Cranston Public Library

A sanitorium in the Swiss Alps reflects the societal ills of pre-twentieth-century Europe, and a young marine engineer rises from his life of anonymity to become a pivotal character in a story about how a human's environment affects self identity. In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting...

In an era of bootlegged whiskey and muddled race relations, faith and medicine are failing the patients at the Waverly Hills tuberculosis sanatorium. Dr. Wolfgang Pike believes music could play a pivotal role in his patients' care--but his boss's disapproval, rising racial tensions, and past memories tear at him.

The beloved actor and screenwriter's second novel, set in 1903, stars a young concert violinist named Jeremy Webb, who one day goes from accomplished adagios with the Cleveland Orchestra to having a complete breakdown on stage. If he hadn't poured a glass of water down the throat of a tuba, maybe he wouldn't have been sent to a health resort in Badenweiler, Germany. But, it's in that serene place that Jeremy meets Clara Mulpas, whom he tries his hardest...

The story involves a young man (Hans Castorp), who visits a cousin in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps before World War I. After manifesting symptoms of tuberculosis, he remains there for seven years. The characters he meets during this time forms a microcosm of pre-war Europe and represents a classic example of the German Bildungsroman. The work was instrumental in winning Mann the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1929.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Healing Sands Sanitarium, southwest of Seattle, Washington, sits on the sandy doorstep of the Pacific Ocean. Famed for its restorative rest cures, fermented diets, and Dr. Hornsby's electrotherapeutics, no one has ever died at Healing Sands. Until now. When Professor Bradshaw is summoned to investigate, he knows this was no accident, but his only clue to foul play is as insubstantial as smoke - to anyone other than...

Tensions and problems of life in a tuberculosis sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps, and the tragic love story of a vivacious girl and a grand prix race-track driver.

"Following on the heels of her exciting and widely acclaimed A Monster's Notes, and with Sheck's characteristic brilliance of language, Island of the Mad follows the solitary, hunchbacked Ambrose A., as he sets out on a mysterious journey to Venice in search of a lost notebook he knows almost nothing about. Eventually he arrives in San Servolo, the Island of the Mad, in the Venetian Lagoon, only a few minutes' boat-ride from Venice. At the island's...