Central Skagit Library District

"Abjuring the city for a pastoral life, a group of utopians set out to reform a dissipated America. But the group is a powerful mix of competing ambitions and its idealism finds little satisfaction in farmwork. Instead, of changing the world, the members of the Blithedale community individually pursue egotistical paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthorne's tale both mourns and satirizes a rural idyll not unlike that of nineteenth-century America...

“[Parker's found] the pitch-perfect voice for a guy who is straining every muscle to cut down on the booze, hang on to his new job as police chief, and not get rattled by the body of a teenage girl”(The New York Times) in this bestselling mystery in the Jesse Stone series.
Robert B. Parker takes readers back in Paradise, where Detective Jesse Stone is looking for two things: the killer of a teenage girl—and someone,...

Introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives. A transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions ... At the center of everyone's life is a mysterious garden where only red plants...

Tony and Brianna Lincoln just moved into Paradise, but friendly they aren't. In fact, these urbane thrill killers are knocking off the neighbors one by one, and Jesse Stone is next.

From her silver Mercedes to her designer kitchen, Molly's life is gleaming and beautiful, at least on the surface. Married to Tanner, a top cosmetic dentist, she has a wonderful daughter finishing high school and twin stepsons from Tanner's first marriage. No one in her exclusive neighborhood in Goldenhills, Massachusetts, knows what living with the demanding Tanner is really like. They know even less about the life she left behind in Florida almost...

An Apache hit man arrives in Paradise to find a missing girl and snuff out her mother. But his conscience is getting the best of him. If he doesn’t make the hit, he’ll pay for it. So might Jesse Stone, who’s been enlisted to protect them all.

"A fresh, funny take on the search for a soulmate." —People
A savvy, page-turning novel about a woman torn between her husband and the man she thought she'd marry by the author of the New York Times Bestseller and Reese's Book Club Pick,  The Last Thing He Told Me
Annie Adams is days away from her thirty-second birthday and thinks she has finally found some happiness. She visits the world's...

"A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley"-- Bertha Truitt has always been an enigma to people in Salford, Massachusetts. She was discovered unconscious in a cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century-- nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her...

"In the wake of a scandal, the Montrose family and their three daughters -- Catherine, Lydia and Emeline -- flee Boston for their new country home, Willow Hall. The estate seems sleepy and idyllic, but a subtle menace creeps into the atmosphere. Remnants of a dark history that call to Lydia, and to the youngest, Emeline. All three daughters will be irrevocably changed by what follows, but none more than Lydia, who must draw on a power she never knew...

"Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving people on the run from powerful enemies. The family business--co-managed with his father, a retired spy--is smooth sailing, as they fill up Onset's holiday homes during the town's long, drowsy off-season and help clients shed their identities in preparation for fresh starts....