Central Kansas Library System

""Love is our only hope," Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. "It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks." In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. "Love just won't...

The prominent journalist, historian, and author-an eyewitness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century-tells the story of his final years. In the third book of a three-volume series, William Shirer recounts his return to Berlin after the Third Reich's defeat, his shocking firing by CBS News, and his final visit to Paris sixty years after he first lived there as a cub reporter in the 1920s. It paints a bittersweet picture of his...

In January 2003, Nick Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 35 and 36, respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. As Nick and Micah travel the globe, the intimate story of their tragic family legacy unfolds in the details of the untimely deaths of their parents and only sister. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world the Sparks...

"In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA, Dani Shapiro received the astonishing news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her. In just a few hours of Internet sleuthing, she was able to piece together the story of her conception and, remarkably, find a YouTube video of her...

"Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of hours of experimental...

After thirteen years of international bestseller stardom with his works of violent crime fiction, author George Stark is officially declared dead--revealed by a national magazine to have been killed at the hands of the man who created him: the once well-regarded but now obscure writer Thad Beaumont. Thad's even gone so far as to stage a mock burial of his wildly successful pseudonym, complete with tombstone and the epitaph "Not a Very Nice Guy." Although...

"As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam"--

A commemorative hardcover edition of the only collection ever published of the celebrated novelist's shorter works. Here is a treat for devoted fans of John Irving. First published twenty years ago, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by the author, beginning with three memoirs. The longest of the memoirs is "The Imaginary Girlfriend," his candid account of his twin careers in writing and wrestling, which, as the Denver Post observed,...

"From the bestselling author of Stitches and Help, Thanks, Wow comes her long-awaited collection of new and selected essays on hope, joy, and grace. Anne Lamott writes about faith, family, and community in essays that are both wise and irreverent. It's an approach that has become her trademark. Now in Small Victories, Lamott offers a new message of hope that celebrates the triumph of light over the darkness in our lives. Our victories over hardship...

An autobiographical portrait of the author's efforts to deal with the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, shortly after their daughter Quintana was placed into an induced coma to help her survive complications after pneumonia.