Frank Carlson Library

A poignant tale of childhood and the ties of family, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" will transport the reader to the early 1900s where a little girl named Francie dreamily looks out her window at a tree struggling to reach the sky.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

"Susan Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries"-- "Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative...

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of...

The young and headstrong D'Artagnan, having proven his bravery by dueling with each, becomes a friend of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, members of the King's Musketeers. He is in love with Constance Bonancieux and, at her urging, he and his friends head for England to reclaim two diamond studs that the Queen has imprudently given to her lover, the Duke of Buckingham. Richelieu, the chief minister of King Louis XIII, will resort to anything, even murder,...

"At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon?s army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes--conflict...

"William Golding's unforgettable classic of boyhood adventure and the savagery of humanity comes to Penguin Classics in a stunning Graphic Deluxe Edition with a new foreword by Lois Lowry As provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, Lord of the Flies continues to ignite passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary boys marooned on a coral island...

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In The Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when...

"When Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad was published in 1990, critics and scholars alike hailed it as a masterpiece." "Now Robert Fagles presents us with the Odyssey, Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem, recounting the arduous wanderings of Odysseus during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca, after the Trojan War. If the Iliad is the world's greatest war story, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey...

Emma's opening sentence, which describes the titular heroine's many advantages, is loaded with foreboding. Discomfort and vexation lie on the horizon, triggered by her penchant for matchmaking. Emma's latest scheme involves finding a suitable husband for ingenue Harriet Smith, and to that end she persuades the latter to reject good-natured farmer Robert Martin, despite a mutual attraction. Harriet must set her sights higher, she exhorts, fixing on...