Arcadia Public Library

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but...

Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she's grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the ball--and yet clinging to her sense of humor. Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor. When an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her...

"A raw and unflinching look at the objectification and misogyny of the Playboy mansion, a woman's stolen young adulthood and her journey to self-acceptance, and a rare look inside Hugh Hefner's final days. Crystal offers a vulnerable and clear-eyed look at how her experience with Hugh Hefner catalyzed her transformative journey from someone who prized external validation over all else to a person who finally recognizes her true worth. This candid...

"With her two boys off to college, forty-year-old Julia Monroe intends to expand her cleaning business in New Orleans, but God seems to have other plans. Samuel Reed, the ruggedly handsome Green Beret who broke her heart more than twenty years ago, has returned to town, and he's determined to win her back"-- Having just turned forty, Julia Monroe hopes this next decade goes much better than the last, in which she became a young widow raising two...

"After her widowed father remarries, nineteen-year-old Clara Bender is no longer needed to help run his household. When she comes across letters from her mother's aunt Ella Mae Zook, she sets off to visit Lancaster County's Hickory Hollow to decide where her future lies. The two women form a bond while restoring an heirloom wedding quilt and sharing their lives, with Ella Mae confiding about a tragedy from her courting years. Eventually, Ella Mae...

"Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But on a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds' move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy's family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive. Ten days after this seismic loss, Amy is in the hospital,...

For young widow Bria Bartolucci, running a B&B in the sun-soaked village of Positano, Italy, was supposed to be like going on a permanent vacation. But it's hardly la bella vita when her first guest is a dead body... On the surface, Bria's Mediterranean life radiates beauty--the kind her late husband, Carlo, dreamed about when he concocted the romantic idea to start a bed and breakfast on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast. With the grand opening of Bella...

When her elderly mother falls under the spell of a handyman who's a little too kind, a little too involved, Connie, when he moves in, finds her desperate attempts to unmask him leaving her wondering if she's lost her grip on reality--and if that's been his plan all along.

"Kezia Cooper Hobson, recently widowed, arrives in New York from San Francisco. Determined to make a fresh start, she has just completed the sale of her Pacific Heights home, not to mention her late husband's venture capital firm, and in doing so is also freed from her responsibility as a board member of the company. Bringing with her only a few personal treasures, she is excited to move into the blank slate of a beautiful midtown penthouse in the...