Cranston Public Library

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that--if he can find it--would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences...

An aging Cuban fisherman, alone in a small skiff, catches a magnificent marlin and must defy the sea, marauding sharks, and his own flagging strength to bring his great catch home.

The Decameron (c.1351) is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions....

The last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, published posthumously in 1986, charts the life of a young American writer and his glamorous wife who fall for the same woman.
A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young...

"A major new novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels. Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining...

'From the Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, the haunting sequel to The Childhood of Jesus, continuing the journey of David, Simon, and Ines. "When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins." David is...

The ambitions, dreams, failings, and innermost thoughts of a diverse group of passengers are revealed as they travel aboard a bus along the backroads of California.

This single volume, blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy includes an introduction, maps of Dante's Italy, Hell, Purgatory, Geocentric Universe, and political panorama of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, diagrams and notes providing the reader with invaluable guidance.

An aviator, whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert, encounters a little man from a small planet who describes his adventures in the universe, seeking the secret of what is really important in life.

Twenty-year-old Bethany Schrock is restless. Her love life has derailed, her faith hangs by a thread, and she's spending the hot summer days wading through a lifetime's accumulation of junk at the home of five ancient Amish sisters. About the only distraction is the dangerously handsome -- and irritating -- Jimmy Fisher. Getting involved at the local soup kitchen and starting a community garden helps, but a childhood mystery continues to plague Bethany....