Central Kansas Library System

A young girl who loves fancy things helps her family to be fancy for one special night.

Left penniless after her parents' death, Kelsey Langton must now take responsibility for the well-being of her younger sister, Jean. But when circumstance and human frailty conspire to leave them homeless as well, Kelsey is forced to resort to drastic measures. Only by allowing herself to be sold at auction can she rescue her sister's future--and so Kelsey enters the infamous House of Eros, resigned to becoming the mistress of some well-heeled gentleman....

"In 1889 Seattle, Washington, Militine and Thane meet while serving the local poor. Though both carry a dark history and a sense of haunting pain, they begin to grow closer and wonder whether God can build something new and beautiful from the debris of the past"--

"A sinful act ruins the lives of three people, especially that of Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful, and dignified woman, who has conceived a child out of wedlock and receives a public punishment of having to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing. Despite Hester's attempts through the years to distance herself from her past and repent for her sins, she continues to be rejected by society. A best-seller upon its publication in 1850, The Scarlet Letter's...

"SANDRA DALLAS is the author of fourteen novels, including A Quilt for Christmas, Fallen Women, True Sisters, The Bride's House, Whiter Than Snow, Prayers for Sale, Tallgrass and New Mercies. She is a former Denver bureau chief for Business Week magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado."-- "It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime....

Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father--a former concert pianist and teacher--moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father ... until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. An unforgettable story of love on...

Overview: A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes,...

A collection of letters by nineteenth-century homesteader Howard Ruede in which he chronicles his first year in Kansas while writing back to his family in Pennsylvania, covering topics such as poverty, unsanitary conditions, and starvation.

"New York, 1910: A city of extravagant balls in Fifth Avenue mansions and poor immigrants crammed into crumbling Lower East Side tenements. A city where the suffrage movement is growing stronger every day, but most women reporters are still delegated to the fashion and lifestyle pages. But Vera Garland is set on making her mark in a man's world of serious journalism. Shortly after the world-famous Hope Diamond is acquired for a record sum, Vera begins...

Eva is excited for a visit from her sister Alice, who lives in Suffolk with her husband and three children. But when Alice arrives alone, desiring a break from her family, Eva becomes concerned. Her dismay deepens as Alice starts spending time with a former beau, Keenan Ripley, who owns the nearby pear orchard. At the same time, Phoebe's sister Julia, now a widow and pregnant, is in a fretful state, and Phoebe struggles to be helpful to her. When...