Las Animas - Bent County Library District

Discovering that a local shelter is looking for temporary homes for their dogs over the Christmas holidays, Todd, a developmentally challenged young man, persuades his reluctant family to take in a special canine named Christmas, who teaches an entire community a lesson in the transforming power of love and goodwill.

"With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality---the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are. Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic...

Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her--though it is stressful--and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team. But Jill's life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news:...

"At 32, Russell Green has it all: a stunning wife, a lovable six year-old daughter, a successful career as an advertising executive and an expansive home in Raleigh. He is living the dream, and his marriage to the bewitching Vivian is the center of that. But underneath the shiny surface of this perfect existence, fault lines are beginning to appear...and no one is more surprised than Russ when he finds every aspect of the life he took for granted...

Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland.

It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their mother, Charlotte, takes off, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. One day Bean sees a police car outside the house, and she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives. Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears many stories about why their mother left Virginia. Bean adores her whip-smart...

In the gentle tradition of James Herriot, Bailey White, Ferrol Sams, and Garrison Keillor, Karon continues the fresh and beautifully written story of a small mountain town in the South. The village rector, Father Tim, can no longer deny his feeling for his neighbor. But what about the wealthy widow who has been wooing him with casseroles? It's clear that Father Tim is in need of divine intervention.

When Honora and Sexton Beecher are rendered penniless by the crash of the stock market, Sexton is forced to work in a nearby mill that is plagued by violence, and as they try to reconstruct their lives, they are confronted by passions of every kind.

Pearl Louie Brandt has a terrible secret which she tries desperate- ly to keep from her mother, Winnie Louie. And Winnie has long kept her own secrets - about her past and the confusing circumstances of Pearl's birth. Fate intervenes in the form of Helen Kwong, Winnie's so-called sister-in-law, who believes she is dying and must unburden herself of all falsehoods before she flies off to heaven. But, unfortunately, the truth comes in many guises, depending...

"From a distance, Michael and Joleen Zarkades seem to have it all: a solid marriage, two exciting careers, and children they adore. But after twelve years together, the couple has lost their way; they are unhappy and edging toward divorce. Then the Iraq war starts. An unexpected deployment will tear their already fragile family apart, sending one of them deep into harm's way and leaving the other at home, waiting for news. When the worst happens,...