Books for English as a Second Language Students and Others: Uncommon Women and Others
Books in the ESL Collection, located at the Worthington Atlantic City library and in our Ebook Collections.
Found Something to Read? Here's How to Get It!
All books listed in this guide are either available in print on the ESL shelves in the Atlantic City Worthington Center Library at Atlantic Cape, or in the library's eBook collections from the vendor Ebsco. Look at the book's call number to determine where the books are.
Books with call numbers that start out with the location AC ESL can be found in the library. Copy the call number, or click on the link to see the catalog record for the book.
Books with a call number that starts out with the word EBSCO are digital. Click on the link to open the record for the book, then click on the link to the full text to begin reading.
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Rubyfruit Jungle
by
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first milestone novel in the extraordinary career of one of this country's most distinctive writers. Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America – and living happily ever after. Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor Southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy the tub and loses her virginity to her girlfriend in sixth grade. As she grows to realize she's different, Molly decides not to apologize for that. In no time she mesmerizes the head cheerleader of Ft. Lauderdale High and captivates a gorgeous bourbon-guzzling heiress. But the world is not tolerant. Booted out of college for moral turpitude, an unrepentant, penniless Molly takes New York by storm, sending not a few female hearts aflutter with her startling beauty, crackling wit and fierce determination to become the greatest filmmaker that ever lived. Critically acclaimed when first published, Rubyfruit Jungle has only grown in reputation as it has reached new generations of readers who respond to its feisty and inspiring heroine.
Call Number: AC ESL PR6073.I558 R8 1988ISBN: 9780553278866Publication Date: 1983-04-01 -
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
by
Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles.
Call Number: AC ESL PR6073.I558 O7 1985ISBN: 9780802135162Publication Date: 1997-08-20 -
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3515.U789 T6 2006ISBN: 9780060931414Publication Date: 1998-12-01 Lexile 890 -
Waiting to Exhale
by
The critically acclaimed novel about four women who learn how to carry on while leaning on each other from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and It's Not All Downhill From Here. When the men in their lives prove less than reliable, Savannah, Bernadine, Gloria, and Robin find new strength through a rare and enlightening friendship as they struggle to regain stability and an identity they don't have to share with anyone. Because for the first time in a long time, their dreams are finally OFF hold.... "Hilarious, irreverent...Reading Waiting to Exhale is like being in the company of a great friend...thought-provoking, thoroughly entertaining, and very, very comforting."--The New York Times Book Review
Call Number: AC ESL PS3563.C3868 .W35 2006ISBN: 9780451233424Publication Date: 2011-06-07 Lexile 710 -
West of the Jordan
by
This is a brilliant and revelatory first novel by a woman who is both an Arab and an American, who speaks with both voices and understands both worlds. Through the narratives of four cousins at the brink of maturity, Laila Halaby immerses her readers in the lives, friendships, and loves of girls struggling with national, ethnic, and sexual identities. Mawal is the stable one, living steeped in the security of Palestinian traditions in the West Bank. Hala is torn between two worlds-in love in Jordan, drawn back to the world she has come to love in Arizona. Khadija is terrified by the sexual freedom of her American friends, but scarred, both literally and figuratively, by her father's abusive behavior. Soraya is lost in trying to forge an acceptable life in a foreign yet familiar land, in love with her own uncle, and unable to navigate the fast culture of California youth. Interweaving their stories, allowing us to see each cousin from multiple points of view, Halaby creates a compelling and entirely original story, a window into the rich and complicated Arab world.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3608.A5455 W47 2003ISBN: 9780807083598Publication Date: 2003-06-15 -
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
by
In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of "Revolutionist Returnees" inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it builds on the personal narrative of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, this book confirms Maya Angelou's stature as one of the most gifted autobiographers of our time.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.N464 Z463 1991ISBN: 9780679734048Publication Date: 1991-06-04Lexile 1320 -
Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family's erratic and eccentric behavior--such as her father Johnny's taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy's habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce--no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans' life lacked drama. By turns overwhelming, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the Nolans' daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life--from "junk day" on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that "cuts right to the heart of life," hails the New York Times. "If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experience."
Call Number: AC ESL PS3537.M2895 T7 2006ISBN: 9780061120077Publication Date: 2006-05-30 Lexile 810 -
House on Mango Street
by
The bestselling coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3553.I78 H6 2009ISBN: 9780679734772Publication Date: 1991-04-03 Lexile 870 -
Hunger Games
by
The first novel in the worldwide bestselling series by Suzanne Collins!Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . . In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7 .C683 2008ISBN: 9780439023481Publication Date: 2008-10-01 Lexile 810 -
Little Women
by
One of the best loved books of all time. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, spoiled Amy: these are hard lessons of poverty and of growing up in New England during the Civil War. Through their dreams, plays, pranks, letters, illnesses, and courtships, women of all ages have become a part of this remarkable family and have felt the deep sadness when Meg leaves the circle of sisters to be married at the end of Part I. Part II, chronicles Meg's joys and mishaps as a young wife and mother, Jo's struggle to become a writer, Beth's tragedy, and Amy's artistic pursuits and unexpected romance. Based on Louisa May Alcott's childhood, this lively portrait of nineteenth- century family life possesses a lasting vitality that has endeared it to generations of readers. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Call Number: AC ESL PS 1017 .L5 1989ISBN: 9780140390698Publication Date: 1989-01-01 Lexile 1300 -
Caucasia
by
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness.Then their parents' marriage falls apart. Their father's new black girlfriend won't even look at Birdie, while their mother gives her life over to the Movement: at night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive with bundles shaped like rifles.One night Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole-they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never find in the States. The next morning-in the belief that the Feds are after them-Birdie and her mother leave everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and-most disturbing of all-their identity. Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother finally make their home in New Hampshire. Desperate to find Cole, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world-so that when she sets off in search of her sister, she is ready for what she will find.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3569.E618 C3 1998ISBN: 9781573220910Publication Date: 1998-02-02 -
Passing
by
Larsen's status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurston's. This Norton Critical Edition of her electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplan's detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text.An unusually rich "Background and Contexts" section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from 1911 to 1935--by Langston Hughes, Juanita Ellsworth, and Caleb Johnson, among others--provide a nuanced view of the contemporary cultural dimensions of race and passing, both in America and abroad. Also included are Larsen's statements on the novel and on passing, as well as a generous selection of her letters and her central writings on "The Tragic Mulatto(a)" in American literature. Additional perspective is provided by related Harlem Renaissance works."Criticism" provides fifteen diverse critical interpretations, including those by Mary Helen Washington, Cheryl A. Wall, Deborah E. McDowell, David L. Blackmore, Kate Baldwin, and Catherine Rottenberg.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3523.A7225 P37 2007ISBN: 9780393979169Publication Date: 2007-09-04 -
Color Purple
by
Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3573.A425 C7 2003ISBN: 9780156031820Publication Date: 2006-11-01 Lexile 690 -
Awakening
by
Kate Chopin's riveting, daring story of one woman's search for personal freedom was so far ahead of its time that its publication in 1899 aroused a storm of controversy violent enough to end its author's career. With an effortless, sure-handed artistry, Chopin tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young mother and model wife, whose romantic involvement with a young man during a vacation at a seaside resort allows her for the first time to imagine a new, freer life. Upon her return to New Orleans, Edna leaves her husband's home for her own cottage and begins an affair, only to discover that the constraints of social custom may be more powerful than she thought. Contemporary readers and reviewers were shocked by the frank, unapologetic treatment of adultery in The Awakening. The fact that we have the book at all is the most convincing tribute to its enduring, irrepressible power. Introduction by Elaine Showalter (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Call Number: AC ESL PS1294.C63 A64 1992ISBN: 9780679417217Publication Date: 1992-11-03 Lexile 1030 -
Awakening
by
Kate Chopin was one of the most individual and adventurous of nineteenth-century american writers, whose fiction explored new and often startling territory. When her most famous story, The Awakening, was first published in 1899, it stunned readers with its frank portrayal of the inner word of Edna Pontellier, and its daring criticisms of the limits of marriage and motherhood. The subtle beauty of her writing was contrasted with her unwomanly and sordid subject-matter: Edna's rejection of her domestic role, and her passionate quest for spiritual, sexual, and artistic freedom. From her first stories, Chopin was interested in independent characters who challenged convention. This selection, freshly edited from the first printing of each text, enables readers to follow her unfolding career as she experimented with a broad range of writing, from tales for children to decadent fin-de siecle sketches. The Awakening is set alongside thirty-two short stories, illustrating the spectrum of the fiction from her first published stories to her 1898 secret masterpiece, "The Storm."
