
Set in 1956, this novel is an account of the memories and legacy of John Ames as he remembers his experiences of his father and grandfather to share with his son. All three men share a vocational lifestyle and profession as Congregationalist ministers in Gilead, Iowa. As John explores the bonds and breakdowns in relationships between fathers and sons, he moves back and forth between his memories and the present. John’s heartfelt, joyous love of life and his profound religious faith suffuse the narrative.
September is a twelve-year-old girl who longs for adventure. When a Green Wind and a Leopard of Little Breezes invite her to Fairyland, she finds a land crushed by the iron rule of a villainous Marquess and soon discovers that she alone holds the key to restoring order. As September forges her way through Fairyland, with a book-loving dragon and a boy named Saturday by her side, she makes many friends and mistakes. But while she loses her shadow, her shoe and her way, she finds adventure, courage, a rather special Spoon, and more...
After a family tragedy orphans her, Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., moves into her grandmother's mostly black community in the 1980s, where she must swallow her grief and confront her identity as a biracial woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.
In New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. When the sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and Effie suspects her father has sent Luella to the "House of Mercy." Effie gets herself committed to save her sister, but when Effie's own escape seems impossible she must rely on an enigmatic girl named Mable to survive.
Set in a small Kentucky town in Depression-era America, the novel details the lives of five women who become traveling librarians, delivering books to the people of Kentucky. The story follows Alice Wright, a British woman, who moves after marrying the Kentucky native Bennett Van Cleve.
Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch - Scout - struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her. Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee's enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.
Margaret Van Buren was a young socialite growing up in post-war Alabama who married the man chosen for her. After enduring his unfaithfulness for years, she decided to flee to Sweet Bay, Ala. There she discovered the Hideaway, a B and B that became her refuge. Though Margaret longed for an “uncomplicated love,” instead she found a devastating love that changed her forever.
Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University, one of the great mathematical geniuses of our time, has just discovered the secret of prime numbers, thereby finding the key that will unlock the mysteries of the universe, guarantee a giant technological leap for mankind and put an end to illness and death. Alerted to this amazing breakthrough on the other side of the universe, and convinced that the secret of primes cannot be entrusted to such a violent and backward species as humans, the super-advanced Vonnadorians dispatch an emissary to erase Martin and all traces of his discovery.
Ed Kennedy, a 19-year-old cab driver convinced of his own mediocrity, is caught in a bank robbery. For reasons he does not understand, he grabs the bank robber's gun and prevents the robber’s escape. The media briefly hails Ed as a hero, but the excitement quickly dies down and Ed returns to his ordinary life of driving a cab until one night, when he receives a mysterious envelope in the mail which contains an Ace of Diamonds with three addresses written on it.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of a poor tobacco farmer who died from cervical cancer, and her cell strand, HeLa, which scientists used to develop a cure for polio and other diseases. In a fascinating and revealing investigation, author Rebecca Skloot uncovers the history of Henrietta and her family, of the exploitation of black Americans by the medical industry, and of Henrietta’s immortal cells.
This fantasy novel revolves around a teenage Indian boy, Pi, who becomes lost at sea after a shipwreck. Pi finds himself struggling for survival against the torrential ocean with his only companion, a Bengal tiger. Life of Pi encompasses author Yann Martel's perspectives of how spirituality is perceived in the physical world. Pi takes a journey through self-discovery with the test of his faith.
79-year-old Martha Anderson dreams of escaping her care home and robbing a bank. She has no intention of spending the rest of her days in an armchair and is determined to fund her way to a much more exciting life-style. Along with her four oldest friends - otherwise known as the League of Pensioners - Martha decides to rebel against all of the rules imposed upon them. Together, they cause an uproar with their antics.
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?
Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.
Nine women form an in-person weekly gathering with tea and wine after finding one another on an internet site devoted to books. They are friends. They trust each other. It’s a happy gathering. What could be more harmless? But when the body of one woman is discovered on a Cambridge common, DCI Barrett and DI Palmer are called in to investigate. The motive behind the crime isn’t clear… but it all leads back to a book club.
From the day old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican village forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous.
In an Alabama town in the early 1950s during the last polio summer before the Salk vaccine, ten-year-old Tabitha "Tab" Rutland is about to have the time of her life. Although movie theaters and pools have been closed to stem the epidemic, Tab, a tomboy with a passion for Roy Rogers, still seeks adventure with her best friend Maudie May. As they row out on the Tennessee River to land the biggest catfish ever, and snoop into the town's darkest secrets, Tab sets out to be a hero...and comes of age in an unforgettable confrontation with human frailty, racial injustice, and the healing power of love.
