Frank Carlson Library

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

When she discovers that big-headed rancher Jesse Pleasant has a softer side during a painfully awkward showing at a community date auction, former tech consultant Lily-Grace Leroux warms to the sparks flying between them, never dreaming that she could have her own happily ever after.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom....

"Regan Carmichael--an independent spirit equally at home in denims and dresses--travels to Wyoming to be the mail-order bride for Dr. Colton Lee--a widower who insists he only wants someone to care for his daughter. Despite family disapproval and an unseen enemy, Colt will soon risk all to make this marriage a true union"--

In Uncle Tom's Cabin , Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery message resonated with readers around the world at its time of publication. With unashamed sentimentality and expressions of faith, Harriet...

The Hart family of Portland, Oregon, faces many setbacks after Ryan's father loses his job, but no matter what, Ryan tries to bring sunshine to her loved ones.

Dramatizes the events that surround the murder of a white man in a volatile Southern community.

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.

The problems which Newt Winger, a young Negro growing up in the Midwest faces are compounded by a murder to which Newt is the only eyewitness.