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9780192823007Publication Date: 2000-07-27 Lexile 1030 -
Annie John
by
"Annie John "is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of "The Catcher in the Rye "and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, "Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. Annie's voice--urgent, demanding to be heard--is one that will not soon be forgotten by readers. An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived." When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."
Call Number: AC ESL PR9275.A583 K5634 1985ISBN: 9780374105211Publication Date: 1985-06-01 Lexile 1130 -
Black and Blue
by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Intimate and illuminating and, as is true of most anything Quindlen writes, well worth the read."--People For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son's face, Fran finally made a choice--and ran for both their lives. Now she is starting over in a city far from home, far from Bobby. In this place she uses a name that isn't hers, watches over her son, and tries to forget. For the woman who now calls herself Beth, every day is a chance to heal, to put together the pieces of her shattered self. And every day she waits for Bobby to catch up to her. Bobby always said he would never let her go, and despite the ingenuity of her escape, Fran Benedetto is certain of one thing: It is only a matter of time. Praise for Black and Blue "Heartbreaking."--Time "Beautifully paced--keeps the reader anxiously turning the pages."--New York Times Book Review "A gut-wrencher--another stunner."--Denver Post "Impossible to put down--the tension is both awful and mesmerizing."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Engrossing--compassionate and tense."--New York Times "Her best novel yet."--Publishers Weekly "Absolutely believable--Quindlen writes with power and grace."--Boston Globe "A moving masterpiece."--Lexington Herald-Leader
Call Number: AC ESL PS3567.U336 B58 2010ISBN: 9780812980493Publication Date: 2010-03-30 Lexile 1000 -
Caddie Woodlawn
by
This Newbery Award winning book . . . has been reprinted with a charming reminiscence by the author about her grandmother Caddie . . . Told with style and grace and teamed with . . . fresh new illustrations, the story of Wisconsin frontier life in the 1860s will continue to attract readers today.--School Library Journal, starred review.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7 .B78 2006ISBN: 9780689713705Publication Date: 1990-02-28 Lexile 890 -
Fever 1793
by
From Fever 1793 "Where's Polly?" I asked as I dropped the bucket down the well. "Did you pass by the blacksmith's? "I spoke with her mother, with Mistress Logan," Mother answered softly, looking at her neat rows of carrots. "And?" I waved a mosquito away from my face. "It happened quickly. Polly sewed by candlelight after dinner. Her mother repeated that over and over, 'she sewed by candlelight after dinner.' And then she collapsed." I released the handle and the bucket splashed, a distant sound. "Matilda, Polly's dead." August 1793. Fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook is ambitious, adventurous, and sick to death of listening to her mother. Mattie has plans of her own. She wants to turn the Cook Coffeehouse into the finest business in Philadelphia, the capital of the new United States. But the waterfront is abuzz with reports of disease. "Fever" spreads from the docks and creeps toward Mattie's home, threatening everything she holds dear. As the cemeteries fill with fever victims, fear turns to panic, and thousands flee the city. Then tragedy strikes the coffeehouse, and Mattie is trapped in a living nightmare. Suddenly, her struggle to build a better life must give way to something even more important -- the fight to stay alive.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7 .A54 2000ISBN: 9780689838583Publication Date: 2000-09-01 Lexile 580 -
Fever 1793
by
An epidemic of fever sweeps through the streets of 1793 Philadelphia in this novel from Laurie Halse Anderson where "the plot rages like the epidemic itself" (The New York Times Book Review). During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out. Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish mother's insistence, Mattie flees the city with her grandfather. But she soon discovers that the sickness is everywhere, and Mattie must learn quickly how to survive in a city turned frantic with disease.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9780689848919Publication Date: 2002-03-01Lexile 580 -
Half Broke Horses
by
Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly). Now she brings us the story of her grandmother -- told in a voice so authentic and compelling that the book is destined to become an instant classic. "Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane, and, with her husband, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle. Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. It will transfix readers everywhere.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3623.A3644 H35 2009ISBN: 9781416586289Publication Date: 2009-10-06 -
Ivy Tree
by
Mary Grey had come from Canada to the land of her forebears: Northumberland. As she savored the ordered, spare beauty of England's northern fells, the silence was shattered by the shout of a single name: "Annabel!" And there stood one of the angriest, most threatening young men Mary had ever seen. His name was Connor Winslow, and Mary quickly discovered that he thought she was his cousin--a girl supposedly dead these past eight years. Alive, she would be heiress to an inheritance Connor was determined to have for himself. This remarkably atmospheric novel is one of bestselling-author Mary Stewart's richest, most tantalizing, and most surprising efforts, proving her a rare master of the genre.
Call Number: AC ESL PR6069.T46 I9 2007ISBN: 9781556527265Publication Date: 2007-09-01 Lexile 790 -
Kira-Kira
by
kira-kira (kee ra kee ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7.K1166 K57 2006ISBN: 9780689856402Publication Date: 2006-12-26 Lexile 740 -
Little House on the Prairie
by
Based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie is the third book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams. Laura Ingalls and her family are heading to Kansas! Leaving behind their home in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, they travel by covered wagon until they find the perfect spot to build a little house on the prairie. Laura and her sister Mary love exploring the rolling hills around their new home, but the family must soon get to work, farming and hunting and gathering food for themselves and for their livestock. Just when the Ingalls family starts to settle into their new home, they find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict. Will they have to move again? The nine books in the timeless Little House series tell the story of Laura's real childhood as an American pioneer, and are cherished by readers of all generations. They offer a unique glimpse into life on the American frontier, and tell the heartwarming, unforgettable story of a loving family.
