Central Skagit Library District

Jane Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen’s fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about...

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...

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women's prison.

But young Adair finds that

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Nineteen-year-old Martha Lessen travels to eastern Oregon in 1917, hoping to be hired by local ranchers to tame their wild horses, and when George Bliss and his wife invite Martha into their home for the winter, she forms a special bond with the ranch's horses, and the many people she meets while caring for them.

Life in Blessing, North Dakota, becomes difficult when courageous and gentle Grace Knutson is presented with an agonizing dilemma.

This is Cather s coming-of-age classic—-the story of a young artist who leaves the mediocrity of her home town to seek fame and success in the big city. A bittersweet reflection on severing oneself from one s past relationships and surroundings, The Song of the Lark explores the loss that ultimately accompanies an artist s highest achievements.

Elmore Leonard is the undisputed master, the 'King Daddy of crime writers' (Seattle Times), in the august company of the all-time greats of mystery/noir/crime fiction genre: John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, et al. The creator of such unforgettable classics as Stick, Out of Sight, and Get Shorty-not to mention the character of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, lately of TV's hit series Justified-Leonard is in fine form with Mr. Paradise....

In the fourth and final chapter of the series, Bailey's planning her dream wedding to Brandon Paul in Los Angeles, but doubts are wracking her mind. Did she make the right choice in choosing Brandon, or should she return home to Bloomington, Indiana, and be with Cody Coleman, her first love?

Intelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live to the full with every nerve, emotion, and instinct laid bare to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading daydreams, dancing -- and the first disturbing encounters...

Casey Ellis has arrived at a lonely place in her life. Her mother remains in a comatose state several years after a terrible accident - and now her father has died. Although Casey never met him, she held an oblique hope that someday her father might acknowledge her. She watched from afar as the illustrious Dr. Cornelius Unger became a celebrated psychologist and teacher. Through it all, she clung to the illusive dream that someday he might take notice...