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Literary Reference Center
Novels, short stories, poems, plot summaries and synopses, and literary criticism. Research guides, lesson plans, and citation tools support student learning.
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Netflix’s most watched limited series to date! The thrilling novel of one young woman’s journey through the worlds of chess and drug addiction.
When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident, she’s placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless,
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Don't miss B. A. Shapiro's new novel, Metropolis, available now!
"[A] highly entertaining literary thriller about fine art and foolish choices." -Parade
"[A] nimble mystery." -The New York Times Book Review
"Gripping." -O, The Oprah Magazine
Almost twenty-five years after the infamous art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum-still the largest unsolved art theft in history-one of the stolen Degas paintings is delivered to...
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Nobody wrote like G.K. Chesterton, who (as the book title indicates) took great joy in penning intelligent, thoughtful, and witty essays on all sorts of themes and things. Chesterton's tendency to cover a vast, irregular range of essay topics began with his first book of prose, "The Defendant," which delightfully addressed a diversity of normally ho-hum subjects ranging from skeletons and Chinese shepherdesses to baby worship, ugliness, and humility....
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Tremendous Trifles is comprised of 39 chapters, each functioning as their own essay or story. With whimsical, light-hearted prose, vivid figurative language, and unparalleled insight, Chesterton covers a variety of philosophical principles of everyday life. Chesterton often used ordinary events and objects to explain deeper matters. Using relatable and accessible examples, Tremendous Trifles also test biases and preconceived ideas, specifically in...
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"One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white...
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More than sixty pieces exploring a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author's experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.
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"In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep...
8) Mother Land
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"To those in her Cape Cod town, Mother is an exemplar of piety, frugality, and hard work. To her husband and seven children, she is the selfish, petty tyrant of Mother Land. She excels at playing her offspring against each other. Her favorite, Angela, died in childbirth; only Angela really understands her, she tells the others. The others include the officious lawyer, Fred; the uproarious professor, Floyd; a pair of inseparable sisters whose devotion...
9) Heretics
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Embark on an intellectual odyssey through the pages of G. K. Chesterton's profound work, "Heretics," a literary masterpiece that challenges conventional thought and confronts the prevailing ideologies of the early 20th century. In this enlightening exploration, Chesterton delves into the realms of heresy, questions established norms and sparks a thought-provoking conversation about the nature of skepticism and belief.
In "Heretics," Chesterton skillfully...
10) Chicago: a novel
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"A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicago--a city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known better--by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mike Hodge--veteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune, medium fry--probably shouldn't have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. Then, again, maybe the man who killed...
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The hysterical, clever, and unforgettable sequel to Jonas Jonasson's international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. He's back. Even older. Even funnier. It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they're not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined...
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2024 Summer Reading: Studio (Creative Mysteries)
Best Non Fiction of 2023
Best of 2023 (WPL-ADULT)
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Best Non Fiction of 2023
Best of 2023 (WPL-ADULT)
More Lists...
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"From the legendary music producer, a savant at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book, many years in the making, that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us. "I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." -Rick Rubin. Many famed music producers, however brilliant, become known for a particular sound which...
13) Stella Bain
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"An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve. When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but...
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Wonderfully tender and hilariously funny, Eligible tackles gender, class, courtship, and family as Curtis Sittenfeld reaffirms herself as one of the most dazzling authors writing today.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE TIMES (UK)
This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met...
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE TIMES (UK)
This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met...
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Thorndike Press large print core volume 0
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From the New York Times-bestselling author of H Is for Hawk comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Vesper Flights brings together Helen Macdonald's most beloved essays with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Macdonald writes with heart-tugging clarity...
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"When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, The Love Poem, she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through time. It begins in a big yellow house with a funeral, an iron poker, and a brief variation forever known as the Pause: a free and feral summer in a middle-class Connecticut town. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future...
18) Walking
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Walking is a lecture by Henry David Thoreau first delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. It was written between 1851 and 1860, but parts were extracted from his earlier journals. Thoreau read the piece a total of ten times, more than any other of his lectures. "Walking" was first published as an essay in the Atlantic Monthly after his death in 1862. He considered it one of his seminal works, so much so, that he once wrote of the lecture,...
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Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined--an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding. Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne...
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"In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston--the sole black student at the college--was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American...