Helen Plum Library

Émile Zola was one of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement. In 1871 Zola began to write his most notable series of novels, the "Rougon-Macquart Novels", that relate the history of a fictional family under the Second Empire. As a strict naturalist, Zola was greatly concerned with science, especially the problems of evolution and heredity vs. environment. However,...

Paddington Bear brings the Brown family to a Christmas spectacular at Barkridges and ends up making a spectacular mess

The daughter of an Italian immigrant family in 1950 Greenwich Village, Lucia Sartori pursues a career in the fashion industry until she falls in love with a handsome stranger, who must win over her traditional family to marry her

"The Caseys and the Yorks share a history laced with bitterness. But when Diandra Casey and Greg York- rivals since childhood- are forced to work together, competing family legacies and the uncovering of family disputes are not the only things they struggle with. The hostile atmosphere suddenly becomes charged with something quite different - something hot, primal, and eternal - a love they're powerless to deny." --

Two brothers take summer jobs at a department store where a series of peculiar events brings them under suspicion

When professional fashionista Haley Randolph is cursed by an irate customer and then experiences a run of bad luck, including the discovery of a dead former classmate in the menswear department, she races against time to catch the real killer

A web of friendship, love, and secrets runs through the Irish town of Ardagh and Kenny's Department Store

When merchandise starts to disappear, Nancy takes a job putting up Christmas decorations at Albemarle's department store to look for the thief

When retail worker Haley Randolph stumbles across the dead body of Lacy Hobbs, who was recently hired by L.A. Affairs to bake a six-foot yellow submarine for high-maintenance Sheridan Adams's A-list charity auction, Haley is blamed for the theft of collectible Beatles bobbleheads and begins to wonder if her new boss Vanessa Lord is trying to sabotage her

"Two weeks before Christmas and all through Manhattan, shop windows are decorated in red and green satin. I'm standing alone in front of the famous Vivant department store, when a charming man named Aiden asks my opinion of the décor. It's a tragedy in tinsel, I say, unable to lie. He asks for a better idea with a twinkle in his eye. Did I know he owned the place? No. He put me on the spot. Now I'm working for that man, trying to ignore that he's...