Call Number: AC ESL Audiokit PZ7 .W6461 1971ISBN: 9780064400022Publication Date: 2008-04-08 Lexile 760 -
Metro Girl
by
A spectacular new novel, complete with high stakes, hot nights, murder and graft--not to mention car chases, car races, car explosions, and car--well, you get the idea Alexandra Barnaby got the brains in her family. The little gray cells certainly bypassed Barney's younger brother, Wild Bill. Now Bill's missing, so Barney is dispatched to Florida in the middle of summer with the bugs and the heat and the bad-hair-day humidity. Barney's thinking things can't get too much worse as she makes the rounds of South Beach, unemployed and sunburned, following her brother's trail of broken-hearted bimbos. Too bad for Barney--she's wrong about the getting worse part. Enter Sam Hooker. Somebody's stolen his boat and the trail leads to--you guessed it--Wild Bill. Hooker decides to follow Barney and see if she can lead him to his boat. In the world of Evanovich, Sam Hooker and Alexandra Barnaby, in their quest to reclaim what's theirs, blast through Florida from Daytona straight on to Key West, exposing a plot to grab Cuban land and to lay waste the people involved. Cussing and tasteless sexual innuendo included.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3555.E92 M48 2004ISBN: 9780060584023Publication Date: 2005-09-27 -
Northanger Abbey
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The earliest of her six major novels, NorthangerAbbey remained unpublished until after Jane Austen's death. A deliciously witty satire of popular Gothic romances, it is perhaps Austen's lightest, most delightful excursion into a young woman's world. Catherine Morland, an unlikely heroine--unlikely because she is so ordinary--forsakes her English village for the pleasures and perils of Bath. There, among a circle of Austen's wonderfully vain, dissembling, and fashionable characters, she meets a potential suitor, Henry Tilney. But with her imagination fueled by melodramatic novels, Catherine turns a visit to his home, Northanger Abbey, into a hunt for dark family secrets. The result is a series of hilarious social gaffes and harsh awakenings that for all of Austen's youthful exuberance nevertheless conveys her mature vision of literature and life--and the consequences of mistaking one for the other.
Call Number: AC ESL PR 4034 .N7 2007ISBN: 9780553211979Publication Date: 1999 Lexile 1120 -
Picture Bride
by
Carrying a photograph of the man she is to marry but has yet to meet, young Hana Omiya arrives in San Francisco, California, in 1917, one of several hundred Japanese "picture brides" whose arranged marriages brought them to America in the early 1900s. Her story is intertwined with others: her husband, Taro Takeda, an Oakland shopkeeper; Kiku and her husband Henry, who reject demeaning city work to become farmers; Dr. Kaneda, a respected community leader who is destroyed by the adopted land he loves. All are caught up in the cruel turmoil of World War II, when West Coast Japanese Americans are uprooted from their homes and imprisoned in desert detention camps. Although tragedy strikes each of them, the same strength that brought her to America enable Hana to survive.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3571.C247 P5 1997ISBN: 9780295976167Publication Date: 2003-12-01 Lexile 910 -
Sold
by
The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award Finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt-then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave. Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words-Simply to endure is to triumph-and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision-will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life? Written in spare and evocative vignettes by the co-author of I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition), this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.
Call Number: AC ESL HQ 281 .M43 2008ISBN: 9780786851720Publication Date: 2008-04-01 Lexile 820 -
Valencia
by
Valencia is the fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the drama-filled dyke world of San Francisco's Mission District. Michelle Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3570.E15 V35 2008ISBN: 9781580052382Publication Date: 2008-04-15 -
Cranford
by
The novel Cranford grew out of a short story (now the first two chapters) and it reads like a series of episodes in the fictional town of Cranford. The central characters are Mary Smith and her friends, the spinster sisters Miss Matty and Miss Deborah. It is a quaint, comedic ode to small town life, and remains Gaskell's most famous work.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781775416456Publication Date: 2009-08-01 -
Emma
by
Emma Woodhouse is sure she'll never marry, and she's proud of it. However, that doesn't stop her from considering herself the village matchmaker. Though her friend, Harriet Smith, is already in love with a man who loves her back, Emma is positive she can find Harriet a better match. Through a set of embarrassing mishaps, unrequited love, and a secret relationship, Emma may find that her matchmaking skills need a little work. And, just maybe, there is someone on the horizon for her after all. Originally published in 1816 in the UK, this unabridged version of Jane Austen's classic comedy of manners illustrates the hazards of messing with others' relationships.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9781467775342Publication Date: 2014-08-01 Lexile 990 -
Pride and Prejudice
by
Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters need husbands, according to their mother. When Mr. Bingley, a handsome, wealthy bachelor, moves in nearby and his equally suitable friends come for visits, Mrs. Bennet's hope soars. Yet Elizabeth finds one of the friends, Mr. Darcy, arrogant and conceited, and her opinion of him worsens when she discovers he has thwarted the relationship between Mr. Bingley and her sister Jane. Romance, heartbreak, and satire weave throughout the story to show the dangers of judging by first impressions and being too prideful to follow one's heart. This is an unabridged version of Jane Austen's delightful comedy, which was first published in 1813 and has remained a popular English novel for more than 200 years.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9781467732390Publication Date: 2014-01-03 Lexile 1190 -
Letter to Harvey Milk
by
This poignant and humorous collection of stories offers a fresh perspective on current issues such as homosexuality and anti-Semitism and lends a unique voice to those experiencing growing pains and self-discovery. Newman's readers accompany her quirky Jewish characters through all types of experiences from an initial lesbian sexual encounter to being sequestered in a college apartment after paranoid Holocaust flashbacks. In these stories characters anxiously discover their lesbian identities while beginning to understand, and finally to embrace, their Jewish heritage. The title story, "A Letter to Harvey Milk," was the second place finalist in the Raymond Carver Short Story Competition.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9780299205744Publication Date: 2004-08-30
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Red Azalea
by
A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, this is Anchee Min's celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao's China. As a child, Min was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao's political operas, Min's life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. This national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose which Newsweek calls "as delicate and evocative as a traditional Chinese brush painting."
