NCW Libraries

"The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama--and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally have a wife, even one with Maggie's background. For Hubert has a secret he desperately needs to stay hidden. And Maggie's unexpected charm,...

An off-kilter narrator witnesses the slow unraveling of a couple's strained marriage that erupts in unexpected ways, in a chilling tale of domestic suspense.

"Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa: Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life's unfulfilled promises; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family...

Mark Helprin's powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour-a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust-must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent...

A little pig in a big city leads to lots of trouble! Josie Shilling's family is too big, their cramped city house is too small, and she feels like no one is ever on her side. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, her older brother, Tom, brings home a pink, squirmy bundle wrapped in an old football jersey--a piglet he rescued from a nearby farm. Her name is Hamlet.

When Jackson and his family face living in their minivan, Jackson's imaginary cat Crenshaw returns to help him.

"Inspired by a true story, this is the unforgettable story of a young boy named Ernest, set during the 1909 Seattle world's fair called the Alaska Yukon Pacific Expo. It is a time when the magical wonders of technology on display at the expo future seems limitless. But for Ernest, a half-Chinese orphan who found his way to America through a last desperate act of his beloved mother, every door is closed. A charity student at a boarding school, he has...

The award-winning author of "A Knight in Shining Armor" presents a historical family saga chronicling the lives and loves of three generations of women in a small Kansas community.

"Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago--from National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson"--