San Antonio College Library

From a commanding new voice in fiction comes a novel as perceptive as it is generous: a portrait of an American family trying to cope in our world today, a story of choices and doubts and transgressions. The Hardings are teetering on the brink. Elson -- once one of Houston's most promising architects, who never quite lived up to expectations -- is recently divorced from his wife of thirty years, Cadence. Their grown son, Richard, is still living at...

"From the award-winning, much loved writer: a deeply moving novel about an American woman's place during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she took from it, and how her story will shape her granddaughter's path. Marian cut herself off from her conservative, wealthy Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War--experiences she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter...

Seventeen-year-old Conrad returns home from a mental institution, where he was sent after his brother's accidental death and his own ensuing suicide attempt. To begin a new life he must learn to accept himself and those close to him.

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created "perfect" life is about to unravel before her eyes. She's forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for-her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect....

"In the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard, the Doe clan, a close-knit family of criminals and victims, has the run of the place. Yet there are signs that patriarch John Doe's reign may be coming to an end. When Jetty Doe breaks into a gun store and makes off with a Kalashnikov, the stage is set for a violent confrontation. But while Jetty is making her way across town in a taxi, an elusive, chatty narrator takes us on a wild journey, zooming in and...

Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.

When Micky Bellsong encounters disabled Leilani Klonk and her stepfather, Preston Maddoc, she finally finds some purpose in her troubled life, so when the family disappears, Micky embarks on an arduous mission to find them.

Overview: The war is over and Marly's father is home -- but he's not the same. Something inside him seems as cold and dead as the winter world outside. But when the family moves to Grandma's old house on Maple Hill, miracles begin to happen. The sap in the trees begins to rise, the leaves start to turn, and maybe, just maybe, Marly's father will begin to bloom again, like the world around them. Winner of the Newbery Medal, this wise and moving classic...

It is the summer of 1977, and New York is suffering under a heat wave, a massive blackout, and a killer named the Son of Sam, while seventeen-year-old Cuban American Nora Lopez wants to escape her increasingly violent younger brother and worries about college applications and paying rent to spend her days working at the deli with the cute new Colombian boy and her nights at the disco dancing with her best friend Kathleen.