National Network for Equitable Library Service

Stosh travels back to 1969 to try to prevent the untimely death of Roberto Clemente, a legendary baseball player and humanitarian, but upon his return to the present, he meets his own great-grandso

Finalist for the 2014 Silver Birch Express Award Danny finds himself stranded at the bottom of a giant construction hole, armed with nothing but his school backpack, his wits — and the co

When Ethan arrives at summer camp for the first time, he has just three modest goals. First, to survive. Second, not to be hated. Third, not to be the worst at anything.

Barry Clayton has a job he doesn’t want.

Sam Blackman is an angry man. A Chief Warrant Officer in the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the U.S. military, he lost a leg in Iraq.

A simple assignment for private investigator Sam Blackman and his partner Nakayla Robertson: follow Professor Janice Wainwright, who’s suing a surgeon for malpractice, and catch her in activities t

Barry Clayton has left the Charlotte police force to manage his ailing father’s funeral home in the peace and quiet of the Appalachian mountains.

“You want to borrow a casket?” Funeral director and part-time sheriff Barry Clayton finds Jaycee member Archie Donovan’s request absurd until he learns the casket will be the centerpiece of the Jay

Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future.

When Barry Clayton’s father developed Alzheimer’s, Barry gave up his career in law enforcement to return to the North Carolina mountain town of Gainesboro and run the family’s funeral home.

Russell Mullins has left intelligence work. When his wife dies of ovarian cancer, Rusty quits the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a Washington D.C.

The night before a funeral that will thrust the mountain town of Gainesboro, North Carolina, into the national spotlight, the body is stolen from the embalming room and funeral director Barry Clayt

It's Poetry Month and Ms. Coco, who runs the gifted and talented program, is poetry crazy! She cries when she sees a sunset! She thinks boys should have feelings! She talks in rhyme!

Mr. Macky dresses up as Abraham Lincoln to get the students at Ella Mentry School excited about their Presidents' Day oral reports.

These thirty-five brief stories — and the found photographs that inspired them — are by turns realistic and surreal, bloody and tender, delightful and appalling.