National Network for Equitable Library Service

On any given day, Janice Itwaru might be found trolling the streets of Queens for drugs. Janice is an "uncle"--an undercover narcotics officer--trying to meet the impossibly high quota of drug busts needed to make detective, or be sent back down to uniformed patrol. So Janice is out there in her secondhand hoochie skirt, trying to get potential drug dealers--criminals, addicts, dumb kids, whomever--to commit a felony on her behalf.

"Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California-born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks: what do you do when someone you love wants to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife on an afternoon chilled by the Baltic wind while both are painting in their studio. Her portrait model has cancelled; would he slip into a pair of women's shoes and stockings for a few moments so she can finish the painting on time? 'Of course,' he answers.

Boston painter Claire Roth has survived financially by painting reproductions, so when influential gallery owner Aiden Markel arrives with a bizarre proposal--her own show if she will forge a copy of a Degas, one of the pictures stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum--she says yes. As she works, Claire and Aiden become lovers, but she doesn't tell him about her discovery that the stolen Degas is itself a copy. This knowledge is Claire's lifeline when the finished forgery is discovered, Aiden and then Claire are both arrested, and only she can save them.

Former policeman Holland Taylor of St. Paul is hired by a beautiful gubernatorial candidate to retrieve from a blackmailer a compromising video tape. When Taylor arrives at the rendezvous to collect the tape, he finds the blackmailer dead and the tape missing.

Old Order Mennonite Annie Martin has developed feelings for Old Order Amish Aden Zook. Will the couple commit to be together in the midst of deeply drawn dividing lines and potential family hardship or sacrifice their personal feelings for their vows to their churches, for the good of the Plain communities, and the traditions they honor so much?

A wealthy and depressed man bound for Christmas in Hawaii is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. During his stay, he reaches an epiphany worthy of the season and resolves to simplify his life.

Kristina Snow returns home to give birth, a rape-induced pregnancy that occurs in the prequel novel, Crank. Kristina spirals into a dark depression when she cannot recover her pre-baby shape and returns to using to regain control of her weight. Like its predecessor, Glass is written in free verse and portrays the hopeless prison of addiction.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of cultures and generations. In "A temporary matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth, while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.

The original American full dramatization as broadcast on National Public Radio. The fellowship is broken; the quest to destroy the ring seems already shrouded in disaster. But as the evil lord Sauron readies his armies for war, Frodo and Sam continue their lonely journey toward Mordor, guided only by Gollum--a deceitful and tortured creature, helplessly in thrall to the Ring's dark power.

Nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski reflects back on his wild and wondrous days with a circus. It's the Depression Era and Jacob, finding himself parentless and penniless, joins the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. There he meets the freaks, grifters, and misfits that populate this world. He introduces us to Marlena, beautiful star of the equestrian act; to August, her charismatic but twisted husband (and the circus's animal trainer); and to Rosie, the seemingly untrainable elephant Jacob cares for.