Central Kansas Library System

First published in 1865, Mary Mapes Dodge's "Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates" is an endearing children's story about a hard-working, honorable Dutch boy and the challenges he faces as a result of his family's poverty. Hans dreams of entering a big ice-skating race with his sister Gretel so that he may win the beautiful silver skates he desires. Yet, he is also very concerned for his father, who has been injured from a fall off of a dike and in...

One summer evening two couples (two brother and their wives) meet for dinner at a fashionable restaurant in Amsterdam. Behind their polite conversation, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable,...

The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week, July-September, 1859, under the title of "A Good Fight".) The Cloister and the Hearth is a historical novel by the English author Charles Reade. Set in the 15th century, it relates the story revolving about the travels of a young scribe and illuminator, Gerard Eliassoen, through several European countries.

From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale. We all have heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty ... and what curses accompanied Cinderella's...

Engaging the services of a miniaturist to furnish a cabinet-sized replica of her new home, 18-year-old Nella Oortman, the wife of an illustrious merchant trader, soon discovers that the artist's tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways.

"Dr. Gabrielle Winslow joins the Underground in Holland to help smuggle Jews out of the country. She teams up with an OSS agent to rescue her uncle in Berlin. Will they succeed in bringing him out of Germany only to be trapped in Holland?"--Provided by publisher.

"For fans of the "Who Was" series, this lively, accessible, and full-color chapter book biography shows how a self-taught scientist was the first to observe the microbial life in and around us. By building his own microscope, Antony van Leeuwenhoek advanced humanity's understanding of our oft-invisible world around us."-- Invisible organisms called microbes are everywhere: in soil, oceans, and snow; in the food we eat and the air we breathe - even...

"Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international team--led by an obsessed retired FBI agent--has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why? Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people...

“Just try to resist.... A Continental Downton Abbey plus sex, with a dash of Dangerous Liaisons tossed in.” —Seattle Times

Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. When his mother dies, Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe's leading hotelier—a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion

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Attending her high-school reunion at the request of her long-estranged friend, Cate, Ali Barba, a Sikh detective with the Metropolitan Police, suddenly finds herself investigating Cate's death after she and her husband are run down by a hit-and-run driver.