NCW Libraries

"For the first time, all three volumes of Jane Austen's brilliant early manuscripts are available in beautiful facsimile editions. Fan fiction from the eighteenth century-Jane Austen's stories are as fresh and fun today as they were when she wrote them. Forever immortalized as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen actually produced her first "books" as a teenager. Taking their names from the inscriptions on their covers-Volume the First,...

"My Brilliant Life interweaves the past and present of a tight-knit family, finding joy and happiness in even the most difficult times. Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang - his sixty-year-old neighbor and best friend - and through the books he reads to visit the places he would otherwise never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing...

Music and war, war and music-these are the twin motifs around which Bradford Morrow, recipient of the Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has composed his magnum opus, a novel more than a dozen years in the making. In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript-the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens-come into the hands of Meta Taverner,...

An elegant, page-turning thriller in the vein of Night Film and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, this tautly crafted novel is about stories: the ones we tell, the ones we keep hidden, and the ones that we'll do anything to ensure they stay buried. When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his...

Written by Gad, seer of King David, about 1000 BC, this book of prophecy is recommended reading by the Bible, but was never included in the Canon. It was thought to have been lost over three millennia ago. The books of Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, Shemaiah and Iddo are referred to as "The Lost Five." This long-lost book includes two revealing sermons given by King David. We have a prophecy that outlines the end times beginning with the Rapture, the seven-year...

"A treasure of a novel, a deliciously enveloping musical mystery which I read with marvel and gusto. A virtuoso performance!"--Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper's Wife Music and war, war and music--these are the twin motifs around which Bradford Morrow, recipient of the Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has composed his magnum opus, The Prague Sonata , a novel more than a dozen years in the making. In the...

"The people who made, saved, and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history, from the acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts The Manuscripts Club tells of twelve men and women, from the eleventh century to the twentieth, who all share an overwhelming obsession with illuminated manuscripts. The saint, the patron, the bookseller, the artist, the antiquary, the collector, the rabbi, the savant, the librarian,...

An obsessive bibliophile and Holy Grail fanatic combs through centuries of history to uncover a long-lost secret about the medieval Barchester Cathedral library at the side of a young American charged with digitizing the library's manuscripts.

Deciding to illustrate a disturbing, secret handwritten manuscript from her late Pulitzer Prize-winning father, aspiring artist Haven Marbury is plunged into a nightmarish world when a monstrous creature appears, forcing her to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets to rewrite everything she thought she knew about herself.

"An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A.S. Byatt's Possession and Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, anemigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a...