NCW Libraries

The inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors. The inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors.

Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author recounts in feverish tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman -- a pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing, greedy ... good for nothing." Overwhelmed afterwards by feelings...

"This story, set on an Indian reservation just after World War II, concerns the return home of a war-weary Navaho young man. Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless...

Two ebullient young men search for truth the Zen way: from marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, and "yabyum" in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude in the high Sierras and a vigil atop Desolation Peak in Washington State.

Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights, a brooding mansion on the Yorkshire moors, as an orphan child. Cathy is the daughter of the wealthy family that takes him in. They are drawn together from the moment they meet, their love consuming, destructive, and full of desire. They cannot be together, and yet they cannot stay apart. The consequences will haunt generations. The book's core theme is the destructive effect that jealousy and vengefulness have,...

"Chinua Achebe is considered the father of modern African literature, the writer who "opened the magic casements of African fiction." The African Trilogy--comprised of Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and No Longer at Ease--is his magnum opus. In these masterly novels, Achebe brilliantly imagines the lives of three generations of an African community as their world is upended by the forces of colonialism from the first arrival of the British to the...