Spanish Peaks Library District

There are people in Edgewater, Oregon, who think Rachel Gaston got away with murder twenty years ago. Rachel still has no idea how a foolish teenaged game turned deadly, or who replaced the soft pellet air gun she thought she was using with a real weapon. When a figure leapt out at her from the darkness of the old fish processing plant, she fired without thinking. Too late, she recognized her half-brother, Luke, and saw the blood blooming around his...

"A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home in this new novel from Ella Berman. . . . Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline's death. But that didn't stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures. While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized...

Exposure to abuse, discrimination, violence, neglect, and other adverse experiences during childhood significantly increase the risk of serious health, social, emotional, and learning problems throughout life. These traumatic events can disrupt brain, social, and emotional development. This disruption impacts a student's opportunity for academic success. School systems must reconsider how they support children that have been exposed to trauma and...

"What if Anne Frank survived the Holocaust? The year is 1945, and Anne Frank is sixteen years old. Having survived the concentration camps but lost her mother and sister along the way, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But it's not easy to fit the pieces of their life back together. Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghosts of the horrors they experienced, while Pim is fixated on returning to normalcy. Anne's beloved diary...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic or stressful experiences, such as abuse, which occur during childhood or adolescence. Existing research shows that these negative early life experiences have long-lasting effects on an individual's well-being. However, the burden of these experiences among Colorado adults was previously unknown. Results from the initial recruitment phase showed that ACEs are common, with nearly two-thirds of participants...

Determined to find closure, forensic artist Jenna Thompson, haunted by the brutal murder of her family, returns to Nashville where she is faced with a new horror when she helps Detective Rick Morgan identify the remains of a young child that is linked to a recent spate of killings - and her past.

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians -- but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the...

LAPD cop Scott James is not doing well since a nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him ready to explode. He is unfit for duty until he meets his new partner. Maggie is not doing so well, either. Ther German shepherd survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before she lost her handler to an IED and sniper attack, and her PTSD is as bad as Scott's. He was a cop on...

"Rainy lives at the top of Tiger Mountain. Cloistered in pine trees and fog, it's a sanctuary, a new life. She can hide from the past she wants to forget. When Rainy reluctantly agrees to a girls' weekend in Vegas, she's prepared for an exhausting parade of shots and slot machines. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn't come back to the hotel room. And then Rainy gets the text message, sent from Braithe's phone: someone has her. But Rainy...

Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can't escape. Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart. But when he's forced to look after his best friend's sister, he starts to feel something in his chest: A crack. A melt. A fire that could end his world as he knew it. Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped...