Alamosa Public Library

"America's preeminent storyteller, James Michener, introduced an entire generation of readers to a lush, exotic world in the Pacific in this classic novel. But this is a novel about people, people of strength and character: the original Polynesians; the fragile missionaries who came to bring their religion to the natives; the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos who intermarried into a beautiful race called Hawaiians. Here is the story of their relationships,...

"Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line-- getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle...

"A triumph of storytelling. Henríquez pulls us into the lives of her characters with such mastery that we hang on to them just as fiercely as they hang on to one another and their dreams. This passionate, powerful novel will stay with you long after you've turned the final page." - Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk A boy and a girl who fall in love. Two families whose hopes collide with destiny. An extraordinary novel that...

Minnesota, 1909. When Signe, her husband, Rune, and their three boys arrive from Norway to help a relative clear his land of lumber, they dream of owning their own farm and building a life in the New World. But Uncle Einar and Aunt Gird are hard, demanding people, and Signe and her family soon find themselves worked nearly to the bone in order to repay the cost of their voyage. At this rate, they will never have land or a life of their own. Signe...

John Bergson, a Swedish farmer, struggles desperately with the soil but dies unsatisfied. His daughter Alexandra resolves to vindicate his faith, and her strong character carries her weak older brothers and her mother along to a new zest for life. Years of privation are rewarded on the farm. But when Alexandra falls in love with Carl Linstrum, and her family objects because he is poor, he leaves to seek a different career. After Alexandra's younger...

Border Patrol Agent Danika Morales has sworn to protect the southern borders of the U.S., but that oath has cost her dearly. She has paid a heavier price than most: her husband, Toby, was murdered two years ago trying to help the very immigrants Danika was responsible for sending back to Mexico-and his murder has never been solved. Now a string of attacks and arrests leads her to believe that someone from McAllen profits from sneaking undocumented...

There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you. There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it's how you look or talk, or where you're from; maybe it's what you eat, or something just as random. It's not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it. Jacqueline Woodson's lyrical text and Rafael López's dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders...

Weaves together the story of the disappearance of a prison guard's daughter on Alcatraz in 1937, and an Irish boy's efforts 20 years earlier to find his real father in America.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends,...

"Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of this novel, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her husband, Sam suddenly dies. And then more jolt: her big-hearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves--lines from her...