KDL Recommends

The Olympic dreams of teenaged equestrian Annemarie Zimmer end when her beloved horse, Harry, injures her and destroys himself in a jumping accident. In the agonizing aftermath, she gives up riding and horses entirely. Two decades later, she returns to her family’s horse farm and rediscovers her passion for riding.

Anxiety rules Annemarie Zimmer’s days. Her new relationship is faltering, her daughter’s possible Olympic future makes her worried for her safety, and for nearly half a year, Annemarie has struggled to make peace with her past. But if she cannot let go, the personal battles she has won and the heights she has achieved will have all been for nothing.

Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn’t understand people, but apes she gets—especially the bonobos who are capable of reason and communication through American Sign Language. But when an explosion rocks the lab, Isabel must connect with her own kind to save her family of apes from a new form of human exploitation.

At fifteen, Faith Duckle was lured under the bleachers by a bunch of boys and brutally attacked. Faith eventually turns to violence for retribution, forcing her to flee home in search of the only friend she has—a troubled but caring busboy who is the lover of a sideshow performer—and to tumble into the colorful, transient world of the circus.

Eighty-six year old Cleo Threadgood shares a lifetime of memories of Whistle Stop, Alabama, where the social scene centers on its one café, with Evelyn Couch, a younger woman who is looking for meaning in her life. This is the novel that inspired the popular 1993 movie.

A young immigrant is suddenly awakened by a fire in P. T. Barnum’s stable, where he works and sleeps, and soon finds himself at the center of a citywide arson investigation. Determined to clear his name, he will change his identity many times and find himself mixed up with one of the city’s toughest and most enterprising gangs

For forty-one years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, an elephant at Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Ready to retire, Sam rejoices when Neva Wilson is hired. Neva and Sam decide to send tired Hannah to an elephant sanctuary—just as the zoo’s director launches an aggressive campaign, inextricably tying
Hannah’s future to the fate of the zoo.

Rudy Harrington heads off for a part of the world where he knows scarcely a soul. But he has a guide: a slender book called Philosophy Made Simple. This book, however, can’t prepare Rudy for the surprises that emerge as he arranges for his daughter’s Hindu wedding and gets to know Norma Jean —an elephant with a talent for painting.

In the 1910s and ‘20s, Mabel Stark was the superstar of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, and one of America’s most eccentric celebrities. A tiny, curvaceous Kentucky blonde in a white leather bodysuit, Mabel was sexually adventurous and suicidally courageous. This book is Robert Hough’s novelization of her fantastic life.

By sixteen, Mose had already joined the vaudeville circuit. Then self destructive comedian Rocky Carter came crashing into his life and a thirty year partnership was born. But cracks were appearing in their complex relationship until one unforgivable act leads to another and a partnership begins to unravel.

Lewis Tully has not been in the circus business since he was wiped out by a flood in 1919. When a poker game generates a fair amount of cash, he decides to give it one more go. He summons performers to create a small but special circus. His most difficult task though is to take care of a nine-year-old orphan put in his care.

Jumbo was a superstar of the Victorian era, but his moving relationship with zookeeper Matthew Scott is told here for the first time using newly discovered archival material, including Scott’s own diaries. Chambers’ account of Jumbo’s secret history enhances an already magnificent legend.