Ocean State Libraries

Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious,...

"A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

In this spellbinding blend of suspense and human drama, Danielle Steel tells a powerful and unusual story of one woman’s journey from darkness into light, as she fights to escape a mesmerizing sociopath who holds her in his thrall. . . .
  
Top photographer Hope Dunne has known joy and heartbreak, and finds serenity through the lens of her camera. Content in her SoHo loft, she isn’t looking for a man or excitement....

"Carmilla was the vampire to break the mold of rotting flesh and foul stench. She was the very first romantic vampire, and after inspiring Bram Stoker's Dracula, she has continued with us, always in the shadow, influencing culture with a subtlety that is as alluring as it is elitist. A multi-layered story of love, loss, and a yearning for both a past and a future unobtainable, and finally of great sacrifice. Carmilla ranks as one of the world's great...

"On All Souls Day, the late Marcus Conway returns home. Solar Bones captures in a single relentless sentence the life and death of this rural Irish engineer, and his place in the globally interconnected 21st century. The book takes in local municipal failures and global financial collapse, the quotidian pleasures of family, ancient history and the latest headlines, the living and the dead. A vital, tender, acerbic, warm, and death-haunted work one...

The national best-seller A Drinking Life is a poignant memoir of a boy growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II. The son of Irish immigrants, Pete Hamill is raised by his supportive mother, but feels overlooked by his crippled, alcoholic father. In a captivating narrative, Hamill reflects on his early experiences with alcohol and considers the personal implications of the American culture of drinking.

Edna O'Brien, the author of "The Country Girls" trilogy, "The Light of Evening," and "Byron in Love," portrays the events, people, emotions, and landscape that contributed to her rich and heady life. She is the recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

"Critical essays published during the last twenty-five years on Joyce's celebrated novel "Ulysses."" --