Call Number: AC ESL DS 778.7 .M56 2006ISBN: 9781400096985Publication Date: 2006-04-11 Lexile 640 -
Coming of Age in Mississippi
by
The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement--a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person's ability to affect change. "Anne Moody's autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage."--Chicago Tribune Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was . . . the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life. A straight-A student who realized her dream of going to college when she won a basketball scholarship, she finally dared to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC, she experienced firsthand the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement--and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs, and deadly force that were used to destroy it. A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation's destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement. Praise for Coming of Age in Mississippi "A history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed . . . a timely reminder that we cannot now relax."--Senator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review "Something is new here . . . rural southern black life begins to speak. It hits the page like a natural force, crude and undeniable and, against all principles of beauty, beautiful."--The Nation "Engrossing, sensitive, beautiful . . . so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down."--San Francisco Sun-Reporter
Call Number: AC ESL E185.97.M65 A3 2004ISBN: 9780385337816Publication Date: 2004-02-03 Lexile 870 -
Across a Hundred Mountains
by
Winner of the American Book Award, Across a Hundred Mountains is a "timely and riveting" (People) novel about a young girl who leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his family to work in America--a story of migration, loss, and discovery. After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves in search of her father, who left them two years earlier. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding themselves--in a Tijuana jail--in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected of ways. In Across a Hundred Mountains, Reyna Grande puts a human face on the controversial issue of immigration, helping readers to better understand "the desperation of illegal immigrants and the families they leave behind" (Entertainment Weekly) in pursuit of a better life.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3607.R3627 A63 2007ISBN: 9780743269582Publication Date: 2007-05-15 -
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
by
This revolutionary, award-winning play by a lauded playwright and poet is a fearless portrayal of the experiences of women of color--"extraordinary and wonderful...that anyone can relate to" (The New York Times) and continues to move and resonate with readers today more than ever. From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975 when it was praised by The New Yorker for "encompassing...every feeling and experience a woman has ever had," for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3569.H3324 F6 2010ISBN: 9780684843261Publication Date: 1997-09-01 -
Gather Together in My Name
by
In this second volume of her poignant autobiographical series, Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humor, and humanity. "A curiously heartening story in which decency, honor, truth, love do exist, imperfectly, fractionally and flickeringly, not in some Platonic realm of the ideal, but in the flawed lives of real men and women."--The Washington Post Gather Together in My Name continues Maya Angelou's personal story, begun so unforgettably in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The time is the end of World War II and there is a sense of optimism everywhere. Maya Angelou, still in her teens, has given birth to a son. But the next few years are difficult ones as she tries to find a place in the world for herself and her child. She goes from job to job-and from man to man. She tries to return home-back to Stamps, Arkansas-but discovers that she is no longer part of that world. Then Maya's life takes a dramatic turn, and she faces new challenges and temptations.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.N464 Z464 2009ISBN: 9780812980301Publication Date: 2009-04-21 Lexile 800 -
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
by
Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this bestselling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to be treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power of spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou's latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth on every page. Maya Angelou speaks out . . . On Faith: "I'm taken aback when people walk up to me and tell me they are Christians. My first response is the question 'Already?' It seems to me a lifelong endeavor to try to live the life of a Christian. It is in the search itself that one finds ecstasy." On Racism: "It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color." On Taking Time for Ourselves: "Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. A day away acts as a spring tonic. It can dispel rancor, transform indecision, and renew the spirit." On Death and Grieving: "When I sense myself filling with rage at the absence of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns should be focused on what I can learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life?" On Style: "Style is as unique and nontransferable and perfectly personal as a fingerprint. It is wise to take the time to develop one's own way of being, increasing those things one does well and eliminating the elements in one's character which can hinder and diminish the good personality."
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.N464 W68 1994ISBN: 9780553569070Publication Date: 1994-10-01 Lexile 1190 -
Annie on My Mind
by
This groundbreaking book, first published in 1982, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. From the moment Liza Winthrop meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she knows there is something special between them. But Liza never knew falling in love could be so wonderful . . . or so confusing. Of the author and the book, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee said, "Nancy Garden has the distinction of being the first author for young adults to create a lesbian love story with a positive ending. Using a fluid, readable style, Garden opens a window through which readers can find courage to be true to themselves." The 25th Anniversary Edition features a full-length interview with the author by Kathleen T. Horning, Director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center. Ms. Garden answers such revealing questions as how she knew she was gay, why she wrote the book, censorship, and the book's impact on readers - then and now. "No single work has done more for young adult LGBT fiction than this classic about two teenage girls who fall in love." --School Library Journal
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7 .G165 2007ISBN: 9780374400118Publication Date: 2007-02-20 Lexile 1000 -
Bonesetter's Daughter
by
The first time Amy Tan - The New York Times best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Hundred Secret Senses - learned her mother's real name as well as that of her grandmother was on the day she died. It happened as Tan and several sidblings - unified by a need to feel helpful instead of helpless - gathered to discuss their dying mother's past and prepare her obituary. Tan was stunned when she realized she had not known her own mother's birth name. It was just one of several surprises. In the act of writing a simple obituary Tan came to realize there was still so much she did not know about her. Soon afterwards she began rewriting the novel she had been working on for five years. Inspired by her own experiences with family secrets kept by one generation from the next, and drawn from a lifetime of questions and images, the result is The Bonesetters's Daughter.The story begins when Ruth Young, a ghostwriter of self-help books, comes across a clipped stack of papers in the bottom of a desk drawer. Young has been caring for her ailing mother, LuLing, who is beginning to show the unmistakable signs of Alzheimer's disease. Written in Chinese by LuLing years earlier, when she first started worrying something was wrong with her memory, the papers contain a narrative of LuLing's life as a girl in China, and the life of her own mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the village of Xian Xin - Immortal Heart - near the Mouth of the Mountain. Within the calligraphed pages Ruth finds the truth about a mother's heart, what she cannot tell her daughter yet hopes her daughter will never forget. With her latest novel Amy Tan explores the changing place one has in a family of names that were nearly forgotten. Just as she herself has done, Tan shows Ruth finding the secrets and fragments of her mother's past - its heartfelt desires, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes - and with each new discovery reconfiguring her assessment of the woman who shaped her life, who is in her bones. The extent to which Tan's newest novel mixes pure fiction with elements of autobiography is made clear by Tan herself. In acknowledgements of The Bonesetter's Daughter she writes, "The heart of this story belongs to my grandmother, its voice to my mother."
Call Number: AC ESL PS3570.A48 B6 2008ISBN: 9780399146435Publication Date: 2001-02-19 Lexile 800 -
Catching Fire
by
Suzanne Collins continues the amazing story of Katniss Everdeen in the phenomenal Hunger Games trilogy.Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7.C6837 C37 2009ISBN: 9780439023498Publication Date: 2009-09-01 Lexile 820 -
Handmaid's Tale
by
First published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader is unable to forget its images and its forecast. With more than two million copies in print, it is Margaret Atwood's most popular and compelling novel. Set in the near future, it describes life in what once was the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. Reacting to social unrest, and a sharply declining birthrate, the new regime has reverted to -- even gone beyond -- the repressive tolerance of the original Puritans. Offred is a Handmaid who may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant because she is only valued as long as her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now. Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.
Call Number: AC ESL PR9199.3.A8 H36 1998ISBN: 9780395404256Publication Date: 1986-02-01 Lexile 750 -
Woman Hollering Creek
by
A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3553.I78 W66 1992ISBN: 9780679738565Publication Date: 1992-03-03 Lexile 960 -
Bread Givers
by
This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3547.E95 B74 2003ISBN: 9780892552900Publication Date: 2003-08-01 -
In Love and Trouble
by
Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidence of Walker’s power to depict black women-women who vary greatly in background yet are bound together. “One of the most important, grieving, graceful, and honest writers ever to come into print” (June Jordan).
Call Number: AC ESL PS3573.A425 I5 1973ISBN: 9780156444507Publication Date: 1974-03-20 -
Abeng
by
Ever since Abeng was first published in 1984, Michelle Cliff has steadily become a literary force. Her novels evoke both the clearly delineated hierarchies of colonial Jamaica and the subtleties of present-day island life. Nowhere is her power felt more than in Clare Savage, her Jamaican heroine, who appeared, already grown, in No Telephone to Heaven. Abeng is a kind of prequel to that highly-acclaimed novel and is a small masterpiece in its own right. Here Clare is twelve years old, the light-skinned daughter of a middle-class family, growing up among the complex contradictions of class versus color, blood versus history, harsh reality versus delusion, in a colonized country. In language that surrounds us with a richness of meaning and voices, the several strands of young Clare's heritage are explored: the Maroons, who used the conch shell--the abengmdash;to pass messages as they fought a guerilla struggle against their English enslavers; and the legacy of Clare's white great-great-grandfater, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. A lyrical, explosive coming-of-age story combined with a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica, this novel is a triumph.
