I am having issues with Creating  an Apex class that returns Account objects for the Mapping.net concepts challenge.  I am a VB and Javascript programmer and I can't seem to get the syntax right.   
public class AccountUtils {
    
    public static void accountsByState(String st){
       List<String> accts = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account WHERE billingState = :st];
 }
  
}
I believe the first part is correct, but I cannot seem to get a return value.  I am confused by the constructors.  I have tried the documentation but I can't get a return value.  Please help.  I need to get this challenge complete.
 

Hi Developers Community,

several common tasks must be performed by any new application. For example: read webpage, scan html string and check conditions, send result by email. In the tutorial there already an example for sending an email was introduced, but I do not feel competent to find any other solution when the need comes up.

Please, may I asks for recommendations, how to search for those methods or functions to make use of? 

In my first trial, I am going to rebuild a very small application in SF. This application actually consists of an AutoIt-Skript running on Windows 10: this skript first opens and reads a special webpage (for this, AutoIt makes use of application modules from Internet Explorer) and stores the html code (with all links to embedded Java scripts resolved) as plain text file.

In SF, neither Windows nor Internet Explorer are available to me, so I am looking for a convinient replacement in the new cloud environment.

Kind regards,
Heiner