Ocean State Libraries

A striking portrait of drifters and seekers in post-World War II America, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master unfolds the journey of a naval veteran who arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future, until he is tantalized by The Cause and its charismatic leader.

"The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs. Jumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Joanne McDuffy, an articulate and fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but...

A collection of short stories featuring a cross-section of society including runaways, drifters, gold miners, counterfeiters, attorneys, and slaves from Puritan Massachusetts and revolutionary New Jersey to antebellum Louisiana.

Young Andi Oliver is an amnesiac and drifter who awoke in a Santa Fe bed and breakfast with a man's belongings tossed about the room. Adopting a name from the initials on her backpack, Andi moves from one waitress job to the next, from Idaho to North Dakota, until she takes a job at Klavan's, a massive pigfarming facility that specializes in the dark art of modern livestock management. As Andi begins to uncover the truth about Klavan's and a slaughterhouse...

Paige Mattheson is reputed to be as beautiful as the alabaster sculptures she creates, and just as cold. An intensely private person, she is perfectly happy living by herself, until Jesse Dallas walks into her life. Paige's fierce desire for Jesse both exhilarates and terrifies her. And after spending six glorious weeks with him at her isolated beachfront home, she is a woman passionately in love. But can she trust this loner not to walk out of her...

Mike is a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him. Scott is a wayward son of the mayor of Portland and the object of Mike's desire. Navigating a volatile world of junkies, thieves, and johns, Mike takes Scott on a quest from the grungy streets to the open highways of the Pacific Northwest, in search of an elusive place called "home". A stirring look at unrequited love and life at society's margins.

Wendy is down on her luck, but hoping to turn things around with a summer job in Alaska. Instead, she and her beloved dog Lucy find themselves stranded with no money in a small Oregon town.

When a mysterious drifter breaks into a mansion, he discovers a lonely, beautiful woman trapped in an abusive marriage. When she escapes on the back of his motorcycle, their romantic adventures are just beginning.

Carlisle McMillan, a traveler and master carpenter seeking a place of quiet amid the grinding roar of progress. Near Wolf Butte, a strange and apparently haunted monolith, he finds his quiet, or so he believes, and begins rebuilding a decrepit house as a tribute to the gruff old man who taught him a carpenter's skills, rebuilding his life at the same time. He finds two very different, independent women: Gally Deveraux, who works at a diner in Salamander...

The story covers one Labor Day week-end in a small Kansas town, and tells about the impact a virile drifter has on the lives of several women in town.