Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

One warm night four children stood in front of a bakery. No one knew them. No one knew where they had come from. Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny are orphans.They discover an old red boxcar that provides them shelter from the storm.

In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the "Butcher Boy" incident, as coverage of a family brutally murdered by one of their own swept across newspapers and television screens nationwide. Now, in present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life. No stranger to tragedy, Polly was a runaway at the age of fifteen, escaping a nightmarish Mississippi childhood. Lonely, that is, until she encounters...

One of the most popular books of all-time, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been both venerated and vilified since it was first published in 1885. The story of a young abused boy on the run and his friendship with a runaway slave is about loyalty, compassion, and doing what is right.

Oak Grove is a dry, dusty town haunted by memories of a past flood. Everyone dreads the water-except for two brothers, Trevor and Eli McGill. Nicknamed Trout and Eel for their darting quickness and the thin webbing between their fingers and toes, the boys dream of the farthest seas of a mysterious past they barely remember.

In Michaels's fable-like latest, wicked South Carolina heiress Sarabess Windsor must face the fallout of a decision she made 30 years ago: when her beloved daughter was diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness, doting Sarabess hatched a plan to bear another child solely as a source of bone marrow for little Emily. Donor daughter Trinity, unaware of her parentage, spent her childhood in closely monitored foster care, but forced, like the other children...

No one knows the American Revolution better than Rock Kindle. Rock takes pride in his patriotic forefathers, and his belief that he himself could brave any combat helps him through the bad times, when Rock's father wages small wars on the rest of the family.

Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Naomi, doesn't come home after her school play, Jenny's seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken. As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios kidnapping, murder seem less plausible. The trail...

Sam Krupnik, mad at his mother because she won't let him wear his new plastic fangs in the house, decides to run away to Alaska.

"Lillian Walsh and Grace Bennett have learned so much already about caring for children in distress. It hasn't been easy, but it becomes even more difficult when they suddenly discover that three children have run away. Concerned for the trio's safety, the sisters will do all they can to find the children. But the runaways are not the only thing putting the future of the children's home in question. Lillian is faced with choosing between her dreams...