Ocean State Libraries

"It's the spring of 1938 and no longer safe to be a Jew in Vienna. Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau realizes her only means of escape is to advertise her services as a domestic servant in England. Fate brings her ad to the attention of Christopher Rivers, handsome scion of the aristocratic Rivers family and master of Tyneford. An anxious Elise arrives at Tyneford and immediately falls under its spell. When Christopher's young son, Kit, returns home,...

Sophie Chesterton is a girl about town - she knows all the right people, goes to all the right parties, and wears all the right clothes. But deep down she suspects that her best friends are actually rather nasty, and that her lifestyle doesn't really amount to much. Her father wants her to make her own way in the world, to make him proud. But after one shocking evening her life is changed for ever. Scraping a living as an assistant to a 'glamour'...

A collection of twelve tales includes stories about a waiter who reveals his shocking life of crime to his ex-wife, the disintegration of a marriage following a terrible tragedy, and a middle-aged accountant who ends a love affair.

"They say trouble comes in threes, and Bertie Wooster soon learns why. It all begins when his aunt Dahlia asks him to steal a silver cow creamer illegally obtained by her husband's silver rival. Then comes the telegram from Gussie Fink-Nottle begging Bertie to come to Totleigh Towers to mend the rift between him and his soppy fianceé, Madeline Bassett. To top it all off, Bertie must contend with Roderick Spode, the menacing, black shorts-wearing,...

"A wealthy family bound by the rules of tradition and property, two independent, cultured sisters, and a young man living on the edge of poverty." --

The story of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, as two rivals, Giles Winterbourne and Dr Edred Fitzpiers, compete for the hand of Grace Melbury.

An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a 10 year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time. "Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of her greatest literary achievements and among the most influential novels of the twentieth century. The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement...

"Our narrator is stuck at home alone under lockdown, where she remembers her 1990s childhood in rural Yorkshire. The ecological phenomena that start in her own backyard interconnect and spread out from China to Nicaragua as pesticides circulate, money flows around the planet, and bodies feel the force of distant power"--

"In these short stories, it's the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary: the history of a length of fabric or a forgotten jacket. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby; a child awake in the night explores the familiar rooms of her home, made strange by the darkness; a housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. The first steps into a turning point and a new life are made so easily and...

Moll Flanders has claims to being the first English novel. It is the tale of 'the Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent.' Racy, ironic,...