Catalog Search Results

Reading recommendations for fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks across all reading levels.
1) The waves
Author
Series
Formats
Description
The Waves by an English writer, who is considered as one of the most important modernist 20th Century authors and also a pioneer in the use of the stream of consciousness as a narrative device, Virginia Woolf.
It is an experimental novel which is considered a key text of the Modernist literary movement. Interspersed with lyrical descriptions of waves breaking against the shoreline, the novel traces the intertwining lives of six friends from childhood...
Author
Series
Formats
Description
The Importance of Being Earnest is the last play Oscar Wilde ever wrote, and remains his most enduringly popular. It makes fun of social graces in the late Victorian era. Two seemingly unrelated parties are thrown into ridiculous entanglement when their fake identities, maintained in order to escape social responsibilities, grow ever more complicated to uphold.
Author
Formats
Description
"Identity is in many ways at the center of contemporary society, as evidenced not only by the prevalence of "identity politics" but also by the challenges posed to human self-conception by recent developments in social media, communication technology, and the increasing digitalization of life. Personal and collective identity, often related to questions of gender, race, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation, is constantly questioned, pursued,...
Author
Description
"You swab your cheek or spit in a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal long-buried family secrets and upend your entire sense of identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, a relentless drive to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" Welcome...
Author
Description
A fierce debut novel about mothers and daughters, haves and have-nots, and the stark realities behind the American Dream. A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life. Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naive, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams--and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut. Back when the brass mills were still open, this bustling...
7) Freshwater
Author
Formats
Description
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in...
Author
Description
When a job spins out of control and a man gets killed, smalltime criminal Shannon goes on the run, receives an enigmatic text message, is captured and taken to a laboratory where he's given a new face, a new name, and a new life, courtesy of the mysterious "identity man," and finds work as a carpenter. Just as Shannon feels within sight of redemption, all hell breaks loose. It seems that lots of crooked people--including cops, politicians, and gangsters--want...
9) Divergent
Author
Series
Divergent trilogy volume 1
Appears on these lists
Description
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue -- Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family...
Author
Series
Night angel trilogy volume 1
Description
Determined to escape the Warrens, Azoth seeks out Durzo Blint, the city's most ruthless assassin, to persuade him to take him on as an apprentice and to teach him the deadly Way of Shadows.
Author
Appears on list
Description
This third collection of short fiction by Gaiman includes previously published pieces of short fiction -- stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 -- as well as "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods. The collection explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Horror...
12) The cloud roads
Author
Series
Books of the Raksura volume 1
Formats
Description
"Moon has spent his life hiding what he is--a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight. An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon's true nature is once again discovered and he is cast out by his adopted tribe, he encounters a shape-shifter like himself... someone who seems to know exactly what Moon is, who promises...
Author
Appears on list
Description
A pilot's wife is taught to be prepared for the late-night knock at the door. But when Kathryn Lyons receives word that a plane flown by her husband, Jack, has exploded near the coast of Ireland, she confronts the unfathomable--one startling revelation at a time. Soon drawn into a maelstrom of publicity fueled by rumors that Jack led a secret life, Kathryn sets out to learn who her husband really was, whatever that knowledge might cost. Her search...
14) The wrong sister
Author
Formats
Description
"From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess senses an undeniable familiarity about her. Hair color, square chin, wide-set blue eyes . . . Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Intrigued, Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday....
Author
Series
Andrea Oliver novels volume 1
Description
"The #1 internationally bestselling author returns with a new novel in the vein of her New York Times bestsellers Pretty Girls and The Good Daughter--a story even more electrifying, provocative, and suspenseful than anything she's written before. What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all? Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she's spent her whole life in the small beachside town...
16) Dear child
Author
Description
"A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare. She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior. She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn't their Lena. The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn't sharing, and Lena's devastated father is...
Author
Series
Description
Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a timeless comedic masterpiece that combines witty satire, social commentary, and farcical humor in a delightful theatrical concoction.
Set in the elegant drawing rooms of Victorian-era London, the play revolves around the hilarious deceptions of its characters, particularly Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing. These dashing young men each maintain a fictitious persona-Algernon has invented a friend...
18) Mudwoman
Author
Description
M.R. Neukirchen--the first female president of a lauded Ivy League institution--struggles to hold onto her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons.
19) The unnamed
Author
Series
Formats
Description
Their wealthy lifestyle marred only by a two-time occurrence of a short-lived illness, Tim and Jane Farnsworth are devastated when the illness returns in ways that frighteningly alter Tim's behavior and test Jane's endurance.
Author
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets. "The thing about books,' she said 'is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of." On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found... For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these...