Ocean State Libraries

Classic fiction. On the grounds of Misselthwaite, her Uncle Archibald's estate near the Yorkshire moors, nine-year-old Mary Lennox finds a walled-in garden that has been locked securely for years. With the help of Dickon Sowerby, a young local boy who can charm animals, Mary cultivates the garden, an experiences that both improves her health and raises her spirits. Ultimately, the secret garden proves beneficial not only to to Mary, but to her sickly...

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and...

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer prize-winning novel of a China that was now in a contemporary classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In the Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the...

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

1920s Oklahoma. The richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. Many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. It became the FBI's first major homicide investigation......

The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, who is forcibly taken to the Klondike gold fields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack. Buck is a dog born to luxury, but his life changes dramatically when he is sold to be a sled dog in the Yukon Terrority. He earns a reputation for his strength and courage, and is rescued from a series of bad owners by John Thornton, who teaches him to love. When John is...

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic that has been translated into more than 40 languages.

"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six,...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility--a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late 1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. Readers and critics were enchanted; as NPR commented, "Towles...

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged{u2014}petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral{u2014}while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than...