Ocean State Libraries

Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice...

With her critically acclaimed debut novel, Still Life with Husband, Lauren Fox established herself as a wise and achingly funny chronicler of domestic life and was hailed as “a delightful new voice in American fiction, a voice that instantly recalls the wry, knowing prose of Lorrie Moore” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Fox’s new novel glitters with these pleasures—fearless wordplay, humor, and nuance—and...

"A girl with the power to search alternate futures lives out six weeks of two different lives in alternating chapters. Both futures hold the potential for love and loss, and ultimately she is forced to choose which fate she is willing to live thorugh"--

Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is a headstrong, manipulative beauty; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During a lakeside summer holiday, they sit for a family portrait by struggling young painter Thomas Bayber. By summer's end, three lives are shattered. Decades later, Bayber, now a reclusive, world-renowned artist, unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler Sisters. Bayber asks...

"When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can't cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer's had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Surely one's own father passing should never come as such a relief. Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes...

"Returning home to act as maid of honor for her best-friend-forever Maggie, Rose is stunned when she discovers that Maggie's husband-to-be is a man with whom she had a one-night stand and, as the big day approaches, must make one of biggest decisions of her life"--

Inspired by an intriguing girl who is nothing like his shallow girlfriend, a high school senior whose life has been mapped out by his parents makes some surprising decisions that lead him to take dangerous--but exhilarating--risks.

"After almost twenty years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind. But when she falls into a coma on the eve of his departure, he has to make a choice between stardom and his wife...