Helen Plum Library

Ruth is a worldly former war correspondent now bored in retirement with a drinking problem and a newly fractured leg. Sam is her unruly grandson, recently kicked out of boarding school and grieving the death of his mother. When the two are brought together under the same roof, they form an unexpected bond

The Beautiful and the Damned is Fitzgerald's character study of American Eastern elites and the insecurities underpinning the courtship and marriage of his protagonists Anthony and Gloria. Drawing upon his own trouble marriage to Zelda Sayres, Fitzgerald paints a picture of the realities and hardships of a relationship where the two members tend towards selfishness and alcoholism. Published in 1922, it was Fitzgerald's second novel and predecessor...

Chronicling the adventures of an eccentric, resilient and tight-knit family. A remarkable story of unconditional love. A young woman who, influenced by the joyfully wild nature of her deeply dysfunctional father, found the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms

During a visit to Venice, Professor David Ullman--one of the world's leading authorities on demonic literature--witnesses a terror in a tiny attic room. Then his 12-year-old daughter Tess disappears before his eyes, and he must find her while confronting an unspeakable darkness along the way

"Since Shelbi enrolled at Windward Academy as a senior and won't be there very long, she hasn't bothered making friends. What her classmates don't know about her can't be used to hurt her--you know, like it did at her last school. Andy Criddle is not okay. At all. He's had far too much to drink. Again. Which is bad. And things are about to get worse. When Shelbi sees Andy at his lowest, she can relate. So she doesn't resist reaching out. And there's...

Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their lives

[This book] is [an] account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games - games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."--Back...

An alcoholic drifter comes into the life of a lonely widow and her young son in the barren flatlands of Texas. But when Mac is revealed to be a once-famous country singer, he must confront a painful past that includes his bitter superstar ex-wife

"An autobiography of Rodney King, who was the defendent in the judicial case that sparked the L.A. Riots in 1992"--Provided by publisher