On The Lighter Side (SCPL)

Ellen is putting the finishing touches on a wedding quilt made from scraps of old dresses when the bride-to-be-her granddaughter June-unexpectedly arrives and announces she's calling off the marriage. With the tending of June's uncertain heart in mind, Ellen tells her the story of Nell, a Kansas-born woman who goes to the High Plains of New Mexico Territory in 1898 in search of a husband. Working as a biscuit-shooter, Nell falls for a cowboy named...

"Jameela Green only has one wish. To see her memoir on The New York Times bestseller list. When her dream doesn't come true, she seeks spiritual guidance at her local mosque. New imam and recent immigrant Ibrahim Sultan is appalled by Jameela's shallowness, but agrees to assist her on one condition: that she perform a good deed. Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a chain of absurd and unfortunate events. The homeless man they try and...

Pull up a lounge chair and have a cocktail at Sunset Beach - it comes with a twist. Drue Campbell's life is adrift. Out of a job and down on her luck, life doesn't seem to be getting any better when her estranged father, Brice Campbell, a flamboyant personal injury attorney, shows up at her mother's funeral after a twenty-year absence. Worse, he's remarried - to Drue's eighth grade frenemy, Wendy, now his office manager. And they're offering her a...

"Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor...

"In the small town of Granite Creek, Minnesota, Haze Evans suffers a stroke at the age of 89 and slips into a coma. Haze is a local legend, having written a daily column in the Granite Creek Gazette for fifty years running"--

"Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient...

"P.R. Chandrasekhar, the celebrated professor of economics at Cambridge, is at a turning point. He has sacrificed his family for his career, but his conservative brand of economics is no longer in fashion, and yet again he has lost the Nobel Prize to a rival. His wife has left him for a free spirited West Coast psychiatrist and relocated to Boulder, Colorado. His son, a capitalist guru with a cult following, mocks his father's life work; his middle...

A novel that spans fifty years. The Italian housekeeper and his long-lost American starlet; the producer who once brought them together, and his assistant. A glittering world filled with unforgettable characters.

"Nancy Harrison is running for Senate, and she's going to win, goddamnit. Not that that's her slogan, although it could be. She's said all the right things. Passed all the right legislation. Chapped her lips kissing babies. There's just one problem: her grown children. Greta and Nick Harrison are adrift. Nick is floundering in his attempts to write a musical about the life of Joan Didion (called Hello to All That!). And then there's his little sister...