Central Skagit Library District

FINALIST FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
An epic love story in the vein of Cold Mountain and The Great Circle, about a young reindeer herder and a minister's daughter in the nineteenth century Arctic Circle
In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders

...

A wealthy children's book author is compelled by the availability of real estate in a small American downtown to purchase property and set up a series of bookstores. In her attempts to turn the town into a minor tourist attraction she has problems with her employees (three local girls and a boyfriend). A death occurs and a mystical consideration about the powers of books is had by all.

Two Counties has always been a bit peculiar. More unmarked graves are dug there than proper ones, they say. And families keep secrets too. I'd learn that the hard way. Pop and I caught the early train to Mitchell, Indiana, that morning. I was excited to see my cousin Birdy and run around town all day. But after I had an encounter with a cutthroat on the train, and when I found out I had a brother named Ray, I figured things couldn't get any more...

Jennifer Egan's cool, transcendent prose meets Karen Thompson Walker's speculative eye in this luminous literary debut following two patients in recovery after an experimental memory drug warps their lives. Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental memory treatment for Alzheimer's using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he's running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known abstract...

A bestselling Italian writer makes her American debut with this delightful dramedy of manners, family, romance, and fashion that is set on the island of Sardinia at the end of the nineteenth century-a dazzling and original literary blend of Jane Austen and Adriana Trigiani. In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman's remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her...

Lila and Theron is set in rural America and relates a personal story of love and sacrifice. Lila and Theron do not imagine themselves poor, nor do they covet what they don't have. They are whole in themselves and on their land – in marked contrast to today's victim culture of safe spaces and narcissism.

Former gladiator Saevius is certain Fortune's smiling on him when a Pompeiian politician buys him to be his bodyguard. That is until his new master, Laurea Calvus, orders Saevius to discover the gladiator with whom his wife is having a sordid affair. In order to do that, Saevius must return to the arena, training alongside the very men on whom he's spying. Worse, he's now under the command of Drusus, a notoriously cruel-and yet strangely intriguing-lanista. But...

A wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi, from the incomparable Jac Jemc. History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal...

A remarkable debut novel about women's relationships – with each other and with the men in their lives – and the rise of fundamentalism in India today. 'When the light shifts, you see the world differently.'A superbly nuanced work of fiction, Anindita Ghose's first novel The Illuminated revolves around two women: Shashi and Tara. After the sudden death of her celebrated husband, Shashi is alarmed to realize that overnight, she has lost her life's...

Sixteen year old Gus Woodard is about to live the best summer of his life. Then something goes wrong, terribly wrong. Ajar is a coming of age story about Gus Woodard and his schizophrenic brother. Set during the 1970s in a small town Gus must suffer the undeserved consequences when his delusional brother goes on a murderous rampage. Gus blunders his way through life as the town turns against him and his family. Gus is forced to experience betrayal...