Washoe County Library System

A British stockbroker abandons his wife and career to pursue a simple life as an artist in Tahiti. Charles Strickland rebels against his life as a London stockbroker and decides to abandon civilization and his family to pursue a career as a painter in the South Pacific. Inspired by the life of the French painter, Paul Gauguin, Maugham portrays a 19th century gentleman who abandons his profession and family to pursue his art in Paris. Through this...

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great DepressionOver seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbecks tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of Americas most widely read and taught novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. They hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George...

Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line...

In war-torn England, WWII U.S. soldier Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop is targeted by British intelligence. His map of sexual conquests exactly matches the map created by locations of recent German rocket bombs. Slothrop flees the suspicious superpowers in an attempt to find the mysterious Rocket 00000, which may hold the answers.

The three short novels that make up this book are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of 'The Thirteen' remain...

A new edition of the author's first published novel focuses on the adventures of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and who now fears their retaliation. Reprint.

Recounts the adventures of a band of Jews--former Soviet soldiers and concentration camp survivors--who battle the retreating German army in the closing days of World War II

"The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the Holocaust, from the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism Sparking a flurry of heated debate, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript...

In Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck's beautifully rendered depictions of small yet fateful moments that transform ordinary lives, these twelve early stories introduce both the subject and style of artistic expression that recur in the most important works of his career. Each of these self-contained stories is linked to the others by the presence of the Munroes, a family whose misguided behavior and lack of sensitivity precipitate disasters and tragedies....