Ocean State Libraries

Selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the century and called "Evelyn Waugh's finest achievement" by the New York Times, Brideshead Revisited is a stunning exploration of desire, duty, and memory. The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece — a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world...

"Humphrey Wescott, Earl of Riverdale, has died, leaving behind a fortune and a scandalous secret that will forever alter the lives of everyone in his family--including the daughter no one knew he had ... Anna Snow grew up in an orphanage in Bath, knowing nothing of the family she came from. Now she discovers that the late Earl of Riverdale was her father and that she has inherited his fortune. She is also overjoyed to learn she has siblings. However,...

"The MacBrides lead a cozy life of upper class privilege: good looks (more or less), a beautiful home, tuition-free education at the prestigious private school where Rowan is headmaster, an altruistic righteousness inherited from magistrate Lydia. But when Rowan and his three grown children gather for the first time since Lydia's passing at the family's weekend home--a restored barn in the English countryside--years of secrets surface ... [and they]...

The year is 1527. The great portraitist Hans Holbein, who has fled the reformation in Europe, is making his first trip to England under commission to Sir Thomas More. In the course of six years, Holbein will become a close friend to the More family and paint two nearly identical family portraits. But closer examination of the paintings reveals that the second holds several mysteries...Set against the turmoil, intrigue and, tragedy of Henry VIII's...

Follows the life of Patrick Melrose, a member of an upper class English family, through his traumatic childhood with an abusive father, drug addiction, fatherhood, and the possible loss of his family home.

Based on the novel by R.F. Delderfield, this follows the fortunes of Paul Craddock, a former soldier who purchases a run-down Devon estate. Set between the Boer War and the outbreak of World War I, the miniseries depicts the end of an era, as England moves into the modern age. Wounded Boer War veteran Paul Craddock (Nigel Havers, Chariots of Fire) arrives at Shallowford House in 1902 to establish himself as squire of Sorrell Valley. With the assistance...

Chronicling the hilarious highs and devastating lows of his tumultuous life, this blackly humorous drama follows Patrick from his childhood trauma at the hands of an abusive father and neglectful mother, to the peak of his heroin addiction, and his attempts to stay sober and support his family. --

Jane Austen meets Philip Roth in a sexy, sparkling debut novel reconstructing the real-life scandal that inspired Alexander Pope's famous poem "The Rape of the Lock." London, 1711. The rich young offspring of the city's fashionable families fill their days with masquerade balls, opera engagements, and clandestine courtships. Leading the pursuit of pleasure are the beautiful Arabella Fermor, with her circle of beaus, and Robert Petre, seventh Baron...