Arcadia Public Library

In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" and Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shouting," Jeannette Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family. The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors...

"The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a...

"A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a paradox: to pay tribute, lay scorn upon, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut"--

From award-winning author Sara Zarr comes a story of the small moments that show us who we are, and how family is not just something you're part of, but something you make. Lou and her family don't have much, but for Lou it's enough. Mom. Her sister, Casey. Their apartment in the city. Her best friend, Beth. It would be better if Dad could stop drinking and be there for her and Casey, and if they didn't have to worry about money all the time. But...

On the surface Petrone had it all: a family, a budding writing career, a successful marriage. But she was desperately lonely, and dealing with the life and death of her alcoholic mother and the ghosts of her own suicidal past. Here she takes us on her journey from loss into renewed life. Writing from a universally understood place of struggle, Petrone provides a timeless reminder to world-weary readers that, just as birth follows death, light does...

Aideen's best (and only) friend is pulling away. Her mother's drinking problem is a constant concern. She's running out of diseases to fake so she can skip PE. When she sees her nemesis, overachiever Meabh Kowalski, in the midst of a full-blown meltdown, she sees a problem that-- unlike her own disaster of a life-- seems refreshingly easy to solve. She volunteers to help Meabh escape her crushing pile of extracurriculars... by pushing Meabh down the...

Political fervor hits the South Side in season 9, as the Gallaghers take justice into their own hands. While Frank sees financial opportunity in giving voice to the underrepresented working man, Fiona tries to build on her real estate success and takes an expensive gamble, Debbie fights for equal pay and Ian faces the consequences of his crimes as the Gay Jesus movement takes a destructive turn.

The Gallaghers have always scraped by, but Season Seven finds them finally getting a leg up. When Frank awakens from a coma to learn that his family tossed him in the river, he declares war, Gallagher vs. Gallagher.

Aces is the story of a young man who fights against the battering of his mother by his drunken father. The situation escalates until Ace desperately stabs his father to death, and is sent to jail for a period of 15 years. Nine years later he is out on parole. He kills again within a day's time of his release.

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....