Ocean State Libraries

"A spare ... [and] bittersweet ... story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future"-- In Holt, Colorado, widower Louis Waters is initially thrown when the widowed Addie Moore suggests that they spend time together, in bed, to stave off loneliness. They are soon exchanging the confidences and memories of lives now empty of family, and their hopes for the...

"An evocative new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins. Beware the wrath of a woman scorned-she just might save the world. Lillie knew the empty nest would be hard when her son left for college, but she had no idea of the full extent to which her world would come crashing down-until her husband announced out of the blue that he was in love with another woman, and he would be leaving, too. Besides the fact that this announcement...

It is 1954 and the story traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life on the coast of Brazil. Throughout his years there, four people slip in and out of his life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia. Yohan longs to connect with these people,...

Two brothers meet at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback. In an isolated belt of Western Australia, they are each other's nearest neighbor, their homes four hours' drive apart. The third brother lies dead at their feet. Something caused Cam, the middle child who had been in charge of the family homestead, to die alone in the middle of nowhere. So the eldest brother returns with his younger sibling to the family...

“We are all walking around this city with our hearts sadly swimming in our chests, like dying fish on the surface of a still pond. It’s enough to make you give up entirely.” —from Instant Love
But we don’t give up. We keep trying. We’re either too stupid to learn from our mistakes or we honestly believe that the next time will be different; it’s hard to say which. Driven by the mad hopefulness...

A Girl in Winter is the moving and enigmatic story of Katherine LInd, a European woman in wartime England. The vicious winter weather has paralyzed the countryside; the emotions of Katherine are frozen as well, as fear and loneliness increase her sense of isolation. By splicing the story of Katherine's sunlit 16th summer in between the halves of a single winter day on which the suitor of her youth returns to her present life, Larkin illuminates the...

"Is love worth the loss of one's freedom and independence? This is what Mrs. Tavernor must decide in the new novel in the Westcott series from New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh. When Harry Westcott lost the title Earl of Riverdale after the discovery of his father's bigamy, he shipped off to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, where he was near-fatally wounded. After a harrowing recovery, the once cheery, light-hearted boy has become a reclusive,...

"In 1996, the unnamed narrator in Teddy Wayne's Apartment is attending the MFA program at Columbia on his father's dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, the narrator offers his spare bedroom - rent-free - to Billy, a handsome, talented classmate from a working-class family in the Midwest, who is attending Columbia on scholarship. As the semester progresses, the narrator's rapport...

"When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children. But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman's disappearance. Her lover is nowhere...