Central Kansas Library System

A poignant tale of childhood and the ties of family, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" will transport the reader to the early 1900s where a little girl named Francie dreamily looks out her window at a tree struggling to reach the sky.

"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four ... When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the...

The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums. "Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother...

"An extraordinary memoir about finding wonder in everyday life. Nate Staniforth has spent most of his life and all of his professional career trying to understand wonder--what it is, where to find it, and how to share it with others. He became a magician because he learned at a young age that magic tricks don't have to be frivolous. Magic doesn't have to be about sequins and smoke machines--rather, it can create a moment of genuine astonishment....

"When an artist and a duke cross paths in the bustling London slums, an unlikely love story begins and their lives will be forever changed. Royal Academy painting student Lucy Coover quickly comes to the aid of the naked drunkard she stumbles upon one evening in the Shoreditch slums. If only she could banish his lovely form from her dreams as easily. Instead, she finds herself compelled to paint the man in his natural form. Little does she know that...

The long buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the official and cultural barriers to women covering war. Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French dare devil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time...