NCW Libraries

A family tries to survive in rural Trinidad, when one thirteen year old twin boy walks into the bush one evening and does not come home. Clyde, the father, is forced to go looking and when he learnes his son's fate, his world is shattered.

Summer, 1943. The King and Queen choose to send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a noble family in the country. Despite her headstrong nature, the princess's fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London. She arrives in Yorkshire under an alias; only her guardians know her true identity. Charlotte befriends a young evacuee, trains with her cherished horse - and falls deeply in love with her...

A turf war between neighbors leads to a small-town crisis in this hilarious, addictive, and sharply observant debut novel. The White Elephant looms large over the quaint suburban town of Willard Park: a gaudy, newly constructed behemoth of a home, it soars over the neighborhood, dwarfing the houses that surround it. When owner Nick Cox cuts down Allison and Ted Millers' precious red maple--in an effort to make his unsightly property more appealing...

Few writers can enter their characters so completely or evoke their lives as viscerally as Andre Dubus III. In this deeply compelling new novel, a father, estranged for the worst of reasons, is driven to seek out the daughter he has not seen in decades. Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his...

Four American women become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer's complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams, and shifting senses of adventure and bravery. Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of a friend. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of Julia, Camille, and Susan, all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship. Susan,...

"Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids - Sybil, age seven, and George, age two - Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression,...

The Garden Café, next to Lissbeg library, is a place where plans are formed and secrets shared, and where, even in high tourist season, people are never too busy to stop for a sandwich and a cup of tea. But twenty-one-year-old Jazz--daughter of the town's librarian Hanna Casey--has a secret she can't share. Still recovering from a car accident, and reeling from her father's disclosures about his long-time affair, she's taken a job at The Old Forge...

Iris Cooper has been singing ever since she can remember, hitting the high notes like no one else. When she is twelve, her father convinces the owner of a bar in Lake City, Texas, to let her perform, and she stuns the audience. In the ensuing years, never staying anywhere for long, father and daughter move from one dusty town to the next, her passion for music growing every time she takes the mike in another roadhouse. But it is not an easy life for...

"How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law...

"In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What must it have been like to be them? We hold our breath for them. Our heart beats faster for them. We look again at the photograph in a new light, and say Yes, it might have happened just like that. This...