Central Kansas Library System

Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. A...

"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four ... When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the...

Me Talk Pretty One Day contains far more than just the funniest collection of autobiographical essays - it quite well registers as a manifesto about language itself. Wherever there's a straight line, you can be sure that Sedaris lurks beneath the text, making it jagged with laughter; and just where the fault lines fall, he sits mischievously perched at the epicenter of it all. David Sedaris's new collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day, tells a most unconventional...

In the small north Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues behind. There were no witnesses, no real suspects, no one with a motive. The police soon settled on Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russos. Quincy was framed, convicted, and sent to prison for life. For twenty-two years he languished in prison with no lawyer, no advocate...

An elite military cop, Jack Reacher was one of the army's brightest stars. He is on the case after a general is found dead, and within hours the general's wife is murdered.

A group of American and English expatriates living on Paris' Left Bank in the 1920's, travels to Pamplona, Spain, to experience the bullfighting and the annual running of the bulls.

"In rural Iowa, life is both the planter and uprooter of dreams. As love, long delayed, springs to life in the heart of a young Swedish immigrant, one man struggles with his withered ambitions--and new blessings that could take their place if he would but allow them room."--Page 4 of cover.

Professor Jeremy Logan is brought onto famed explorer Porter Stone's archaeological team to investigate a series of harrowing and inexplicable occurrences that are causing people on the expedition to fear a centuries-old curse behind Pharoah Narmer's elusive "double" crown of the two Egypts. As paranoia and fear run rampant, Logan must delve into the mysteries of ancient Egyptology and near death experience in order to understand what might be plaguing...

Cather presents the story of the Nebraska prairie. Alexandra Bergson, daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers, is devoted to the land and suffers the hardships of prairie life.

Ten-year-old Dreenie feels both intrigued and frightened when she thinks about the girl nicknamed Bluish, whose leukemia is making her pale and causing her to use a wheelchair.