NCW Libraries

"Joan Sample is not living the life she expected. Now a widow and an empty-nester, she has become by her own admission something of a recluse. But after another birthday spent alone, she is finally inclined to listen to her sister, who has been begging Joan to reengage with the world. With her support, Joan gathers the courage to take some long-awaited steps: hiring someone to tame her overgrown garden, joining a grief support group, and even renting...

"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. All this means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and...

"A devastating story of one family's border-crossing adventure to rescue one another and make peace with the past, set in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, two years after the occupation of South Ossetia by Russia in 2008"-- Provided by publisher. Having fled conflict in the former-Soviet Republic of Georgia as children, Saba and his brother have fought to make peace with the past. In particular, they struggle with the sacrifices of a mother...

"When a boy's grandmother shows him how to fold an origami crane, the boy and crane become instant friends. They sail around the room and play, but the crane also watches over the boy and comforts him in a time of loss. The crane is always on the boy's nightstand--it's the last thing he sees each night and the first thing he sees each morning. Over time, the boy grows older, and the crane becomes dusty. But even when the boy becomes a young man,...

"After a lifetime of kindly taking care of his irresistible but impossible sister and her wonderful daughter, Tom is finally ready to put himself first. Naturally, that's when his phone rings. Tom does what he always does--answers the call. And therein lies either the beauty or dysfunction, (or perhaps both) of the sometimes too tight ties that bind families together"--

"Si eres una verdadera aventurera, el Hotel La Sirena es el mejor lugar para vivir. Hay habitaciones que explorar huéspedes que espiar y muchos seretos por descubrir."-- "When an eccentric elderly newcomer arrives at the Mermaid Hotel, the suspicious daughter of the hotel's managers unexpectedly bonds with the prickly lady, who encourages her to join in quirky adventures."--

"Selected by Jos Charles as the winner of the 2021 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, Return Flight is a lush reckoning: with inheritance, with body, with trauma, with desire-and with the many tendons in between"--

"An elderly piano teacher takes a young music student under his wing and changes her life. This story is inspired by events in the life of Daniel Mergler - a wonderful musician who loved to teach and whose generous spirit inspires author and journalist David Gutnick to this day.

Nai-nai tells her granddaughters the story of her outing, as a seven-year-old girl in China, to see the Moon Lady and be granted a secret wish.

It is summer in the south of France, and Pea and her little sister Margot spend their days inventing games in the meadow behind their house. Their father has died in an accident, and their mother has just lost a baby. Maman is English, already isolated in this small, foreign village, and in her compounded grief, she has retreated even further. Pea and Margot can't make Maman happy again. When Pea befriends Claude, a man who seems to love the meadow...