Washoe County Library System

Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching in Tokyo in the 1960s, is set on a life-changing quest when her Japanese surrogate mother, Michi, dies, leaving her a tansu of homemade plum wines wrapped in rice paper. Within the papers Barbara discovers writings in Japanese calligraphy that comprise a startling personal narrative. With the help of her translator, Seiji Okada, Barbara begins to unravel the mysteries of Michi's life, a story that begins...

"An English professor struggling for tenure discovers that her ex-fiance has just become the president of her college--and her new boss--in this whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen's classic Persuasion. Anne Corey is about to get schooled. An English professor in California, she's determined to score a position on the coveted tenure track at her college. All she's got to do is get a book deal, snag a promotion, and boom! She's in. But then...

"The bestselling, Thurber-prize winning author of Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement completes her hilarious trilogy of academic mishap by chronicling the beleaguered Professor Fitger as he leads the annual "Experience Abroad" to London and beyond with eleven clueless undergrads in tow. Jason Fitger may be the last faculty member the dean wants for the job, but he's the only Professor available to chaperone Payne University's annual...

"Ivan is a tightly wound philosophy professor whose reverence for logic and order governs not only his academic interests, but also his closest relationships. His wife, Prue, is quite the opposite: a pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is young and beautiful, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them. Might it have something to do with...

Offered a fantastic job in a rising star's political campaign on condition that she will work abroad and return to Washington after spending a dream year at Oxford, Ella clashes with, and then falls for, an outspoken literature professor with a life-changing secret that forces her to rethink her ambitions. Set amidst the breathtaking beauty of Oxford, this sparkling debut novel tells the unforgettable story about a determined young woman eager to...

"J. P. Monninger, author of the international bestseller The Map That Leads to You, the novel Nicholas Sparks called "romantic and unforgettable", tells a poignant love story of the ways the world divides two souls-and the way that love brings them together. Kate Moreton is in Ireland on sabbatical from her teaching position at Dartmouth College when she meets Ozzie Ferriter, a fisherman and a veteran of the American war in Afghanistan. The Ferriter...

"Mitsuki Katsura, a Japanese woman in her mid-fifties, is a French language instructor at a private university in Tokyo. Her husband, whom she met in Paris, where he ardently wooed her, is a professor at a different private university. He is having an affair with a much younger woman. In addition to her husband's infidelity, Mitsuki must deal with her ailing eighty-something mother, a demanding, self-absorbed woman who is nothing like the idealized...

"A powerful, intimate novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open City “A remarkable performance from one of the most brilliant and singular minds at work today.”&#٬٢٠١٤؛Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling. A weekend spent antiquing...

"San Francisco in the 1970s. Free love has given way to radical feminism, psychedelic ecstasy to hard-edged gloom. The Zodiac Killer stalks the streets. A disgraced professor takes an office in a downtown tower to plot his return. But the walls are thin and he's distracted by voices from next door--his neighbor is a psychologist, and one of her patients dislikes the hum of the white-noise machine. And so he begins to hear about the patient's troubles...

"English professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter confronts a Big Tech billionaire to solve the suspicious suicide of a former student The world of Big Tech is full of eccentric characters, but shamanic billionaire Gerald Byrne may be the strangest of the bunch. The founder of Byrner, a global social media platform, Byrne is known for speaking with vague profundity and for dabbling in esoteric spiritual practices; he wears his hair in a long black ponytail...