Central Kansas Library System

Author finds his identity and what is important in life through suffering defeat, and tragic love.

"The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds...

Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.

"He was history's most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography. Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills...

The classic novel tells the story of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a half-Jewish advertising canvasser, as he wanders the streets of Dublin in 1904.

"Artist Beverly Vernon gets the shock of her life when she discovers the skeletal human remains of a child while digging in her backyard. Then, while painting her imaginary grandchild, a series of strange events hit her studio. Does Beverly have a ghost, and could the odd events be linked to the discovery in her yard?"--Publisher's description.

Meet Rowland Sinclair, gentleman and artist living in 1931 Sydney. Friend of the Left, son of the Right, he paints in a superbly tailored, three-piece suit and houses friends who include a poet, a painter, and a feminist sculptress whom he has painted nude and hung it in the drawing room. Is he perhaps in love with Edna? If so, she isn't having any. Sinclair's life of ease, it may be said almost that of playboy, is akin to that of the era's English...

"Mackenzie Cooper took her eyes off the road just long enough to rob her of her beloved daughter and ultimately of her new marriage, family, friends, and privacy. Now she lives in Vermont under the name Maggie Reid. She's thankful for her new friends--though she can't risk telling them too much-- and takes satisfaction in working as a makeup artist. Covering up scars is a skill she has mastered. Then a friend's teenage son is thrust into the national...

"A novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever. Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge--aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner--is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother's unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic...

Susan Wittig Albert is the best-selling author of the China Bayles mysteries. In this cozy, she fictionalizes the adventures of acclaimed author Beatrix Potter. It's 1905, and to recover from the loss of her fiancé, Potter moves into a small farmhouse in Sawrey. Populated by colorful characters, both human and critter, her new life is full of promise. That is, until a villager dies, and murder is suspected. Now it's up to this amateur sleuth to find...