Central Skagit Library District

"A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work. But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds...

"Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he's done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn't want to die--he wants to be celebrated, understood. Through a kaleidoscope of women--a mother, a sister, a homicide detective--we learn the story of Ansel's life. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the...

"Cuando el Dr. Louis Creed deja Chicago y se traslada con su familia a la idílica ciudad de Ludlow, en Maine, todo en la vida parece sonreírles. Pero en ese paisaje idílico un peligro oculto acecha a la comunidad. Louis estaba seguro: el gato había muerto atropellado, y por eso lo había enterrado. Aun así, incomprensiblemente, el gato había vuelto a casa. Church estaba allí otra vez, como él temía y al mismo tiempo deseaba, porque su hijita...

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot....

"An English spy must follow his neglected wife through the streets of London as she investigates her sister's death with the aid of the Widow's Grace. Can they find common ground and learn to work together?"--

When she comes to the realization that she has no real friends despite her many followers on social media, Mari decides to hike the John Muir Trail using her cousin's boots and trail diary. Her thousands of followers helped Mari Turner become an internet starlet. But when she breaks down and posts a video confessing she isn't the happy, in-love, inspirational online personality she's pretending to be, it goes viral and she receives major backlash....

Britain, the not-too-distant future. Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test. He wants his family to belong. Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress. When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death. How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?

In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly...

"Niger, West Africa, 2074. It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren't what they used to be. Within all this, I introduce you to Ejii Ugabe, a child of the worst type of politician. Back when she was nine years old, she was there as her father met his end. Don't waste your tears on him: this girl's father would throw anyone under a bus to gain power. He...

"Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call...