Wasatch County Library

Twenty years after the trial of Tom Robinson, Scout returns home to Maycomb to visit her father. There, she struggles with personal and political issues, as her small Alabama town adjusts to the turbulent events beginning to transform the United States in the mid-1950s.

Swanns Way, by Marcel Proust, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, 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 Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

At first glance, wheat farming may not appear to be a scintillating topic for a novel, but in the hands of renowned social realist Frank Norris, this seemingly quotidian activity is transformed into a fascinating analysis of the economic factors that spurred the expansion into the western United States. The first novel in a planned trilogy that Norris never completed, The Octopus: A Story of California is an enlightening and gratifying read.

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"Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, the work follows Jean Valjean, a victim of society who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and mayor of a northern town. Despite this he is haunted by an impulsive, regretted former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector Javert. Valjean eventually...

Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It's a snapshot of Dublin society in the early 20th century, capturing the lives of ordinary people in various stages of their existence. The stories are interconnected thematically, offering a vivid portrayal of the city and its inhabitants. The collection consists of 15 stories, each exploring different facets of human experience, often with a focus on the mundane...

Joe Christmas, who appears to be white but is part African-American, kills Joanna Burden, a spinster with whom he has had an affair. He is captured, castrated, and killed by outraged townspeople.

This 1899 semi-autobiographical collection of stories about boys at a British boarding school in North Devon focuses on three chums-the eponymous Stalky, McTurk, and Beetle-who were stand-ins for Kipling himself and his boyhood friends. Rowdy and amusing, the stories are among Kipling's freshest.

The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's classic saga of the privileged von Trotta family, encompasses the entire social fabric of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before World War I. The author's greatest achievement, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times.

The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.

This “very remarkable novel”—first in the acclaimed Alexandria Quartet—tells a haunting story of love, desire, and deception in the Egyptian city pre-WWII (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).
 Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between World Wars I and II, Justine is the first installment in the distinguished Alexandria Quartet. Here Lawrence Durrell crafts an exquisite and...