National Network for Equitable Library Service

Bleak House follows the fortunes and relationships of three characters whose fates are tied to the obscure inheritance case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which is tied up in endless litigation. While many deserving and undeserving claim the inheritance, it is ironically being devoured in legal costs.

Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe--a quest that yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.

A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, survives an explosion that kills his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in as an orphan, he becomes entranced by the one thing that reminds him of his mother: a painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld.

This is the story of Santiago, a shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a worldly treasure. From his home in Spain, he journeys to Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him.

Reissued now in hardcover with a new introduction by the author, Cormier's chilling look at the insidious world of gang intimidation and the abuse of power in a boys' boarding school is no less relevant today than it was in 1974. Stunned by his mother's recent death and appalled by the way his father sleepwalks through life, Jerry Renault, a New England high school student, ponders the poster in his locker. Do I dare disturb the universe? Part of his universe is Archie Costello, leader of a secret school society, the Virgils, and master of intimidation.

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-Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973-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. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the long-awaited new novel'a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan'from the award-winning, internationally best-selling author Haruki Murakami. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.

Follows the individual odysseys of fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura after he runs away from his home and overbearing father, and Nakata, an elderly finder of lost cats fleeing a gruesome murder, as they both head to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu.

Thea Kronberg has a voice that can call down angels and the soul of a Colorado pioneer girl. But as she develops her talents and devotes herself to the life of an artist, she must consider the cost of the creative path she follows.

A young Kentucky miner grows up in the Appalachian Mountains, where he's torn between his family and the lure of the city.