Ocean State Libraries

Written shortly after he became Biship of Hippo, "Confessions" highlights Augustine's childhood in Numidia and his riotous youth and early manhood in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. It also chronicles his continuing struggle with sin and his efforts to find satisfaction in Manichaenism and Neoplatonism. Particularly poignant are his mother's tireless efforts to rescue him from self-destruction and his dramatic conversion to the Christian faith at age 32....

"A portrait of American manners and morals at the turn of the century offers the saga of Lily Bart, a beautiful heroine who lacks one requirement for marrying well in New York society--her own money." --

"Heidi is a work of children's fiction published in 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri, originally published in two parts as Heidi's years of learning and travel and Heidi makes use of what she has learned. It is a novel about the events in the life of a young girl in her grandfather's care, in the Swiss Alps. It was written as a book "for children and those who love children". Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known...

First published in 1925, "The Professor's House" is the profound study of a middle-aged man's unhappiness by critically acclaimed American author Willa Cather. The novel tells the story of its central character, Professor Godfrey St. Peter, in three parts. In the first part, the Professor feels that he is losing control over his life and resists the direction it is taking. He is displeased with his family's move to a new house, with his daughters...

The story of a French priest who goes to New Mexico and with another priest win the Southwest for the Catholic Church. After forty years, he dies--the archbishop of Santa Fe.

Her stories suggest someone writing in a different era and in a vastly different English. Her language is as transparent as clean glass, yet hovers on the edge of poetry. Her characters are passionate men and women swaddled in English reserve -- and sometimes briefly breaking through. And her genius is to pinpoint those unacknowledged and almost imperceptible moments in which those people's relationships -- with one another and themselves -- change...

The story begins when Myshkin arrives on Russian soil after a stay in a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by St. Petersburg society as an idiot for his generosity and innocence, the prince finds himself at the center of a struggle between a rich, kept woman and a beautiful, virtuous girl, who both hope to win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's very goodness seems to bring disaster to everyone he meets. The shocking denouement tragically reveals how,...

Art master Walter Hartright comes to the aid of his student, Laura, whom he has fallen in love with, after the woman's husband steals her fortune and identity, and while helping her, Walter finds a connection between Laura's situation and a mysterious woman in white.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

"American John Dowell tries to understand the complex intrigues and passions behind the orderly Edwardian facade of the relationship he and his wife nurtured with English couple, Captain and Leonora Ashburnham."--