Washoe County Library System

A young man, blessed with loving parents and a safe home in a world where want and neglect abound, leaves this haven in search of himself. He joins the Samanas, a band of wandering ascetics without possessions or earthly ties. His quest unfulfilled, he descends into a life of unbounded luxury and indulgence. Where is truth? Where will his soul find true ease? In denial? In decadence? Or in some truth far greater than himself, so simple, so close to...

""Pride and Prejudice" is a 1813 romantic novel by seminal English author Jane Austen. The story revolves around Elizabeth Bennet, a 20-year-old English woman who, as she matures, must learn the difference between the superficial and the necessary. Elizabeth, her five sisters, and their father live on Longbourn estate, a large property that will not be inherited by any of his daughters when their father dies. Because of this, it is vital that at least...

Engaging the services of a miniaturist to furnish a cabinet-sized replica of her new home, 18-year-old Nella Oortman, the wife of an illustrious merchant trader, soon discovers that the artist's tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways.

When her sister Julia's new--and much older--husband is found dead the morning after their hasty marriage, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady's maid, Eva, must discover the killer before the Renshaws' social standing is irreparably damaged by a murder charge.

"The "original, first-rate, serious, and beautiful" short fiction (New York Times Book Review) that introduced J. D. Salinger to American readers in the years after World War II, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and the first appearance of Salinger's fictional Glass family. Nine exceptional stories from one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and frequently affecting, Nine Stories sits alongside Salinger's...

The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together in one volume, with a new preface, two bestsellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, by an "important humorist in the classic tradition" (The New York Times Book Review) who is "the natural successor to Dorothy Parker" (British Vogue). In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life: its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions....

Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central concern. Alva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America's great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. Ignored by New York's old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built 9 mansions, hosted...

'"People were poorer and had not the comforts, amusements, or knowledge we have today; but they were happier.' Lark Rise to Candleford is Flora Thompson's classic evocation of a vanished world of agricultural customs and rural culture. The trilogy of Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green tells the story of Flora's childhood and youth during the 1880s in Lark Rise, in reality Juniper Hill, the hamlet in Oxfordshire where she was born....

It is 1916 and the Hunters, their friends and their servants are settling down to the business of war. As conscription reaches into every household, Britain turns out men and shells in industrial numbers from army camps and munitions factories up and down the land. Bobby, the second Hunter son, gains his wings and joins his brother in France. Ethel, the under housemaid, embarks on a quest and Laura Hunter sets out on her biggest adventure yet. Diana,...