Kiowa County Public Library District

DESCRIPTION In the city of Egunu, Nigeria, fifteen year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a somewhat cloistered life. Their father is a wealthy businessman, they live in a beautiful home, and attend private school. But, through Kambili's eyes, we see that their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious man has impossible expectations of his children and his wife, and if things don't go his way he becomes physically...

"Vesper Wright is in hell. The night she gets fired from her unglamorous restaurant job, she comes home to find an envelope waiting on her doorstep. There's no return address, but she knows exactly who it's from--her estranged family. Inside the envelope is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper's cousin and childhood best friend Rosemary, the one person she regrets losing touch with. She's getting married at the family home. A home that, according...

Sixteen-year-old Thomas Cale has grown up imprisoned at the Sanctuary of the Redeemers, a fortress run by a secretive sect of warrior monks. He is one of thousands of boys who train all day in hand-to-hand combat, in preparation for a coming holy war. As far as Cale knows, this is the only existence there is--until one day he discovers a door and opens it. Then Cale goes on a journey of danger and discovery, coming to realize that he alone has the...

To the warrior-monks known as the Redeemers, who rule over massive armies of child slaves, "the last four things" represent the culmination of a faithful life. Death. Judgement. Heaven. Hell. The last four things represent eternal bliss-or endless destruction, permanent chaos, and infinite pain. Perhaps nowhere are the competing ideas of heaven and hell exhibited more clearly than in the dark and tormented soul of Thomas Cale. Betrayed by his beloved...

When Harden Campbell wakes cold and beaten in a dirt-floor cell, he finds only three other things in the room with him: the mutilated body of his good friend, an ancient typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, the top sheet of which has a single, typed sentence. He knows the message is from Coyote, his brilliant, megalomaniacal roommate whose lust for power and reverence has recently revealed him for the true sociopath he is. Now, as the founder of...

Merlyn Athrawes is the cybernetic avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which Earth was lost. Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the long-hidden human race. The island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the fraudulent alien Church, and with Merlyn's help has vaulted into a new age of steam-powered efficiency. But the wounded Church is regrouping. Its armies and resources are vast. The fight...

Centuries ago, the human race fought its first great war against an alien race and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later, their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the re-emergence of industrial civilization. But not all of Safehold's founders were on board with this plan. Those dissidents...