On Tuesday, May14th, some library services will be unavailable due to system maintenance. Collections will be searchable, but patron account services will be limited.
After discovering the true nature of the One Ring, Bilbo Baggins entrusts it to the care of his young cousin, Frodo, who is charged with bringing about its destruction and thus foiling the plans of the Dark Lord.
Presents the epic depicting the Great War of the Ring, a struggle between good and evil in Middle-earth, following the odyssey of Frodo the hobbit and his companions on a quest to destroy the Ring of Power.
"Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Earnest, while Algernon has also posed as Earnest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend--the "rivals" to fight for Earnest's undivided attention and the "Earnests" to claim their beloveds--pandemonium breaks loose"--Page 4 of cover.
Lady Windermere misinterprets her husband's interest in an older woman, Mrs. Erlynne, causing a rift that could lead to both marital and societal ruin. Lady Windermere's Fan Is an intriguing tale that examines intention versus outcome in a world driven by perception.
Lady Windermere is a young wife who's concerned by her husband's connection to the mysterious, Mrs. Erlynne. She believes the woman is a threat to her marriage and livelihood. Despite...
Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty...
"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...
Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous love stories in the English language. It is also, as the Introduction to this edition reveals, one of the most potent revenge narratives. Its ingenious narrative structure, vivid evocation of landscape, and the extraordinary power of its depiction of love and hatred have given it a unique place in English literature. The passionate tale of Catherine and Heathcliff is here presented in a new edition that...
The Professor (1857) is English writer Charlotte Brontë's first novel. Rejected by several publishing houses, Brontë shelved the novel in order to write her masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847). After her death, The Professor was edited by Brontë's widower, Arthur Bell Nichols, who saw that the novel was published posthumously. Based on Brontë's experience as a student and teacher in Brussels-which similarly inspired her novel Villette-The Professor is...
With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...
After her uncle dies, young Jane Eyre is terribly mistreated by her aunt and cousins. She is quickly sent away to a girls' school, where life is not much better. But Jane loves books and learning, and she becomes the first in her class. She goes on to teach, then takes a position with Mr. Rochester, working as a governess. At his mansion, life changes dramatically.
Story of Holden Caulfield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. The hero-narrator of "The Catcher in the Rye" is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex...
Scout Finch, the young daughter of a local attorney in the Deep South during the 1930s, tells of her father's defense of an African-American man charged with the rape of a white girl.
A sharply witty novel about social ambitions and artistic pretensions by the author of Brave New World. The widowed Mrs. Aldwinkle will tell anyone who will listen of her love for art, and in a quest to surround herself with her intellectual equals, she invites an entourage to an Italian palace. One guest, who supports his poetry habit by editing a magazine for rabbit fanciers, will become the target of her amorous advances. Another...
Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and...
"All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?" Generations of readers have recognized the impassioned cry that introduces the young narrator of Demian, and embraced this tale of a troubled young man's struggle toward self-awareness. Initially published in Berlin in 1919, the novel met with instant critical acclaim, as well as great popular success among people seeking...
"Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, Siddhartha is the story of a soul's long quest for the answer to the enigma of man's role on earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but isn't content with the disciple's role. He must work out his own destiny--a torturous road on which he experiences a love affair with the beautiful courtesan Kamala, the temptation of success and riches, the heartache of struggling...
A powerful collection of short stories by Shirley Jackson. "The Lottery," one of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker. "Powerful and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate her remarkable...
Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodara, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, the lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable noises and self-closing doors, but...