Helen Plum Library

"Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he...

Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in fifteenth-century China According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian--born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness--is...

"A young woman gets pulled into Estée Lauder's enigmatic orbit as the future cosmetic icon prepares to take the world by storm. From the USA Today bestselling author of The Social Graces and Park Avenue Summer comes a story of friendship, glitz, and glamour in 1940s New York. New York City, 1938. Gloria Downing is done with lies. Eager to distance herself from a family scandal, what she needs is a total makeover and a friend she can lean on-and into...

A celebration of Langston Hughes and African American authors he inspired, told through the lens of the party held at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1991

They could have been allies: two self-made millionaires who invented a global industry, in an era when wife and mother were supposed to be the highest goals for their sex. Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein each founded empires built on grit and determination...and yet they became locked in a feud spanning three continents, two world wars, and the Great Depression. Brought up in poverty, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden changed popular opinion, persuading...

"Socialite Edith Bolling has been in no hurry to find a new husband since she was widowed, preferring to fill her days with good friends and travel. But the enchanting courting of President Woodrow Wilson wins Edith over and she becomes the First Lady of the United States. The position is uncomfortable for the fiercely independent Edith, but she's determined to rise to the challenges of her new marriage--from the bloodthirsty press to the shadows...

Arriving in Hollywood to become an actress, Anna May Wong discovers her beauty and talent aren't enough to overcome the racism that relegates her to supporting roles and, over the years, fights to win lead roles, accept risqué parts, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden-even as she finds global stardom At the dawn of a new century, America is falling in love with silent movies. Wong Liu Tsong and her sister, daughters of Chinese immigrants who...

"While men have long been credited with producing the first abstract paintings, the true creator was actually a woman - Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who was inspired by her mystic visions. Acclaimed authors Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, and M.J. Rose bring her story to life in this groundbreaking novel. Early 1900s: The world belongs to men, and the art world in Stockholm, Sweden, is no different, until Hilma af Klint brings together a mysterious...

"How did sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne write literary landmarks Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey? What in their lives and circumstances, in the choices they made, and in their close but complex relationships with one another made such greatness possible? In her new novel, Rachel Cantor melds biographical fact with unruly invention to illuminate their genius, their bonds of love and duty, periods of furious creativity, and the ongoing...

"In one of his most accomplished, compelling novels yet, acclaimed New York Times bestseller Jeff Shaara accomplishes what only the finest historical fiction can do - he brings to life one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history - Theodore Roosevelt - peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, from the waning days of the rugged frontier...