Las Animas - Bent County Library District

" "Lyrical, propulsive, dark and compelling. Joy knows well the grit and gravel of his world, the soul and blemishes of the place."--Daniel Woodrell. In the country-noir tradition of Winter's Bone meets 'Breaking Bad,' a savage and beautiful story of a young man seeking redemption. The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically...

Responding to the fractured relationships of the adults around them, two young girls — one wild and reckless with a fierce imagination and one polite and cautious — engage in increasingly dangerous play and find their lives shattered in a single, unthinkable moment. Miggy Brenneman is a wild and reckless seven-year-old with a fierce imagination, hellbent on pushing against the limits of childhood. Ellen is polite, cautious, and drawn to her friend's...

Exiled back to Montverre, an ancient and elite academy hidden in the mountains where his fate hangs in the balance, Léo Martin, in the rarified world of learning he once loved, feels a strange connection to the new Magister as the legendary Midsummer Game approaches.

"Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, unexpected, and explosive. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way...

"Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours. But this version of 1950's America is characterized by a significant event: The Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons, left a trail of fiery destruction in their path, and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex's beloved Aunt Marla transform but her mother did not?...

"Twentysomething Ellie thought she was her father's favorite child; she was sure he would leave her his most prized possession, a baseball with which they played catch, and which sat on his desk, as a kind of inspiration: her poet father's most famous poem was called "The Catch." But when her father's will is read, his children, including from other marriages, each receive a meaningful object, except Ellie, who receives a glow-in-the-dark tie rack...

In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and...

"One summer in Seaside, steps away from the bustling boardwalk, the Dunne family faces an unknowable future and copes with loss through hard work and dark humor, sisterhood and friendship, romance and escape. Brian and Margot Dunne live in Seaside year-round, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, quickly turning over rental houses to keep a roof over their heads. Together the family must navigate the unimaginable...

When she develops feelings for her best friend, construction worker Russell Hart, high-powered corporate exec—and virgin—Abby Sullivan, as he tries to keep her a safe distance, sees through his tough-talking exterior and is determined to turn the friendzone into foreplay.

Jack's dying mother told him, "Run and never look back." He spent his life amassing wealth, but after losing his family, he has no one to share it with. Alone with his demons and a backpack, he heads to South America, where people with nothing teach him what matters. After thrashing his dog-abusing boss, Hunter learns of his father's death in a mysterious fire. Biker buddies Nugget and Itch ride with him from North Carolina to California. Stories...