Lone Cone Library

Lincoln Jones is always working on the latest story he's got going in his notebook. Those stories are his refuge. A place where the hero always prevails and the bad guy goes to jail. Real life is messy and complicated, so Lincoln sticks to fiction and keeps to himself. Which works fine until a nosy girl at his new school starts prying into his private business. She wants to know what he's writing, where he disappears to after school, and why he never...

Shai Williams was born to be a star (or a veterinarian, and maybe a dentist). She attends a special elementary school for the performing arts, and her grandma Rosa and aunt Mac-N-Cheese are both actresses. So Shai is shocked when she doesn't get the lead role in the third-grade musical. Instead, the part goes to the new girl, Gabby Supreme, who thinks she is better than everyone else. To add insult to injury, Ms. Gremillion has now asked Shai to help...

In near-future Japan, Susie Sakamoto is mourning the loss of her husband and son to a plane crash. Alone in her big modern house, which feels like more of a prison, Susie spends her days drinking heavily and taking her anger out at the only “sentient” thing left in her life: Sunny, the annoying home robot her husband designed. Susie despises Sunny, and sometimes even gets a sinking feeling that Sunny is out to hurt her. To escape her paranoia...

The clashes between President Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney over slavery, secession, and the president's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. Legal historian Simon brings to life the passionate struggle during the worst crisis in the nation's history, the Civil War. The issues that underlaid that crisis--race, states' rights, and the president's wartime authority--resonate today in the nation's political debate.

Life's a bit of a beach these days for Ginger Walsh, who's single at 41 and living back home in the family FROG (Finished Room Over Garage). Geri, her BlackBerry-obsessed sister, is also nearly off the deep end about her pending fiftieth birthday (and might just drag Ginger with her). Toss in a dumpster-picking father, a Kama Sutra T-shirt wearing mother, a movie crew come to town with a very cute gaffer, an on-again, off-again glassblower boyfriend,...