Call Number: AC ESL PR9265.9.C55 A63 1995ISBN: 9780452274839Publication Date: 1995-09-01 -
Bastard Out of Carolina
by
A profound portrait of family dynamics in the rural South and "an essential novel" (The New Yorker) "As close to flawless as any reader could ask for . . . The living language [Allison] has created is as exact and innovative as the language of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye." --The New York Times Book Review The publication of Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina was a landmark event that won the author a National Book Award nomination and launched her into the literary spotlight. Critics have likened Allison to Harper Lee, naming her the first writer of her generation to dramatize the lives and language of poor whites in the South. Since its appearance, the novel has inspired an award-winning film and has been banned from libraries and classrooms, championed by fans, and defended by critics. Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family--a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard-drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney--and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.L453 B37 2012ISBN: 9780452297753Publication Date: 2012-02-01 Lexile 900 -
Bluest Eye
by
The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3563.O8749 B55ISBN: 9780452273054Publication Date: 1994-09-01 Lexile 920 -
Curious Wine
by
The intimacy of a cabin at Lake Tahoe provides the combustible circumstances that bring Diana Holland and Lane Christianson together in this passionate novel of first discovery. Candid in its eroticism, intensely romantic, remarkably beautiful, CURIOUS WINE is a love story that will remain in your memory.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3556.O737 F57 2011ISBN: 9781594932557Publication Date: 2011-04-19 -
Gathering Blue
by
Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever. As she did in THE GIVER, Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve, and what could be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira's plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7.L967 G37 2000ISBN: 9780547995687Publication Date: 2012-09-25 Lexile 680 -
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
by
The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North. Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like "garret" attached to her grandmother's porch. A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman's determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family.
Call Number: AC ESL E444.J17 A3 2001ISBN: 9780486419312Publication Date: 2001-11-09 Lexile 740 -
Jane Eyre
by
&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RJane Eyre&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RCharlotte Bronte&&L/B&&R, is part of the&&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R&&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&R New introductions commissioned from today''s top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader''s viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader''s understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&RImmediately recognized as a masterpiece when it was first published in 1847, &&LB&&RCharlotte Brontë&&L/B&&R''s &&LI&&RJane Eyre&&L/I&&R is an extraordinary coming-of-age story featuring one of the most independent and strong-willed female protagonists in all of literature. Poor and plain, Jane Eyre begins life as a lonely orphan in the household of her hateful aunt. Despite the oppression she endures at home, and the later torture of boarding school, Jane manages to emerge with her spirit and integrity unbroken. She becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she finds herself falling in love with her employer--the dark, impassioned Mr. Rochester. But an explosive secret tears apart their relationship, forcing Jane to face poverty and isolation once again. &&LP&&ROne of the world''s most beloved novels, &&LI&&RJane Eyre&&L/I&&R is a startlingly modern blend of passion, romance, mystery, and suspense. &&L/P&&R&&LP&&R&&LB&&RSusan Ostrov Weisser&&L/B&&R is a Professor of English at Adelphi University, where she specializes in nineteenth-century literature and women''s studies. Her research centers on women and romantic love in nineteenth-century literature, as well as on contemporary popular culture. Weisser also wrote the introduction to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of &&LI&&RPersuasion&&L/I&&R. &&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R
Call Number: AC ESL PR 4167 .J3 2003ISBN: 9781593080075Publication Date: 2003-04-01 Lexile 840 -
Jane Eyre
by
Jane Eyre endures a harsh childhood as an orphan living first with her cruel aunt and later at a boarding school run by a callous headmaster. After completing school, Jane accepts a governess job taking care of a spirited young girl, and she secretly falls in love with her employer, the dark and brooding Mr. Rochester. But after he proposes, she discovers he has a secret with the power to destroy their relationship--and maybe even his life. Struggle, heartbreak, and redemption all play into this unabridged version of Charlotte Brontë's classic English novel, taken from the 1897 copyright edition and featuring original illustrations by F. H. Townsend.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9781467732413Publication Date: 2014-01-03 Lexile 840 -
Like Water for Chocolate
by
The bestselling phenomenon and inspiration for the award-winning film. Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico blends poignant romance and bittersweet wit. This classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef, using cooking to express herself and sharing recipes with readers along the way.
Call Number: AC ESL PQ7298.S6 E86 1995ISBN: 9780385420174Publication Date: 1995-10-01 Lexile 1030 -
Number the Stars
by
1990 Newbery Medal Winner As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen's family takes in Annemarie's best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her as part of the family. Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war. Winner of the 1990 Newbery Medal.
Call Number: AC ESL PS 3562.O923 N86 1989ISBN: 9780395510605Publication Date: 1989-04-24 Lexile 670 -
Little House on the Prairie
by
Based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie is the third book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams. Laura Ingalls and her family are heading to Kansas! Leaving behind their home in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, they travel by covered wagon until they find the perfect spot to build a little house on the prairie. Laura and her sister Mary love exploring the rolling hills around their new home, but the family must soon get to work, farming and hunting and gathering food for themselves and for their livestock. Just when the Ingalls family starts to settle into their new home, they find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict. Will they have to move again? The nine books in the timeless Little House series tell the story of Laura's real childhood as an American pioneer, and are cherished by readers of all generations. They offer a unique glimpse into life on the American frontier, and tell the heartwarming, unforgettable story of a loving family.
Call Number: AC ESL Audiokit PZ7 .W6461 1971ISBN: 9780064400022Publication Date: 2008-04-08 Lexile 760
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One for the Money
by
The dynamite blockbusterfrom Janet Evanovichthat started it all--now a major motion picture starring Katherine Heigl as Stephanie Plum! ONE FINE MESS Welcome to Trenton, New Jersey, home to wiseguys, average Joes, and Stephanie Plum, who sports a big attitude and even bigger money problems (since losing her job as a lingerie buyer for a department store). Stephanie needs cash--fast--but times are tough, and soon she's forced to turn to the last resort of the truly desperate: family... ONE FALSE MOVE Stephanie lands a gig at her sleazy cousin Vinnie's bail bonding company. She's got no experience. But that doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that the bail jumper in question is local vice cop Joe Morelli. From the time he first looked up her dress to the time he first got into her pants, to the time Steph hit him with her father's Buick, M-o-r-e-l-l-i has spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. And now the hot guy is in hot water--wanted for murder... ONE FOR THE MONEY Abject poverty is a great motivator for learning new skills, but being trained in the school of hard knocks by people like psycho prizefighter Benito Ramirez isn't. Still, if Stephanie can nab Morelli in a week, she'll make a cool ten grand. All she has to do is become an expert bounty hunter overnight--and keep herself from getting killed before she gets her man...
Call Number: AC ESL PS3555.V21 O5 1994ISBN: 9780312362089Publication Date: 2006-06-13 -
Purple Hibiscus
by
"One of the most vital and original novelists of her generation." --Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker From the bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home--a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father's authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins' laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together. Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.
