Frank Carlson Library

On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of the slightly disreputable, the temporarily lost, and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the great river's tides. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they cling to one another in a motley yet kindly society. There is Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by happenstance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man whose boat dominates the Reach....

These were days of uncertainty and peril, of noble deeds and great sacrifice. An exciting time to be young and adventurous . . . but a dangerous time to fall in love.

"Covid-19 has arrived in London, and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal, chaotic mundanity of screens, isolation, and the disasters small and large that have plagued recent history. As our unnamed narrator--a classics academic immersed in her studies of ancient prophecies--navigates the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes obsessed with predicting the...

Archie Greene has lived with his grandmother since he was a baby, but when a mysterious package arrives on his twelfth birthday with instructions to take it to a strange bookshop in Oxford, he finds himself involved with a secret society of people who protect the world's magical books, and discovers that he has family he never knew about.

A hopeless unromantic gets a crash course in love in the fourth hilarious novel from bestselling author Anna Maxted After her disaster of a marriage ends when she is justtwenty, Hannah is convinced you have to be out of yourmind (or desperate) to tie the knot. And life without ahusband at thirty-one is just fine, thank you very much.She has a steady job working as a private investigator(albeit a mediocre one); a devoted boyfriend of fiveyears,...

The mysterious and magical powers of the red king have been passed down through his descendants. These gifts, some evil and some good turn up unexpectedly in someone who hads no idea where they came from. This is what happened to Charlie Bone...

A most inconvenient marriage...Forced by bankruptcy and scandal into exile in France, Lord Waverly expects never to return to his homeland until, staggering home from a gambling hell in the wee hours of the morning, he encounters a young novice escaping from a convent. When she asks him to escort her to England, promising him that her English grandfather will reward him handsomely for her safe conveyance, Waverly reluctantly agrees.Alas, he soon realizes...

In 1912, rational Fred Fairly, one of Cambridge's best and brightest, crashes his bike and wakes up in bed with a stranger--fellow casualty Daisy Saunders, a charming, pretty, generous working-class nurse. So begins a series of complications--not only of the heart but also of the head--as Fred and Daisy take up each other's education and turn each other's philosophies upside down.

After years as a sweet, good-natured pushover, Annie Markham has had to face up to three hard truths: • You've got to be tough to succeed in business and romance. • Sometimes your meddling loved ones areright about your worthless, no-good boyfriend being worthless and no good. • The only reliable thing about men is thatthey're totally unreliable. Okay, she's been persuaded. So now, seven years after wisely and abruptly dumping the "love of...

A young English thief stumbles on, and subsequently is recruited for, a super-secret operation that trains teenagers in remote viewing and astral projection techniques in order to engage in spying.