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.

Young scientist Victor Frankenstein, grief-stricken over the death of his mother, sets out in a series of laboratory experiments testing the ability to create life from non-living matter. Soon, his experiments progress further until he creates a humanoid creature eight feet tall. But as Frankenstein soon discovers, a successful experiment does not always equal a positive outcome.

"At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon?s army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes--conflict...

"Conflating her own childhood experiences with those of a celebrated Wagnerian soprano of her day, Willa Cather here introduces Thea Kronborg, a Scandinavian-American singer who rises from a one-story town in Colorado to the Metropolitan Opera House. Along the way she learns her own capacity for the rigorous demands of artistic excellence, and how few of her colleagues are willing to sacrifice ordinary vanities for exacting professional standards....

In the Catskill Mountains, farmer Rip Van Winkle meets a strange dwarf and a group of men playing ninepins. He drinks from their keg and falls into a deep sleep. When he awakens, everything is changed.