Catalog Search Results
1) Bleak House
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Description
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
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Coming-of-age
OBD Audiobook Classics - Adult
OBD Christmas Chapter/ Nonfiction Books - Youth
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
OBD Audiobook Classics - Adult
OBD Christmas Chapter/ Nonfiction Books - Youth
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
Description
"Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters...
3) Pygmalion
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English
Description
An idealistic professor transforms an unsophisticated Cockney girl into a refined young lady in this classic drama set in turn-of-the-century London.
4) Ivanhoe
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English
Description
The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft -- but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's...
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From the Publisher: When David Copperfield's widowed mother remarries, David suffers from his stepfather's abuse. At age 8, David is sent away to a harsh school where the principal routinely beats the students. David's circumstances become even worse when he is removed from school and, at age 10, forced to labor from morning to night in a London warehouse. David then decides to take desperate action. He will run away to his great-aunt, who lives...
6) King Lear
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English
Description
Featuring the images of some of the world's most famous stage and film actors, these additions to the all-new Oxford School Shakespeare introduce--and enthrall--young people to one of the greatest writers of all time. This season brings revised editions of five of the Bard's most famous plays--As You Like It, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour Lost and The Taming of the Shrew. Designed specifically for students unfamiliar with Shakespeare's rich literary...
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In a rip-roaring journey of peril and adventure, four explorers find a lost prehistoric world in the remote wilds of South America. Huge pterodactyls rule the skies and the jungle beneath is home to lumbering stegosaurus, carnivorous dinosaurs and terrifying ape-men. If the adventurers can survive then fame and fortune almost certainly await them back in London, but in this dangerous land that defies all science and reason who knows what could happen....
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AAPI Heritage Month
Aliens
May Books on Tap: Sci-fi
Thomas Ford Library's Science Fiction Book Club Selections
Aliens
May Books on Tap: Sci-fi
Thomas Ford Library's Science Fiction Book Club Selections
Description
"When massive, intelligent aliens from Mars touch down in Victorian England and threaten to destroy the civilized world, humanity's vaunted knowledge proves to be of little use. First published in 1898, H.G. Wells's masterpiece of speculative fiction has thrilled and delighted generations of readers, spawned countless imitations, and inspired dramatizations by such masters as Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg. The War of the Worlds is a fantasy that...
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English
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A “superbly ingenious” classic of space survival from the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey—one of science fiction’s most influential grandmasters (Daily Express).
Expanding the Moon’s population hinges on building a thriving tourist industry. But when a prototype tourist craft called the Selene encounters a moonquake, the ship plummets under a vast body of liquid-fine moondust...
Expanding the Moon’s population hinges on building a thriving tourist industry. But when a prototype tourist craft called the Selene encounters a moonquake, the ship plummets under a vast body of liquid-fine moondust...
10) Hard times
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"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...
12) The time machine
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English
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"A Victorian scientist and inventor creates a machine for propelling himself through time, and voyages to the year AD 802701, where he discovers a race of humanoids called the Eloi. Their gently indolent way of life, set in a decaying cityscape, leads the scientist to believe that they are the remnants of a once great civilization. He is forced to revise this assessment when he comes across the cave dwellings of threatening ape-like creatures known...
13) Frankenstein
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"Few works by comic book artists have earned the universal acclaim and reverence that Bernie Wrightson's illustrated version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein was met with upon its original release in 1983. A generation later, this magnificent pairing of art and literature is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements made by any artist in the field. This book includes the complete text of the original groundbreaking novel,...
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2023 Summer Reading - Read Outside Your Comfort Zone: Frequently Challenged Books
Audiobooks with Famous Narrators
Banned Books
More Lists...
Audiobooks with Famous Narrators
Banned Books
More Lists...
Description
In this Orwellian dramatization, religion becomes a tool of repression and social control to force women into the roles of stay-at-home wives, domestic staff, prostitutes, or surrogate mothers. They have no rights to their bodies or property and are completely dependent upon men. Those women who have had at least one child find themselves forced into the role of breeding machine, producing children for childless couples. References to 20th-century...
15) The nine tailors
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English
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While ringing in the New Year, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers some old crimes: “A rattling good mystery” (Kirkus Reviews).
Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter are halfway across the wild flatlands of East Anglia when they make a wrong turn, straight into a ditch. They scramble over the rough country to the nearest church, where they find hospitality, dinner, and an invitation to go bell-ringing. This ancient...
Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter are halfway across the wild flatlands of East Anglia when they make a wrong turn, straight into a ditch. They scramble over the rough country to the nearest church, where they find hospitality, dinner, and an invitation to go bell-ringing. This ancient...
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English
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Description
After spending five years in Paris grieving the death of her son, Madame Ranevskaya returns to her home in Russia when the family estate is about to be auctioned to pay off debts. The former estate serf and current rich merchant, Lopakhin comes up with a plan to save the family from bankruptcy but the family cannot bear to destroy their beautiful orchard.
17) Huckleberry Finn
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English
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Chafed by the "sivilized" restrictions of his foster home, and weary of his drunkard father's brutality, Huck Finn fakes his own death and sets off on a raft down the Mississippi River. He is soon joined by Jim, an escaped slave. Together, they experience a series of rollicking adventures that have amused readers, young and old, for over a century.
The fugitives become close friends as they weather storms together aboard the raft and spend idyllic
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Esme Allen is a well-known West End actress at just the moment when the West End is ceasing to offer actors a regular way of life. The visit of her young daughter, Amy, with a new boyfriend sets in train a series of events which only find their shape sixteen years later.
19) Solaris
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English
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A psychologist is sent to investigate a spate of deaths on a space station.
20) Don't be a leaf
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English
Description
In these digitally remastered classic radio programs, Jean Shepherd muses on the impact of dirty glasses, shopping for cars with the old man, flyswatters, growing up with the White Sox, and the great divide between Southside and Northside baseball fans.