Ocean State Libraries

Twenty-four-year-old Edward Warren, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: his dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara. With her father's chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father's...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An astonishing novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.
In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage....
Six...

"It's been five years since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, no closer to having their lives figured out. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living--and living well. But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as...

"Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), loves his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for visits. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, Patrick is honestly out of his league. So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick's brother has a health crisis, Patrick finds himself taking on the role of primary guardian. Quickly...

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to...

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely...

From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—a brilliant and compassionate novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes...

It's the summer of 1983 in Italy, and Elio, a precocious 17-year-old, spends his days in his family's villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading and flirting with his friend Marzia. One day, Oliver, a charming American scholar arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio's father, an eminent professor. Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives...

"For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his attention-overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences. Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre,...

The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex Delaware remembers a little girl. it is eleven years since seven-year-old Melissa Dickinson dialed the hospital help line for comfort-and found it in therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young heiress is desperately calling for the psychologist's help once more. Only this time it looks like Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really coming true.