NCW Libraries

In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent--her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error"--Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents...

Widow Kate Bradley and her three daughters run the Shady Rest Hotel on the outskirts of Hooterville. City folk escape from hectic urban life with brief stays in the rural village where nothing much ever happens. Floyd and Charley make regular runs in the Hooterville Cannonball, an ancient steam train that is still the town's chief public transportation to Drucker's General Store.

"At twenty-nine, auctioneer Toby Miller is a notorious bachelor. But his job keeps him on the road for months out of the year, and he knows no Plain woman could want a marriage that would force her to live and raise children alone. Thankfully, Toby's content to dedicate his life to the family business, especially now that his grandfather is retiring. So why does his heart keep longing for something-or more specifically, someone-he can't have? Rachelle...

"Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize "What Bennett aims at is nothing short of a re-enchantment of the world... This is a truly stunning debut, beautifully written and profoundly witty." -The Guardian Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennett's debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish press that published it. A deceptively slender volume, it captures with utterly...

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

Ethan Frome was published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in turn-of-the-century New England in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan Frome is a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm. Ethan's character is one that comes full circle,...

Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family's rural dairy farm, forty minutes and a world away from Dublin. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who takes to her bed for days on end, claims not to know who Debbie's father is, and believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small family is Maeve's brother Billy, who lives in a caravan behind their house, drinks too much, and likes to impersonate famous dead writers online....

Astonishingly, one out of every six people who share this planet with us live on less than a dollar a day. Slightly over one billion people on the planet live on a dollar a day. While the reasons for their poverty may be different across geographic regions and political circumstances, the results are much the same. Extreme poverty robs people of options in life, and the cycle is nearly impossible to break without help. While the poor often work very...

"Owen Cross grew up with two loves: one a game, the other a girl. One of those loves ruined him. Now he's counting on the other to save him. Baseball always came easy for Owen Cross. His innate talents were honed beneath the stiff hand of a father who wanted nothing more than for his son to succeed where he had failed. The girl was a little more complicated. Owen loved Micky Dullahan from the first time they met, on a lonely hill overlooking the depressed...