Central Skagit Library District

"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson "One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson "His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...

Author Edna Ferber described the story of So Big as being about a "material man, son of his earth-grubbing, idealistic mother". Left an orphan at 19 years old in the late 1880s, Selina Peake needs to support herself. She leaves the city life she has known to become a teacher in the farming community of High Prairie, IL. Her father had told her that life is an adventure, and one should make the most of it. Selina sees beauty everywhere, including...

In Europe, Men Fought A War To End All Wars. In Galveston, They Fought To Survive... In Europe, the guns had gone silent. But, in Texas, the spirit of the Wild West still lived, and the town of Galveston belonged lock, stock, and barrel to a handful of criminal overlords. Kingpins of vice, gambling, liquor, and big-time show business, the overlords didn't count on a stubborn, Hollywood stuntman who inherited his uncle's bank and a grudge. Nor...

Two broken people come together to make each other whole in 1850s Utah. He is a Presbyterian minister who turned gold prospector after the death of his wife, she is an Irish girl who was sold into slavery to an American during the potato famine. They meet in the wilds, she lying unconscious in the snow, having been abandoned.

"When the Jensen family sends a new generation out into the world, they always keep the homefires burning - and rifles loaded - just in case they bring trouble back with them. Smoke Jensen's daughter Denny can outride, outrope, and outshoot any man who gets in her way. But being a pretty woman, Denny sometimes attracts the attention of unsavory suitors. Like the lecherous Count Malatesta. Denny met the seductive Sicilian on her trip to Europe - and...