Del Norte Public Library

Gabby, Billy, Izzie, Andy, and Sean - each bursting with their own personality, strikingly different looks and talents, in sports, science, and the arts. Each drawn by the magical spark of connection that happens to the young. At the exclusive Atwood school, on a bright September day, starting in kindergarten they become an inseparable group known to outsiders as the Big Five. In this rarefied would, five families grow closer, and five children bloom...

The Age of Innocence centers on an upper-class couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a woman plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870's New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier novel, The House of Mirth, which was more brutal and critical. Not...

"A deliciously funny, sharply observed novel of family, wealth, love and tennis, this zeitgeisty debut follows three women in an old Brooklyn Heights clan: one who was born with money, one who married into it, and one, the millennial conscience of the family, who wants to give it all away. Rife with the indulgent pleasures of affluent WASPS in New York and full of recognizable if fallible characters (and a couple of appalling ones!), it's about the...

Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, and his family. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Jende is desperate to keep his job and is soon forced to make an impossible choice.

Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he's landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office. A wealthy art lover named John Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding...

"Escaping from an arranged and abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone from her 1950s rural village to the vibrant pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the henna artist-and confidante-most in demand to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own... Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who...

The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking,...

A must-have new edition of one of the great American novels--and one of America's most popular--featuring a new introduction by Min Jin Lee, the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, and a striking new cover that brings the quintessential novel of the Roaring Twenties into the 2020s. Young, handsome, and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby seems to have everything. But at his mansion east of New York City, in West Egg, Long Island, where the party...

At first glance, the murders of Italy's prominent businessmen appear unrelated, but Guido Brunetti begins to suspect a fatal link.

Two stories in one volume Bonus story by Marie Ferrarella entitled Finding happily-ever-after. Ready for marriage (℗♭1994) "Three years ago, Mary Jo Summerhill fell completely and utterly in love with Evan Dryden. But she was a kindergarten teacher, and he was a Boston blue blood with political ambitions. His family said she was not the right kind of wife for Evan. Mary Jo agreed--she didn't belong in his world. So she lied, and broke his heart....