Call Number: AC ESL PR9387.9.A34 P87 2012ISBN: 9781616202415Publication Date: 2012-04-17 Lexile 920 -
Speak
by
The first ten lies they tell you in high school. "Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself. Speakwas a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7 .A54385 1999ISBN: 9780374371524Publication Date: 1999-10-22 -
What Night Brings
by
What Night Brings focuses on a Chicano working-class family living in California during the 1960s. Marci--smart, feisty and funny--tells the story with the wisdom of someone twice her age as she determines to defy her family and God in order to find her identity, sexuality and freedom.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3620.R855 W48 2003ISBN: 9781880684948Publication Date: 2003-04-01 -
Blacker the Berry
by
A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, this novel was the first to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. The author, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers insightful reflections of the era's mood and spirit in an enduringly relevant examination of racial, sexual, and cultural identity.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9780486461342Publication Date: 2008-05-19 Lexile 1070 -
Daddy-Long-Legs
by
At the age of eighteen, the orphan Jerusha Abbott is plucked from the institution and put through college by a mysterious benefactor. His only condition is that she write him a letter every month, to practice the writers' craft. Her colorful letters about college life are accompanied by drawings from Webster's own pen.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781775417163Publication Date: 2009-12-01 Lexile 920 -
Moll Flanders
by
Daniel Defoe wrote Moll Flanders in 1722, after the highly successful Robinson Crusoe. Defoe's political work was ceasing at the time, though his experience with the Whigs shines through in the novel. The full title of the novel gives a brief overview of its contents: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who Was Born In Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety For Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife [Whereof Once To Her Own Brother], Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon In Virginia, At Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781775412526Publication Date: 2009-01-01 Lexile 1390 -
Training School for Negro Girls
by
When you're black and female in America, society's rules were never meant to make you safe or free. In this "flawlessly executed work [that] reinvigorates the short fiction genre," Camille Acker's relatable yet unexpected characters break down the walls of respectability politics, showing that the only way for black women to be free is to be themselves (BUST). In her debut short story collection, Camille Acker unleashes the irony and tragic comedy of respectability onto a wide-ranging cast of characters, all of whom call Washington, DC, home. A "woke" millennial tries to fight gentrification, only to learn she's part of the problem; a grade school teacher dreams of a better DC, only to take out her frustrations on her students; and a young piano player wins a competition, only to learn the prize is worthless. Ultimately, they are confronted with the fact that respectability does not equal freedom. Instead, they must learn to trust their own conflicted judgment and fight to create their own sense of space and self. "A timely, welcome book."--The Millions
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781936932375Publication Date: 2018-10-23
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Quicksand
by
Brave, bold, and brilliant, this ground-breaking first novel is the work of one of the Harlem Renaissance's most influential and enduring writers. Larsen's autobiographical portrait of a biracial woman's quest for self-identity and acceptance offers a cautionary tale of an individual lost between two cultures.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3523.A7225 Q55 2006ISBN: 9780486451404Publication Date: 2006-09-15 -
Wild Swans
by
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history--a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord's concubine; her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents' experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving--and ultimately uplifting--detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Call Number: AC ESL CT1828.C478 A3 2003ISBN: 9780743246989Publication Date: 2003-08-12 -
Lipstick Jihad
by
As far back as she can remember, Azadeh Moaveni has felt at odds with her tangled identity as an Iranian-American. In suburban America, Azadeh lived in two worlds. At home, she was the daughter of the Iranian exile community, serving tea, clinging to tradition, and dreaming of Tehran. Outside, she was a California girl who practiced yoga and listened to Madonna. For years, she ignored the tense standoff between her two cultures. But college magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Iran as a journalist. This is the story of her search for identity, between two cultures cleaved apart by a violent history. It is also the story of Iran, a restive land lost in the twilight of its revolution. Moaveni's homecoming falls in the heady days of the country's reform movement, when young people demonstrated in the streets and shouted for the Islamic regime to end. In these tumultuous times, she struggles to build a life in a dark country, wholly unlike the luminous, saffron and turquoise-tinted Iran of her imagination. As she leads us through the drug-soaked, underground parties of Tehran, into the hedonistic lives of young people desperate for change, Moaveni paints a rare portrait of Iran's rebellious next generation. The landscape of her Tehran -- ski slopes, fashion shows, malls and cafes -- is populated by a cast of young people whose exuberance and despair brings the modern reality of Iran to vivid life.
Call Number: AC ESL E184.I5 M63 2006ISBN: 9781586483784Publication Date: 2006-03-28 -
Funny in Farsi
by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir This Random House Reader's Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner! "Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America."--San Francisco Chronicle In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies?--a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey?--an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh's parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don't get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi). Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing--without an accent. Praise for Funny in Farsi "Heartfelt and hilarious--in any language."--Glamour "A joyful success."--Newsday "What's charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture. It's the brilliance of true sophistication at work."--Los Angeles Times Book Review "Often hilarious, always interesting . . . Like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures."--The Providence Journal "A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love--of family, country, and heritage."--Jimmy Carter "Delightfully refreshing."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "[Funny in Farsi] brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American."--San Jose Mercury News
Call Number: AC ESL E 184 .I5 D86 2004ISBN: 9780812968378Publication Date: 2004-01-13 Lexile 1030 -
Heart of a Woman
by
In The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to move to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers, reads her work at the Harlem Writers Guild, and begins to take part in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world. In the meantime, her personal life takes an unexpected turn. She leaves the bail bondsman she was intending to marry after falling in love with a South African freedom fighter, travels with him to London and Cairo, where she discovers new opportunities. The Heart of a Woman is filled with unforgettable vignettes of such renowned people as Billie Holiday and Malcom X, but perhaps most importantly chronicles the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America and how the son she has cherished so intensely and worked for so devotedly finally grows to be a man.
Call Number: ac eslISBN: 9780812980325Publication Date: 2009-04-21 -
Your Blues Ain't Like Mine
by
"ABSORBING...COMPELLING...HIGHLY SATISFYING." --San Francisco Chronicle "TRULY ENGAGING...Campbell has a storyteller's ear for dialogue and the visual sense of painting a picture and a place....There's a steam that keeps the story moving as the characters, and later their children, wrestle through racial, personal and cultural crisis." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "REMARKABLE...POWERFUL." --Time "YOUR BLUES AIN'T LIKE MINE is rich, lush fiction set in rural Mississippi beginning in the mid-'50s. It is also a haunting reality flowing through Anywhere, U.S.A., in the '90s....There's love, rage and hatred, winning and losing, honor, abuse; in other words, humanity....Campbell now deserves recognition as the best of storytellers. Her writing sings." --The Indianapolis News "EXTRAORDINDARY." --The Seattle Times "A COMPELLING NARRATIVE...Campbell is a master when it comes to telling a story." --Entertainment Weekly YOUR BLUES AIN'T LIKE MINE won the NAACP Image Award for Best Literary Work of Fiction
Call Number: AC ESL PS3553.A5599 Y68 2007ISBN: 9780345401120Publication Date: 1995-06-27 Lexile 880 -
Bell Jar
by
A beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition of this haunting American classic "It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." -- USA Today A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar an enduring classic.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3566.L27 B4 2006ISBN: 9780061148514Publication Date: 2013-06-11 Lexile 1050 -
Joy Luck Club
by
Master storyteller Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters in this New York Times bestseller. "The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational."--Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish--and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember...
