Ocean State Libraries

"The Reservoir follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he looks back upon his life in his enforced quarantine solitude, wondering what it all means and who he really is. Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment...

Describes the American dream of Gil Freeman, to become a famous actor in New York, and the ten years that it took to happen.

The personal and professional lives of low-budget filmmaker Mimi and septuagenarian erotica writer Eleanor intersect in the wake of Eleanor's partner's death, Mimi's drug-dealer boyfriend's disappearance, and an illegal immigrant's murder.

First published in 1970 to great acclaim, this novel stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature--a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd" and "The Great Gatsby."

Exploring the scientific contributions of Thomas Edison and Charles Proteus Steimetz in upstate New York at the confluence of the Hudson River and its tributary the Mohawk--and the fate of the same place in the mid-sixties--this is a "novel of America, of its great scientific ingenuity and its emotional ambition; one that frames the birth and evolution of its towns against the struggles of its indigenous tribes, the immigrant experience, a country...

Picturing Will, the widely acclaimed new novel by Ann Beattie, unravels the complexities of a postmodern family. There's Will, a curious five-year-old who listens to the heartbeat of a plant through his toy stethoscope; Jody, his mother, a photographer poised on the threshold of celebrity; Mel, Jody's perfect -- perhaps too perfect -- lover; and Wayne, the father who left Will without warning and now sees his infrequent visits as a crimp in his bedhopping....