Central Skagit Library District

When his volatile father is picked to become an astronaut for NASA's mission to Mars, seventeen-year-old Cal, an aspiring journalist, reluctantly moves from Brooklyn to Houston, Texas, and looks for a story to report, finding an ally (and crush) in Leon, the son of another astronaut. Cal Lewis's volatile father has been picked to become an astronaut for NASA's mission to Mars. This means leaving Brooklyn-- and Cal's career plans as an aspiring journalist--...

The lives of four characters, including cemetery thief Cade Curtis, a runaway slave, and an illegally captured ocelot, flow together across time through their connections to the Houston bayou and an angel carved from Georgia marble.

"FBI agent Laurel Evertson's investigation into a scam targeting the elderly takes an unexpected twist when key evidence leads her to Morton Wilmington, a felon she arrested five years ago on her first undercover assignment. That case has haunted her since, and though she's vowed to forget Wilmington--and what she sacrificed to put him away--he is now her best lead. Houston Police Officer Daniel Hilton fears his grandparents may be the scammers' next...

Grounded for the summer by her sometimes-evil stepmother, seventeen-year-old vegan feminist Ellen Lopez-Rourke gets permission to join a Quidditch team, where she makes new, if nerdy, friends. Vegan feminist Ellen Lopez-Rourke has one muggy Houston summer left before college. When she is grounded for the entire summer by her (sometimes) evil stepmother, all her plans are thrown out the window. Ellen convinces her parents to let her join the local...

"From the nationally bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls comes a story of 1950s Texas socialites and the one irresistible, controversial woman at the bright, hot center of it all. Joan Fortier is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns. Every man who sees her seems to want her; every woman just wants to...

"Liya Thakkar is a successful biochemical engineer, takeout enthusiast, and happily single woman. The moment she realizes her parents' latest dinner party is a setup with the man they want her to marry, she's out the back door in a flash. Imagine her surprise when the same guy shows up at her office a week later -- the new lawyer hired to rescue her struggling company. What's not surprising: he's not too thrilled to see her either after that humiliating...

On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath the glitz and superficial normalcy, a class war has begun, and it is nothing like the conventional portrayal of the decade. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed. When Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted...

Rafael Zhettah relishes the simplicity and freedom of his life. He is the owner and head chef of a promising Houston restaurant, a pilot with open access to the boundless Texas horizon and a bachelor, content with having few personal or material attachments. When he finds Tieresse-- billionaire, philanthropist, sophisticate, bombshell-- sitting at one of his tables he also finds his soul mate, and his life starts again. And just as fast, she is brutally...