Washoe County Library System

Penguin Classics commemorates the 50th anniversary of Steinbeck's Nobel Prize with two stunning new editions of his best-loved worksAt age fifty-eight, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. This chronicle of their trip meanders from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Still evocative and awe-inspiring after fifty years, Travels with Charley in Search of America provides an intimate look...

In vivid poems that reflect the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, an award-winning author shares what it was like to grow up in the 1960s and 1970s in both the North and the South.

"This book contains some stories from my life: the awkward growing-up years, the confusing dating years, the fulfilling work years, and what it was like to be asked to play one of my favorite characters again. Also included: tales of living on a houseboat, meeting guys at awards shows, and that time I was asked to be a butt model. A hint: all three made me seasick. -- Lauren Graham".

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness...

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met, a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves...

"The story of how a doodling kid grew up to become Dr. Seuss"--

"The definitive, fascinating, all-reaching biography of Dr. Seuss Dr. Seuss is a classic American icon. His work has defined our childhoods and the childhoods of our own children. More than twenty-five years after his death, his books continue to find new readers, now grossing over half a billion dollars in sales. His whimsical illustrations and silly, simple rhymes are timeless favorites because, quite simply, he makes us laugh. Theodor Geisel, however,...

"A searing and brave memoir that offers a new understanding of suicide as a distinct mental illness. As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalizations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials,...

A compendium of all the short fiction of Truman Capote includes such pieces as "Children on Their Birthdays" and "A Christmas Memory," as well as such lesser-known tales as "Master Misery" and "Jug of Silver." Most readers know Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood; or they remember his notorious social life and wild and witty public appearances. But he was also the author of superb short tales that were as elegant...

A current death-row inmate relates the story of his life--including heroin-addict parents, an abusive foster family, a life of crime and imprisonment, and his eventual embracing of Buddhism. "When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose." The moving memoir of...