Frank Carlson Library

"A sinful act ruins the lives of three people, especially that of Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful, and dignified woman, who has conceived a child out of wedlock and receives a public punishment of having to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing. Despite Hester's attempts through the years to distance herself from her past and repent for her sins, she continues to be rejected by society. A best-seller upon its publication in 1850, The Scarlet Letter's...

Master of scalpel-sharp suspense, New York Times best-selling author Michael Palmer brings his unique experience as an emergency room physician to each of his sensational thrillers. In The Patient, he creates a beautiful neurosurgeon from Boston who must treat a cold-blooded killer or forfeit the lives of hundreds of innocent victims. Dr. Jesse Copeland is experimenting with ARTIE, a tiny robot designed to remove previously inoperable brain tumors....

Fired from Los Angeles for drinking, Jesse Stone lands a job as police chief in a Massachusetts town whose leaders want a pushover. When a white supremacist militiaman tries murder, Stone surprises them.

"January isn't the season for the seaside, but the big Fire and Ice festival is keeping bookstore owner Addie busy. Amid the plans for a fireworks display and an ice-carving competition, she's also dog sitting for a friend in the hospital. When Addie goes to her friend's house to gather supplies, she notices an interesting item on the nightstand which belongs to her shop assistant, Paige: a very valuable copy of the beloved children's book The Secret...

When a visiting actress becomes the subject of a death threat, Jesse and the rest of the Paradise police department go on high alert. And when Jesse witnesses a horrifying collision caused by a distracted teenage driver, the political repercussions of her arrest bring him into conflict with the local selectmen, the DA, and some people with very deep pockets.

When the body of a divorced Florida heiress washes ashore in Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone learns of the woman's past appearances in an erotic video and finds it suspicious that the victim's family seems unaffected by her death.

Dispatched by the district attorney to a declining Massachusetts neighborhood to address a case related to a new public relations campaign, state investigator Win Garano suspects a deeper agenda and becomes involved with a loosely organized association of vigilante police officers, in a case during which he is assisted by his intuitive grandmother.

"Ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading, and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough." --

A Massachusetts district attorney running for governor wants to use some radical new DNA technology to solve a long-ago murder. The result? A new round of violence.

"When Dahlia decided to become a foster mother, she had a few caveats: no howling newborns, no delinquents, and above all, no girls. A harrowing incident years before left her a virtual prisoner in her own home, forever wary of the heartbreak and limitation of a girl's life. Eleven years after they began fostering, Dahlia and Louie consider their family complete, but when the social worker begs them to take a young girl who has been horrifically abused...