Ridgway Public Library

"Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami's novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormenters. These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced...

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...

A singular and powerful debut novel about a young black American learning the difficulties of forming your own identity when society has already assigned you one. Like most recent college graduates, Jonah Winters is unsure of what's next. A young black American raised in France and living in New York City, he tries on a couple of careers only to find that nothing feels right. And as Jonah struggles to envision his future, he feels pressured by his...

"From a debut author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age--a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country. Raised in Pennsylvania, Zinzi Clemmons's heroine Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these...

Welcome to LA? Nineties' Hollywood gets an Italian makeover in this poignant and ruefully funny coming-of-age novel featuring a teenage girl who's on shaky ground—in more ways than one.
Mere weeks after the 1992 riots that laid waste to Los Angeles, Eugenia, a typical Italian teenager, is rudely yanked from her privileged Roman milieu by her hippie-ish filmmaker parents and transplanted to the strange suburban world of the San Fernando...

"Call Me Home has an epic scope in the tradition of Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves or Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and braids the stories of a family in three distinct voices: Amy, who leaves her Texas home at nineteen to start a new life with a man she barely knows, and her two children, Jackson and Lydia, who are rocked by their parents' abusive relationship. When Amy is forced to bargain for the safety of one child over the other, she...

"Set in Kenya against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion--a strange, intolerant woman--has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching...

"August, 1943. Fourteen-year-old Massimo is all alone. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving the American bombing raid that killed his parents, Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbey’s shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed 'Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican,' rescues Massimo and brings...

Thirty years after destroying her detective father's career and altering the lives of everyone she loves, Rachel, who has never given up hope of vindicating her father, finally finds The Sunset Strangler, a killer who, in the summer of 1979, preyed on young women in northern California.

Moving to Vermont the summer after seventh grade, a young gymnast hides a secret as she makes new friends and investigates her grandmother's claim that someone is trying to destroy her cricket farm.