Washoe County Library System

In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels, that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age, the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism.

"Peggy Orenstein's Girls & Sex broke ground, shattered taboos, and galvanized conversations about young women's right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unintended effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. To understand girls and sex, we also need to talk about boys and sex. Today's young men are subject to the same cultural forces as their female peers. They are steeped...

Dr. Wilbur Larch, saint and obstetrician, founder and director of an orphanage in rural St. Cloud, Maine in first half of this century, is an ether addict and abortionist. He is also the mentor of Homer Wells, an orphan who is never adopted.

"Tell your story walking." St. Vincent's Home for Boys, Brooklyn, early 1970s. For Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. The Human Freakshow, a victim of Tourette's syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects), Frank Minna is a savior. A local tough guy and fixer, Minna shows up to take Lionel and three of his fellow orphans on mysterious errands: they empty a store of stereos as the owner watches; destroy...

A collection of letters written to young people that address a number of issues from predominately Hispanic and African-American men that include single parenthood, sexually transmitted diseases, the allure of materialism, and the power of words and faith.

A New York lawyer, dominated by a demanding Jewish mother, plays out a sexual revenge in fact and fantasy

Dickens' great coming-of-age novel, now in a beautiful new clothbound edition. This is the novel Dickens regarded as his "favourite child" and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the 'umble Uriah Heep,...

Determined to collect a seventy dollar debt from an old friend in the Marines, Norwood Pratt travels to New York, meeting eccentric characters along the way.

A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke Pappas has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.