Washoe County Library System

Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardy's early work, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna...

After his wife dies Thaddeus Davenant, owner of a country estate in England, advertises for a nanny for their baby but finds no one suitable. One candidate, however, decides the palatial surroundings would suit her very well and she is ready to do anything to obtain the job. The result is drama.

First published in 1936, We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state. We the Living is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a...

Little Nell and her grandfather are left destitute when the evil Quilp seizes their Old Curiosity Shop in payment for their overdue debts.

"A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning,...

When a young Ramona falls in love with a handsome Indian, her family turns away from her and the young couple is forced to begin a life as social outcasts ""If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro," wrote Helen Hunt Jackson, "I would be thankful the rest of my life." Jackson surpassed this ambition with the publication of Ramona, her popular 1884 romantic bestseller. A beautiful...

"The stream itself runs through a small valley in a scenic but depressed rural area. When a plan gets underway to build an industrial park, though, and the promise of new jobs and a dramatically different way of life take hold, the tranquil co-existence of man and animal begins to deteriorate. Clark depicts the changes that take place in the stream, charting the gradual but devastating effects on the plants and animals and, especially, on one particular...