Central Kansas Library System

"When corpses clutching poems begin turning up around Storyton Hall, Jane Steward is on the trail of someone exercising poetic license to kill and is determined to keep her fairytale resort from turning into a southern gothic . . . As Jane eagerly anticipates the wedding of her best friend Eloise Alcott, Storyton Hall is overrun with poets in town to compete for a coveted greeting card contract. They're everywhere, scrawling verses on cocktail napkins...

Sylvia Plath is widely recognized as one of the outstanding poets of the twentieth century. When her Collected Poems was published it won the Pulitzer Prize. Her only published novel, The Bell Jar, has become a modern classic. Because Plath drew so heavily on her own life in both her poetry and her fiction, the outlines of her life are familiar to readers. But, like most writers, Plath changed the facts of her life in her writing. In her determination...

An introduction to the life and career of the beloved 19th-century American poet.

"A funny and whip-smart memoir about a feisty young woman's quest for independence in an isolated Mennonite community. Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging ever closer to the flames. Coming of age in a remote and forested valley--a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands--she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies' sewing circle....

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.

"Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago--'one day, you'll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.' Javier's adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone except for a group of strangers...

Yuri Zhivago, doctor and poet, lives and loves during the first three decades of 20th-century Russia.

In 1938, encouraged by her sixth-grade teacher, Emily taps an unsuspected talent for writing poetry and makes many discoveries about friends, family, and life.

"Since 2001, poet and professor Brian Daldorph has taught a creative writing class at the Douglas County Jail in Lawrence, Kansas. During this time he has worked with thousands of inmates, helping them to find the words to express their struggles while also giving him a unique insight into the behemoth that is the American justice system. Daldorph has taught the class every Thursday now for nearly two decades, and over the years he has watched these...