Call Number: AC ESLPS3570.A48 J6 2006ISBN: 9780399134203Publication Date: 1989-03-22 Lexile 930 -
Mockingjay
by
The greatly anticipated final book in the New York Times bestselling Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest?Katniss Everdeen.The final book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins will have hearts racing, pages turning, and everyone talking about one of the biggest and most talked-about books and authors in recent publishing history!!!!
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7 .C6837 M66 2010ISBN: 9780439023511Publication Date: 2010-08-24 Lexile 800 -
Women of Brewster Place
by
The National Book Award-winning novel--and contemporary classic--that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor "[A] shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . . Miss Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly." --The New York Times Book Review In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects--a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Adapted into a 1989 ABC miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey, The Women of Brewster Place is a touching and unforgettable read. Now with a forword by Tayari Jones.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3564.A895 W6 1983ISBN: 9780140066906Publication Date: 1983-06-30 -
Woman on the Edge of Time
by
Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy's landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures--and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity--and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time "This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy's great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make."--Gloria Steinem "An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling."--Publishers Weekly "Connie Ramos's world is cuttingly real."--Newsweek "Absorbing and exciting."--The New York Times Book Review From the Trade Paperback edition.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3566.I4 W6 1983ISBN: 9780449210826Publication Date: 1985-11-12 -
Attack
by
From the bestselling author of The Swallows of Kabul comes this timely and haunting novel that powerfully illuminates the devastating human costs of terrorism.Dr. Amin Jaafari is an Arab-Israeli surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. As an admired and respected member of his community, he has carved a space for himself and his wife, Sihem, at the crossroads of two troubled societies. Jaafari’s world is abruptly shattered when Sihem is killed in a suicide bombing.As evidence mounts that Sihem could have been responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Jaafari begins a tortured search for answers. Faced with the ultimate betrayal, he must find a way to reconcile his cherished memories of his wife with the growing realization that she may have had another life, one that was entirely removed from the comfortable, modern existence that they shared.
Call Number: AC ESL PQ3989.2.K386 A88 2007ISBN: 9780307275707Publication Date: 2007-04-25 -
Possessing the Secret of Joy
by
From the author the New York Times Book Review calls "a lavishly gifted writer," this is the searing story of Tashi, a tribal African woman first glimpsed in The Color Purple whose fateful decision to submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated leads to a trauma that informs her life and fatefully alters her existence. Possessing the Secret of Joy, out of print for a number of years, was the first novel to deal with this controversial topic and managed to do so in a manner that Cosmopolitan called "masterful, honorable, and unforgettable storytelling." The New Press is proud to bring the book back into print with a new preface by the author addressing the book's initial reception and the changed attitudes toward female genital mutilation that have come about in part because of this book.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3573.A425 P67 2008ISBN: 9781595583642Publication Date: 2008-05-06 -
Anne of Green Gables
by
Anne of Green Gables has been one of the world's most charming coming-of-age stories for more than a century. Best-selling Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published the first book in her charming series in 1908, making it a literary favorite for more than a hundred years. Published as a children's novel, the story of Anne Shirley, an orphan, was inspired by the author's childhood adventures on rural Prince Edward Island. It follows Anne's journey as she moves to a farm on Prince Edward Island to live with a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them with farming chores. The story follows Anne as she makes a home and comes of age on the island. This chic and inexpensive edition comes with a heat-burnished cover, foil stamping, luxurious endpapers, and a smaller trim size that's easy to hold. The widely popular novel has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages since its first publication. About the Word Cloud Classics series: Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics provides a chic and inexpensive introduction to timeless tales. With a higher production value, including heat burnished covers and foil stamping, these eye-catching, easy-to-hold editions are the perfect gift for students and fans of literature everywhere.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7 .M768 2013ISBN: 9781607107286Publication Date: 2013-04-01 Lexile 990 -
Anne of Green Gables
by
Anne of Green Gables has been one of the world's most charming coming-of-age stories for more than a century. Best-selling Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published the first book in her charming series in 1908, making it a literary favorite for more than a hundred years. Published as a children's novel, the story of Anne Shirley, an orphan, was inspired by the author's childhood adventures on rural Prince Edward Island. It follows Anne's journey as she moves to a farm on Prince Edward Island to live with a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them with farming chores. The story follows Anne as she makes a home and comes of age on the island. This chic and inexpensive edition comes with a heat-burnished cover, foil stamping, luxurious endpapers, and a smaller trim size that's easy to hold. The widely popular novel has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages since its first publication. About the Word Cloud Classics series: Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics provides a chic and inexpensive introduction to timeless tales. With a higher production value, including heat burnished covers and foil stamping, these eye-catching, easy-to-hold editions are the perfect gift for students and fans of literature everywhere.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9781607107286Publication Date: 2013-04-01 Lexile 990
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Before We Were Free
by
890 Lexile.
Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.L845 B44 2004ISBN: 9780440237846Publication Date: 2004-04-13 Lexile 890 -
Bone Black
by
Using 61 short vignettes, the author describes growing up in a southern town as an African American rebel in a large family, & how she became the writer she is today.
Call Number: AC ESL E 185.97.H77 A3 1996ISBN: 9780805041453Publication Date: 1996-10-15 -
Dreaming in Cuban
by
"Impressive . . . [Cristina García's] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the 'sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,' as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré."--Time Cristina García's acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country's revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is "a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez" (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel's original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban "Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush."--San Francisco Chronicle "Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose."--The Washington Post "Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind."--The Denver Post
Call Number: AC ESL PS3557.A66 D73 1993ISBN: 9780345381439Publication Date: 1993-02-10 Lexile 940 -
Go Ask Alice
by
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24th After you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs... It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth--and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl's harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful--and as timely--today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ 7 .G534 2006ISBN: 9781416914631Publication Date: 2006-01-01 Lexile 930 -
Island of the Blue Dolphins
by
Scott O'Dell's Newbery Medal-winning classic is a gripping tale of survival, strength, and courage. Based on the true story of a Nicoleño Indian girl living alone on an island off the coast of California, Island of the Blue Dolphins has captivated readers for generations. On San Nicolas Island, dolphins flash in the surrounding blue waters, sea otter play in the vast kelp beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, a girl named Karana spent eighteen years alone. Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that killed her younger brother, constantly guard against Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. Her courage, self-reliance, and grit has inspired millions of readers in this breathtaking adventure.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7 .O237 1988ISBN: 9780547328614Publication Date: 2010-02-08 Lexile 1000 -
Julie of the Wolves
by
The thrilling Newbery Medal-winning classic about an Eskimo girl lost on the Alaskan tundra. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 6, especially during homeschooling. It's a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom. Julie of the Wolves is a staple in the canon of children's literature and the first in the Julie trilogy. The survival theme makes it a good pick for fans of wilderness adventures such as My Side of the Mountain, Hatchet, or Island of the Blue Dolphins. To her small Eskimo village, she is known as Miyax; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When her life in the village becomes dangerous, Miyax runs away, only to find herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness. Miyax tries to survive by copying the ways of a pack of wolves and soon grows to love her new wolf family. Life in the wilderness is a struggle, but when she finds her way back to civilization, Miyax is torn between her old and new lives. Is she Miyax of the Eskimos--or Julie of the wolves? Don't miss any of the books in Jean Craighead George's groundbreaking series: Julie of the Wolves, Julie, and Julie's Wolf Pack.
