Ocean State Libraries

"One summer's day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes down to the local supermarket for some groceries - and comes home with a dog. But Winn-Dixie is no ordinary dog. It's because of Winn-Dixie that Opal begins to make friends. And it's because of Winn-Dixie that she finally dares to ask her father about her mother, who left when Opal was three. In fact, as Opal admits, just about everything that happens that summer is because of Winn-Dixie."--

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious...

Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.

"It's the last race of the season, and the wheels are smoking and the temperature is rising at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Alexandra Barnaby is NASCAR driver Sam Hooker's raceday spotter, his eye-in-the-sky, telling Hooker when to pass and when to get off the gas. From her vantage point high above the grandstand she's also seeing things going on in the infield that will change her life. Things that will lead to a stolen racecar hauler, a kidnapped Saint...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Intimate and illuminating and, as is true of most anything Quindlen writes, well worth the read.”—People

For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw...

"Welcome back to Camino Island, where anything can happen - even a murder in the midst of a hurricane, which might prove to be the perfect crime . . . Just as Bruce Cable's Bay Books is preparing for the return of bestselling author Mercer Mann, Hurricane Leo veers from its predicted course and heads straight for the island. Florida's governor orders a mandatory evacuation, and most residents board up their houses and flee to the mainland, but Bruce...

Bethanne Hamlin takes a road trip with her daughter, Annie, and her former mother-in-law, Ruth. They're driving to Florida for Ruth's 50th high school reunion. A long-time widow, Ruth would like very much to reconnect with Royce, the love of her youth. Bethanne's ex-husband, Grant, would like to reconcile, so she also has a major life decision to consider. And Annie is out to prove to her onetime boyfriend that she can live a brilliant life without...

"In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later and approaching 40, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby's father was murdered 20 years...

Special Agent Holly Barker returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, and faces off against an old nemesis--the man she brought charges against for sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape. The army officer in question was acquitted of all charges, and is now Orchid Beach's new police chief. Will Holly return to the CIA? Or will she challenge her old nemesis for control of the Orchid Beach Police Department?

1960s Florida. Kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood Curtis is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South, one mistake is enough to destroy the future. He is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In...