Central Kansas Library System

A parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for...

In Winter Range, the intimate details of ranching and small-town life are woven into the suspenseful story of three people struggling to survive, to belong, and to love in the chillingly bleak landscape of eastern Montana. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff whose life is stable and content; his wife Pattiann is a rancher's daughter with a secret past. But, when Ike tries to help a hard-luck cattleman named Chas Stubblefield, he triggers Chas's resentment...

Father Herman Hoffman, a gifted and innocent young priest who, during his first parish appointment, gets swept up in the "Crisis" after witnessing child abuse in the parish rectory. When he reports the abuse, he is rebuffed by the archbishop and, vilified for denouncing a priest who has been "cleared" by the police, learns the harsh fate of the whistleblower in the contemporary Catholic Church. Later, forced to testify in a court hearing, Father Hoffman...

With hits like Election and Joe College to his credit, author Tom Perrotta has established himself as a master of satire. Unhappily married Sarah passes her days at the local playground with her three-year-old daughter. When happily unemployed Todd (also married) and Sarah meet, their attraction is immediate. They begin a passionate affair just as their suburban utopia is rattled by the arrival of registered sex offender Ronald James McGorvey. With...

"A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror"--

Charles Ashworth, the bishop of Starbridge, is a man of great accomplishment, confidence, and conviction. Within the Church, he has earned a reputation as a strong, efficient, no-nonsense bishop. Outside the Church, he is known as “Anti-Sex Ashworth.” But when Ashworth's beloved wife dies, a profound crisis of his faith begin. unexpectedly and with brutal force. As bereavement overwhelms his spiritual equilibrium, his strict morality is quickly...

Without her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions.

Ella Turner does her best to fit in to the small, close-knit community of Lisle-sur-Tarn. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and learns French. In vain. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, which leads to her encounter with the town's wolfish librarian. Isabelle du Moulin, known as Le Rousse due to her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in the village suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association...

It is 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, a mental institution known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital's most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses the cascading events leading up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them.

Fortune hasn't been kind to 66-year-old Mattie Gifford. Her mother committed suicide, her husband slept with her best friend, and she can't stand her three selfish daughters. But she does love her son, Sonny, who nevertheless plunges her into deep despair when he takes two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's trailer. Sonny claims to have seen John Lennon's face in an apparition and gets his own mug on the television news. Beaming Sonny Home...