Alamosa Public Library

"The ... story of Chris McCandless, who gave away his savings, hitchhiked to Alaska, walked into the wilderness alone, and starved to death in 1992, fascinated not just ... Jon Krakauer, but also the rest of the nation. Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller ... and Sean Penn's ... film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been...

Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.

"Jack, 12, tells the gripping story of Joseph, 14, who joins his family as a foster child. Damaged in prison, Joseph wants nothing more than to find his baby daughter, Jupiter, whom he has never seen. When Joseph has begun to believe he'll have a future, he is confronted by demons from his past that force a tragic sacrifice"--

A bullet through a windowpane brings Robicheaux back in contact with the Sonnier family, childhood friends whose morality is scarred by a history of abuse. Welton, once a pilot for the CIA-backed Air America; Lyle, a television evangelist; and Drew, a girl-woman with a bitter past, form an extraordinarily close-knit family whose guarded secrets make it impossible for Robicheaux to protect them.

Garnering media attention when she tries to incinerate her dead father, reclusive Sally Diamond, beginning to discover the horrors of her early childhood, steps into the world for the first time and soon finds her trust issues severely challenged by a sinister voice from her past she does not remember.

The novel starts off sweetly, with the smalltown antics of Carrie, a scrappy Scout-like eight-year-old who's always accompanied by her younger sister Emma. Carrie dreamily darts back and forth between her rough-and-tumble present (abusive stepfather, unloving mother) and the happy memories of her dead father, creating a bittersweet picture of her life in Toast, N.C., spiked with colorful Southern language and some feisty supporting characters.

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing alternative based on the native American Circle Justice, and he is sent to a remote Alaskan Island where an encounter with a huge Spirit Bear changes his life.

While living in Holland, Michael meets Judith, who is frightened, bullied, and beaten by her mother and blames herself for the abuse she is enduring.

Though they seem to have everything, Hannah Parks has watched her husband, Dallin, become increasingly distant. Her hope is buoyed when the couple decides to start a family, but what Dallin reveals in his sleep one night rocks Hannah to her core. As she starts to investigate a much darker side of Dallin than she ever knew existed, Hannah peels away the layers of a diseased relationship closely tied to her own abusive past. When Dallin attempts to...