Call Number: AC ESL PZ7.G2933 J84 2003ISBN: 9780060540951Publication Date: 2003-09-16 Lexile 850 -
Mary Ann in Autumn
by
"An enormously talented writer. . . . By writing about what's seemingly different, Armistead Maupin always manages to capture what's so hilariously, painfully true for all of us." --Amy Tan, author of The Bonesetter's Daughter "Maupin writes with warmth, acuity and tremendous wit. . . . Read him." --Publishers Weekly Following the success of his New York Times bestseller Michael Tolliver Lives, Armistead Maupin's Mary Ann in Autumn is a touching portrait of friendship, family, and fresh starts, as the City by the Bay welcomes back Mary Ann Singleton, the beloved Tales of the City heroine who started it all. A new chapter begins in the lives of both Mary Ann and Michael "Mouse" Tolliver when she returns to San Francisco to rejoin her oldest friend after years in New York City...the reunion that fans of Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series have been awaiting for years.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3563.A878 M37 2010ISBN: 9780061470882Publication Date: 2010-11-02 -
Memory Mambo
by
Memory Mambo describes the life of Juani Casas, a 25-year-old Cuban-born American lesbian who manages her family's laundromat in Chicago while trying to cope with family, work, love, sex, and the weirdness of North American culture. Achy Obejas's writing is sharp and mordantly funny. She understands perfectly how the romance of exile - from a homeland as well as from heterosexuality - and the mundane reality of everyday life balance one another. Memory Mambo is ultimately very moving in its depiction of what it means to find a new and finally safe sense of home.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3565.B34 M4 1996ISBN: 9781573440172Publication Date: 1996-08-27 -
Missed Her
by
Ivan E. Coyote is a master storyteller and performer; their beautiful, funny stories about growing up queer in the Canadian north and living out loud on Canada's west coast have attracted big audiences, whether gay, straight, trans, or otherwise. In their passionate and humorous new collection, Ivan takes readers on an intimate journey, both literal and figurative, through the experiences of their life: from their year spent in eastern Canada, to their return to the west coast, to travels in between. Whether discussing the politics of being butch with a pet lapdog, befriending an effeminate young man at a gay camp, or revisiting a forty-year-old heartbreak around her grandmother's kitchen table, Ivan traverses love, gender, and identity with a wistful, perceptive eye and a warmth that's as embracing and powerful as Ivan themself.
Call Number: AC ESL PR9199.3.C66 M57 2010ISBN: 9781551523712Publication Date: 2010-08-31 -
Passing
by
Larsen's status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurston's. This Norton Critical Edition of her electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplan's detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text.An unusually rich "Background and Contexts" section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from 1911 to 1935--by Langston Hughes, Juanita Ellsworth, and Caleb Johnson, among others--provide a nuanced view of the contemporary cultural dimensions of race and passing, both in America and abroad. Also included are Larsen's statements on the novel and on passing, as well as a generous selection of her letters and her central writings on "The Tragic Mulatto(a)" in American literature. Additional perspective is provided by related Harlem Renaissance works."Criticism" provides fifteen diverse critical interpretations, including those by Mary Helen Washington, Cheryl A. Wall, Deborah E. McDowell, David L. Blackmore, Kate Baldwin, and Catherine Rottenberg.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3523.A7225 P37 2007ISBN: 9780393979169Publication Date: 2007-09-04
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Rebecca
by
Now a Netflix film starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, and Kristin Scott Thomas "Last Night I Dreamt I went to Manderley Again..." With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten--a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife--the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca. This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more. A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Call Number: AC ESL PR6007.U47 R4 2006ISBN: 9780380730407Publication Date: 2006-09-05 Lexile 880 -
Stories from Blue Latitudes
by
Stories from Blue Latitudes gathers the major and emerging women fiction writers from the Caribbean, including Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, Merle Collins, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall, and Pauline Melville. Similar themes grace their stories of life at home and abroad. In some, the sexual exploitation of Caribbean girls and women becomes a metaphor for neocolonialism, a biting rejoinder to enticing travel brochures that depict the Caribbean as a tropical playground and encourage Americans to "make it your own." Other tales deal with the sad legacy of colonial history and the ways in which race, skin colour, and class complicate relationships between men and women, parents and children.But whether writing about childhood or adulthood, life in the islands or life abroad, the writers express their particular concerns with a passion that comes from lived experience, and with a love of place and a feminist sensibility that are accessible to new readers of Caribbean literature as well as to an academic audience. "What matters is how well we have told our tale, how well we have drawn pictures of the people and places we write about, " Nunez says. And indeed, this anthology makes those pictures come alive.
Call Number: AC ESL PR 9205.8 .S76 2006ISBN: 9781580051392Publication Date: 2005-11-29 -
Wuthering Heights
by
"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind- not as a pleasure... but as my own being." WUTHERING HEIGHTS is the only novel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.
Call Number: AC ESL PR4172 .W8 2003ISBN: 9780553212587Publication Date: 1983-10-01 Lexile 870 -
Eight Cousins
by
Call Number: Ebsco eBook CollectionISBN: 9781781664827Publication Date: 2012-06-15 Lexile 1150 -
Mansfield Park
by
Fanny Price is born to a poor family, but is sent to her mother's rich relations to be brought up with her cousins. There she is treated as an inferior by all except her cousin Edmund, whose kindness towards her earns him her steadfast love. Fanny is quiet and obedient and does not come into her own until her elder cousins leave the estate following a scandalous play put on in their father's absence. Fanny's loyalty and love is tested by the beautiful Crawford siblings. But their essentially weak natures and morals show them for what they really are, and allow Fanny to gain the one thing she truly desires.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781775412304Publication Date: 2009-01-01 Lexile 1180 -
Old-Fashioned Girl
by
First serialized in a magazine, this classic tale of a country-raised girl whose whole world is turned upside down when she is sent to live with her sophisticated, wealthy relatives is brimming with the charms that have made Alcott's work, including the novel Little Women, so abidingly popular. A must-read for fans of classic children's literature, young and old alike.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781775419631Publication Date: 2010-10-01 Lexile 1290 -
Yellow Wallpaper
by
Doctor's orders confine a woman suffering from anxiety and depression to her bedroom, in an effort to prevent mental stimulation of any sort. Despite her forced "rest cure," she continues to write in her journal when her husband isn't looking. Her entries record her terrible and growing fascination with the hideous yellow wallpaper that dominates the room, documenting her slow descent into madness. This work by American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman was based on the author's own experiences. She knew firsthand that the nineteenth-century medical establishment often had dangerously misguided ideas about women's mental and physical health. It is considered to be a seminal feminist work by some, a prime example of Gothic horror by others. First published in 1892, this is an unabridged version of Gilman's controversial short story.
Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781512426236Publication Date: 2017-01-01 Lexile 1390
