Frank Carlson Library

The best-selling author of Alice's Tulips and other popular novels, Sandra Dallas exhibits a well-honed talent for evoking the past. In The Persian Pickle Club, Dallas transports listeners to 1930s Kansas, where a club of quilters welcomes a new member-and then must turn to each other for support when a startling secret comes to light. "A colorful exploration of Depression-era Kansas and the meaning of friendship."-New York Times Book Review

First published in 1930, "Not Without Laughter" is the debut novel by Langston Hughes and a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical tale of an African-American family in rural Kansas. Langston Hughes, born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, spent much of his youth in Lawrence, Kansas and it is here that he set his first novel. "Not Without Laughter" tells the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a young man and focuses on his "awakening...

A country house is unhappy when the city, with all its buildings and traffic, grows up around her.

"The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era of political greed and corruption that followed the American Civil War. This period is often referred to as "The Gilded Age" because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the era is exemplified through two fictional narratives; one of the Hawkins family, a poor family from Tennessee who try to get the government...

Brian Flynn, a Catholic priest in the small Irish town of Rossmore, decries the faith local citizens and tourists place in nearby St. Ann's Well, and he prays for guidance to really understand his parishioners' feelings when plans are announced to run a highway through Whitethorn Woods where the unofficial shrine is located.

To overcome her painful past, baker Shelby Gilmore goes on the hunt for a friend - a male friend - to convince her stubborn psyche that men can be trusted. But where in a town as small as Fool's Gold will the petite blonde find a guy willing to not date her? Dark, charming Aidan Mitchell puts the "adventure" in Mitchell Adventure Tours ... and into the beds of his many willing female tourists. Until he realizes he's inadvertently become that guy -...

A novel of life in a quiet Midwestern town which exposes the complacency and hyprocrisy there.

At the beginning of Gene Stratton-Porter's thoroughly uplifting novel Michael O'Halloran, the protagonist is a scrappy 10-year-old orphan who must literally fight every day to ensure his own survival. It is only when he stumbles across a little girl facing circumstances even more dire than his own that he begins to make plans for a new life for himself. Will his grandiose vision become reality, or will Michael O'Halloran succumb to the

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It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, has more than he can handle--with church secretary Emma Garrett managing his every move, a lovable but unloved boy named Dooley thrust into his care, and the charm of a new neighbor who effects surprising change in his stick-in-the-mud habits.

Life in a small Southeastern mountain town, centered on its colorful Episcopal minister. He is Timothy Kavanagh, 63, a lifetime bachelor who finally takes the plunge and gets married to his vivacious neighbor, Cynthia. By the author of A Light in the Window.