Central Kansas Library System

The adventures of an orphaned young man in Victorian England who is given a great deal of money by an unknown benefactor to enable him to live as a gentleman, pursuing a good education and fulfilling great expectations.

A classic tale of an orphan growing up in the 1800's of England. Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way. Jeremy Tambling's provocative Introduction reveals subtle themes relevant today in Dickens' favorite work.

"A special 25th anniversary edition of Paulo Coehlo's extraordinary international bestselling phenomenon--the inspiring spiritual tale of self-discovery that has touched millions of lives around the world.Combing magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical...

Reflecting Conrad's genius for narrative that focuses on the quest for inner truths, The Arrow of Gold is an exploration of the dangerous appetites of men and of human vulnerability, as well as a profound meditation on the emotional boundary between people. During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor, the unnamed protagonist, joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's...

Published in 1839, Nicholas Nickleby is Charles Dickens' third novel. In it, Nicholas Nickleby must earn a living to support his mother and sister after his father dies unexpectedly. Turning to a wealthy uncle in London for help, Nicholas is hired on as assistant to Wackford Squeers, a sadistic and small-minded schoolmaster. Meanwhile, his sister must take a job in a milliner's studio and is occasionally pressed into service by their uncle who exploits...

The emotional New York Times bestseller from the author of Home Song and November of the Heart. Widowed at an early age, 44-year-old Lee Reston has overcome many obstacles to raise three children and build a successful business. When her eldest son is killed in a motorcycle accident, Lee turns to his 30-year-old best friend for comfort--and falls in love with him

Gordon McKenna's only sister Georgia and her husband are killed in a car accident, "leaving behind their baby daughter, Keefer. Gordon and his parents are able to survive their sorrow only by devoting themselves heart and soul to the care of the beloved one-year-old."--Jacket.

Bruce, a paramedic in Australia, looks back on the summer when he was fifteen and he and his friend Loonie became involved with Sando, a man with a mysterious past who, recognizing the boys' desire for bigger and better thrills, decides to teach them to surf.

"A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious new employers have inadvertently discovered time travel--and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes..."--Dust jacket flap.

A surprise best-seller in Britain, this outrageous, weirdly funny first novel will appeal to fans of Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha. Not since Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye has literature seen a young man with as much contempt for hypocrisy and phoniness as Patrick Scully, the narrator of this brilliantly observed tale of a nineteen-year-old's frustrations and dreams. Stuck in a dead- job in Dublin, while his friends pursue useless degrees at the...