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The choice / by Hancock, Penny,author.;
Sometimes even the smallest decisions can have huge consequences ... Renee Gulliver appears to have it all: a beautiful house overlooking a scenic estuary on England's east coast, a successful career as a relationship therapist, three grown-up children and a beloved grandson, Xavier. But then Xavier vanishes after Renee fails to pick him up from school, and the repercussions are manifold. Renee is wracked with remorse; the local community questions her priorities; clients abandon her; and, as long-held grievances surface, her daughter Mia offers her a heartbreaking ultimatum. Amid recriminations, misunderstandings and lies, can Renee find a way to reunite her family?
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Families; Missing children; Secrecy;

Aunt Dimity and the enchanted cottage / by Atherton, Nancy,author.;
"It's early May in the small English village of Finch and the air is crackling with excitement: a newcomer is about to move into Pussywillows, a riverside cottage with a romantic reputation. Will the cottage's newest resident prove yet again its enchanting ability to matchmake? But when Crispin Windle arrives, no one knows what to make of him: seemingly a loner, he repels every welcoming gesture and appears altogether uninterested in being a part of the community. Soon, the townspeople have all but dismissed him. Only Lori and Tommy Prescott, a young army veteran who recently moved to Finch, refuse to give up. They orchestrate a chance meeting that leads to a startling discovery: a set of overgrown ruins. They are, Aunt Dimity shares, the remains of a Victorian woolen mill that once brought prosperity to Finch. As the three explore, they stumble upon the unmarked graves of children who died working at the mill. Heartbroken, Lori, Tommy, and Mr. Windle get to work on the seemingly impossible task of identifying the children to give them a proper burial. And as Mr. Windle works tirelessly to name the forgotten children, he slowly begins to open up--giving the romantic cottage a chance to heal his heart as well"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Ghost stories.; Novels.; Dimity, Aunt (Fictitious character); Abandoned buildings; Burial; Cemeteries; Child labor; Mills and mill-work; Recluses; Villages; Women detectives;

Invisible child : poverty, survival, and hope in an American city / by Elliott, Andrea,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tightknit family from shelter to shelter, her story reaches back to trace the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age in the twenty-first century, New York City's homeless crisis is exploding amid the growing chasm between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental addiction, violence, housing instability, pollution, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to "code-switch" between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Coates, Dasani, 2001-; African American homeless children; Homeless children;

Fifty words for rain : a novel / by Lemmie, Asha,author.;
"Kyoto, Japan, 1948. "If a woman knows nothing else, she should know how to be silent ... Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist." Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her shameful skin. The illegitimate child of a Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Though her grandparents take her in, they do so only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life for what it is, despite her natural intellect and nagging curiosity about what lies outside the attic's walls. But when chance brings her legitimate older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him the first person who will allow her to question, and the siblings form an unlikely but powerful bond-a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it-a battle that just might cost her everything."--Publisher's description.
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Racially mixed children; Family secrets; Japanese Americans; Illegitimate children; Aristocracy (Social class); Brothers and sisters;

The wedding shop / by Hauck, Rachel,1960-author.;
"Two women separated by decades. Both set out to help others find their dreams when their own have crumbled. It's the early 1930s, but Cora Scott is walking in stride as a career woman after having inherited her great aunt's wedding shop in Heart's Bend, Tennessee, where brides come from as far away as Birmingham to experience her famed bridal treatment. Meanwhile, Cora is counting down the days until her own true love returns from the river to make her his bride. But days turn into months and months to years. All the while, Birch Good continues to woo Cora and try to show her that while he is solid and dependable, he can sweep her off her feet. More than eighty years later, former Air Force Captain Haley Morgan has returned home to Heart's Bend after finishing her commitment to military service. After the devastating death of her best friend, Tammy, and discovering the truth about the man she loved, Haley is searching for her place in life. When Haley decides to reopen the romantic but abandoned wedding shop where she and Tammy played and dreamed as children, she begins a journey of courage, mystery, and love. As Cora's and Haley's stories intertwine through time in the shadow of the beloved wedding shop, they both discover the power of their own dreams and the magic of everyday love"--
Subjects: Religious fiction.; Romance fiction.; Bridal shops;

The girl behind the door : a father's quest to understand his daughter's suicide / by Brooks, John,1956-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter's room to make sure she was getting up for school and found her room dark and "neater than usual." Casey was gone but he found a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm sorry. Several hours later a security video was found that showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent months after Casey's suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey's journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for the first fourteen months of her life, to her adoption and life with John and his wife Erika in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey's friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers. In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks shares what he learned and asks "What did everyone miss? What could have been done differently?" He'd come to realize that Casey might have been helped if someone had recognized that she'd likely suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy--an affliction common among children who've been orphaned, neglected, and abused. This emotional deprivation in early childhood, from the lack of a secure attachment to a primary caregiver, can lead to a wide range of serious behavioral issues later in life. John's hope is that Casey's story, and what he discovered since her death, will help others. This important book is a wakeup call that parents, mental health professionals, and teens should read"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Brooks, Casey,; Brooks, John, 1956-; Adopted children; Adopted children; Attachment disorder in adolescence.; Fathers and daughters; Suicide;

What storm, what thunder / by Chancy, Myriam J. A.,1970-author.;
"At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster--Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and-at the same time-an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Interpersonal relations; Disasters; Haiti Earthquake, Haiti, 2010;

Brave girl, quiet girl : a novel / by Hyde, Catherine Ryan,author.;
"Brooke is a divorced single mom, financially strapped, living with her mother, and holding tight to the one thing that matters most: her two-year-old daughter Etta. Then, in a matter of seconds, Brooke's life is shattered when she's carjacked. Helpless and terrified, all Brooke can do is watch as Etta, still strapped in her seat, disappears into the Los Angeles night. Miles away, Etta is found by Molly, a homeless teen who is all too used to darkness ... As unpredictable as her life is, she's stunned to find Etta, abandoned and alone. Shielding the little girl from more than the elements, Molly must put herself in harm's way to protect a child as lost as she is"--Dust jacket flap.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Missing children; Homeless teenagers; Single mothers; Divorced mothers; Female friendship;

The butterfly room / by Riley, Lucinda,author.;
"Posy Montague is approaching her 70th birthday. Still living in her beautiful family home, Admiral House, set in the glorious Suffolk countryside where she spent her own idyllic childhood catching butterflies with her beloved father, and raised her own children, Posy knows she must make an agonising decision. The house is crumbling around her, and Posy knows the time has come to sell it. Then a face appears from the past - Freddie, her first love, who abandoned her and left her heartbroken 50 years ago. Already struggling to cope with her son Sam's inept business dealings, and the sudden reappearance of her younger son Nick, Posy is reluctant to trust in Freddie's renewed affection. And unbeknown to Posy, Freddie - and Admiral House - have a devastating secret to reveal ..."--Publisher.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Older women; Life change events; Mothers and sons; Family secrets; First loves; Man-woman relationships; Country life;

A dog's courage [videorecording] / by Do, Kyung-Soo(Actor),voice actor.; Lee, Chun-Baek,film director.; Oh, Seong-yun,screenwriter,film director.; Pak, Ch'ŏl-min,1967-voice actor.; Pak, So-dam,1991-voice actor.; Well Go USA, Inc.,film distributor.;
Voices: Kyung-Soo Do, So-Dam Park, Cheol-Min Park.After his owners abandon him, a dog named Jacob joins a pack of strays and together they search for a new home.G.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Children's films.; Animated films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Dogs; Feral dogs; Friendship; Pets;
For private home use only.