Central Skagit Library District

Introduction by Diane Johnson • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Initially published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre erupted onto the English literary scene, immediately winning the devotion of many of the world’s most renowned writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, who declared it a work...

"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"--

When teenager Carmen and her three friends discover that a pair of worn jeans from a thrift shop provides an uncanny fit for all four of them, they decide to form a sisterhood, with the pants as the symbolic bond of friendship among them, and embark on a sweet-sixteen summer.

Emma is a novel written by Jane Austen. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. The novel was first published in December 1815, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency...

"A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to get an education so that she can escape and choose her own future. Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigeriangirl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a "louding voice"-the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's...

"Echoing novels like Karen Russell's Swamplandia! and Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Alexandra Teague's lighthearted coming-of-age debut is perfect for anyone who's navigated the strange seas of adolescence-and lived to tell the tale. A.Z. McKinney is on the shores of greatness. Now all she needs is a boat. When the Sea of Santiago appeared overnight in a cow pasture in Arkansas, it seemed, to some, a religious miracle. But to high...

"The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why--she doesn't know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires and start-up bros while her own request for a raise gets bumped from manager to manager. When her long-time boyfriend, J, decides to move to a quiet upstate New...

The winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1925. After losing her father and her husband, Selina Peake is left to raise her only son on the farm that was left to her. Dirk Peake, a tenacious boy who grows up to be a successful bond salesman, must come to terms with his own regrets later in life after he decides not to pursue architecture, a passion that both he and his mother shared. This classic novel about family, immigration, and the role of...

"From the internationally bestselling author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, a heartfelt coming-of-age story that Karen Joy Fowler calls "a timeless classic book you will read and reread." Mary Frances "Frankie" Lombard is fiercely in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. Content to spend her days planning capers with her brother William, competing with her brainy cousin Amanda,...

"Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage--with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting...