Catalog Search Results
Author
Summary
Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" is an enchanting and thought-provoking tale that transcends time and gender, offering a profound exploration of identity, self-discovery, and the limits of societal roles. The novel tells the story of Orlando, a young nobleman in the Elizabethan era who miraculously transforms into a woman and embarks on a centuries-long journey through history. Through Orlando's extraordinary adventures-from Shakespeare's court to modern-day...
3) The proposal
Author
Series
Summary
Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her. Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous, if beautiful, aristocrat....
Author
Series
Lexile Measure
720L
Summary
One of Agatha Christie's most famous novels, featuring her beloved detective Hercule Poirot--and her most surprising twist.The story that made Agatha Christie famous ends with one of her most dramatic twists. The villagers of King's Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death. Dr. James Sheppard, the local physician, discovers the body of his friend and narrates...
Author
Series
Summary
"An English manor home, an unsolved mystery, too many suspects to count -- It's the perfect holiday for romance novelist Sara Medlar. After solving two murder cases in their hometown of Lachlan, Florida, Sara Medlar, her niece Kate and their friend Jack need a change of scenery. Sara arranges for them to visit an old friend of hers in England. Upon arrival at Oxley Manor, a centuries-old estate that has been converted to a luxury hotel, Kate and Jack...
Author
Lexile Measure
680L
Summary
In 1919, young couple Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley form a partnership, hiring themselves out as "young adventurers". Their first case, however, is more of an adventure than they expect--working to find documents that, if they were known to the general public, would fuel a communist revolution in Britain. Undercover agents Tommy and Tuppence know that Jane Finn was carrying top secret documents when she disappeared five years ago. What they...
8) Hard times
Author
Lexile Measure
1080L
Summary
"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...
Author
Summary
This "jewel at the heart of English comic literature" chronicles the daily fortunes and misfortunes of a middle-age, middle-class clerk (William Trevor, The Mail on Sunday).
Since its original publication in 1892, The Diary of a Nobody has become a much-loved classic. It is a fictional man's dissection of the everyday drama of his life as an office worker in a London firm. With dry wit, the authors step into the character of Charles Pooter as...
11) Ethan Frome
Author
Lexile Measure
1090L
Summary
A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing wife's young cousin. Trapped by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public condemnation, he is ultimately destroyed by...
12) 'Salem's Lot
Author
Series
Lexile Measure
860L
Summary
The town knew darkness ... and the awful, heavy silence of terrifying images grotesquely dancing in and out of the shadows ... and stark white faces, huge empty eyes and long gnarled hands that reached out with lustful insistence ... and the paralyzing fear of a diabolical corruption and a hideous peril more dreadful than death.
Salem's Lot is a small New England town with the usual quota of gossips, weirdos and respectable folk. Of course there...
13) Sons and lovers
Author
Summary
Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama, and it is now widely considered the major work of D. H. Lawrence's early period. This intensely autobiographical novel recounts the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing to manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict. The author's vivid evocation...
14) Jacob's room
Author
Series
Summary
This landmark novel tells the story of the all-too-brief life of Jacob Flanders, from his childhood in Scarborough through his student years at Cambridge and his bachelor days in London to his death while still a young man during World War I. Though he is an object of love and desire for many of the characters in the novel, Jacob remains curiously unknowable during his short life, as remote and mysterious as the classical landscapes and Greek ruins...
Author
Series
Great books of the Western world volume 37
Illustrated modern library
Macmillan's novelists' library volume 5-6
Illustrated modern library
Macmillan's novelists' library volume 5-6
Summary
Fielding's classic novel chronicles the adventures of Tom Jones, who was abandoned as an infant and grows into a lusty, imprudent young man. Promising to mend his ways, Tom competes with an abusive rival for the affections of a wealthy squire's daughter, and eventually learns the truth about his identity.
Author
Series
Lexile Measure
710L
Summary
It's seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing an evening dress and heavy makeup, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple into their home to investigate. Amid rumors of scandal, she baits...
17) Pulse
Author
Series
Summary
"A smartly dressed man has been found unconscious at the local racecourse and is rushed to the hospital, where he subsequently dies. But who is he? Where does he come from? He had no form of identification on him, and no one claims the body. Doctor Chris Rankin, a specialist who treated the deceased--and who struggles with mental health issues--is intrigued by the nameless dead man, obsessed even, and starts asking questions. However, someone doesn't...
Author
Lexile Measure
960L
Summary
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock and the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.
Author
Series
Everyman's library (Alfred A. Knopf Inc.) volume 349
Lexile Measure
1210L
Summary
Here is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman, " Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about...
20) Mrs. Dalloway
Author
Lexile Measure
950L
Summary
"Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925. It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. The working title of Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours. The novel began with two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host...
