Washoe County Library System

Uncle Tom's Cabin is arguably the most controversial novel ever written by an American. The impetus for the story was the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, which required all residents of the United States to report to the proper authorities any knowledge they may have had of the whereabouts of escaped slaves.

The critique of greed and inhumanity, innocence and redemption, continues to spark debate about the role and the...

Rosie and Abigail are like family, Ina Merriweather used to say. That is, until the day Ina cast out her housekeeper, Rosie, and her fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail. Abigail felt deeply betrayed, especially by Ina's daughter Lila, who was her closest friend. Now, twenty-five years later, an old score is about to be settled, and an old love rekindled. Abigail is now a self-made woman who has built an empire out of the homemaking skills she learned...

The psychologically charged affairs between residents and servants on a posh London street escalate to violence involving a handsome valet who is sleeping with a lord's wife and daughter, an au pair who aids her mistress's affair, and a disturbed gardener.

An interpretation of the American classic refutes statements about the work's dehumanizing qualities as cited by James Baldwin in 1955, explaining how it served to raise period awareness about slavery and abolitionism and continues to provide insight into modern race relations and other social issues.

A couple in a deteriorating relationship are involved in a fatal car accident on their way to an annual wild party at a friend's house deep in the Moroccan desert and must deal with the repercussions. David and Jo Henniger, a doctor and a children's book author, in search of an escape from their less than happy lives in London, accept an invitation to attend a bacchanal at their old friends' home, deep in the Moroccan desert. But as a groggy David...

Rollo Martins' usual line is the writing of cheap paperback Westerns under the name of Buck Dexter. But when his old friend Harry Lime invites him to Vienna, he jumps at the chance. With exactly five pounds in his pocket, he arrives only just in time to make it to his friend's funeral. The victim of an apparently banal street accident, the late Mr. Lime, it seems, had been the focus of a criminal investigation, suspected of nothing less than being...