The introspective son of the mine's superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood forever, Homer fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive.
Narrated by an asthmatic 11-year-old named Reuben Land, this the story of Reuben's unusual family and their journey across the frozen Badlands of the Dakotas in search of his fugitive older brother. Charged with the murder of two locals who terrorized their family, Davy has fled, understanding that the scales of justice will not weigh in his favor. But Reuben, his father, Jeremiah—a man of faith so deep he has been known to produce miracles—and Reuben's little sister, Swede, follow closely behind the fleeing Davy.
After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that's all hers. As April moves through the world, meeting people who feel like home, she chronicles her life in the songs she writes and discovers that where she came from doesn't dictate who she has to be.
Young farm wife Queenie Bean tells about the brief membership of a city girl named Rita, whose boredom with country living and aspirations to be an investigative reporter lead her to unearth secrets in the close-knit group, called the Persian Pickle Club after a coveted paisley print.
Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county's showpiece. Rebecca made it so - even a year after her death, Rebecca's influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter's shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow? A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely...
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. But to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends.
Lily Owens' life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily's outlook changes when she is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna.
Serena, Michelle, Kenya, and Lynette have been best friends since they were small children. And as sister friends forever, they have always been there for one another, through good times and bad--no matter what. When a year of crucial turning points occur for each woman, their friendship will be tested like never before. Yet it is that sisterly love that they will need . . . more than ever.
With the help of her cousins, Finley sets out on a mission to save the dying Everwood and uncover its secrets. But as the mysteries pile up and the frightening sadness inside her grows, Finley realizes that if she wants to save the Everwood, she'll first have to save herself.
Passionately in love Erin and Mark embark on a dream honeymoon to the tropical island of Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water. Suddenly the newlyweds must make a dangerous choice: to speak out or to protect their secret. After all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events...
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return.
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.
It's been three years since Leanne “Lee” Bauer witnessed her best friend’s death in a school shooting. Since then, a story has spread about how Sarah died which the community has latched onto as a symbol of hope. However, Lee knows that the story isn’t true. Worried about the damage caused by the lie, as well the fact that she doesn’t want her friend remembered for something that didn’t happen, she sets out to reveal the truth, even though by doing so she risks ostracism and must relive some of the worst moments of her life.
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It's a decision that will alter her destiny…and it's a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
A father protects his daughter from the legacy of his past and the truth about her mother's death in this thrilling new novel from the prize-winning author of The Good Thief. After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts.
Eden was always good at being good. Starting high school didn’t change who she was. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s world capsizes. Told in four parts—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year—this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, and while learning to embrace a power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.
It's been a decade since the beautiful Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. When her brother, Wyatt, finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town's youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes the girl is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can't look away. She shares a wound that won't close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis's birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently-and violently-across the state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit-with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom, and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty. Covering this career-making story, Riley wrestles with the implications of this tragic incident for her black community, her ambitions, and her relationship with her lifelong friend.
Have you ever spent a weekend with strangers you hate for a friend's hen party? Had to pay hundreds of pounds for that spa break all in the name of besties? Lilah Fox has just returned from the hen party from hell, vowing to actually spend time with her boyfriend and focus more on herself. Then she gets the Whatsapp from her best friend Lauren to say she's just got engaged. And as maid of honor, Lilah just signed up for weekend wedding fairs and weekly planning meetings for the next year. Just when she thinks things can't get any worse, she's about to discover a new fresh hell.
After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.
Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening at the cemetery. Still Meadows, as it’s called, is anything but still. The Whole Town’s Talking tells the story of Lordor Nordstrom, his Swedish mail-order bride, Katrina, and their neighbors and descendants as they live, love, die, and carry on in mysterious and surprising ways.
At their humble teashop, Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St. Clair provide a place for whispered confessions, secret cures, and spiritual assignations for a select society of ladies, who speak the right words and ask the right questions. But the profile of the teashop is about to change with the fortuitous arrival of Beatrice Dunn. Beatrice doesn't know it yet, but she is no ordinary small-town girl; she has great spiritual gifts—ones that will serve as her greatest asset and also place her in grave danger.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. From one of America's iconic writers, this stunning book of electric honesty and passion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.