Bandon Public Library

The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist intersect at an estate called Howards End. There, the lives of three families become entangled. The Wilcoxes, who own the estate, are a wealthy family who made their fortune in the American colonies. The Schlegel siblings-Margaret, Helen, and Tibby-are lively socialites whose spirited and active lifestyles are...

"Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened loss -...

The adventures of an orphaned young man in Victorian England who is given a great deal of money by an unknown benefactor to enable him to live as a gentleman, pursuing a good education and fulfilling great expectations.

When male students from Briarwood join the all-girl Octavian Country Day at the beginning of eighth grade, Massie makes a rule that none of the girls on the Pretty Committee can have anything to do with them, trying to protect the girls' social status

Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution,...

Immediately recognized as a masterpiece when it was first published in 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is an extraordinary coming-of-age story featuring one of the most independent and strong-willed female protagonists in all of literature. Poor and plain, Jane Eyre begins life as a lonely orphan in the household of her hateful aunt and then is sent to the Lowood School, a situation even worse. She becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where...

"Speak up for yourself - we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows that this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only...

To avoid scandal, Lady Georgiana is shipped home to Castle Rannoch where her summer plans include honoring a promise to Her Majesty to keep Castle Rannoch's divorceé houseguest from seducing the Prince of Wales. She's also been coerced into helping Scotland Yard with a top-secret mission--namely keeping an eye on the shooting party at Balmoral and preventing someone from shooting the Prince. And Georgie must manage all this without strangling her...

The Queen of England has concocted a plan in which Lady Georgie is to entertain a Bavarian princess and conveniently place her in the playboy Prince's path, in the hopes that he might finally marry. But queens never take money into account. Georgie has very little, which is why she moonlights as a maid-in-disguise. She must draw up plans: clean house to make it look like a palace; have Granddad and her neighbor pretend to be the domestic staff; un-teach...

"Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters--each more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next--dominate the English scenes. Though they've weathered scandals before, the family falls into disarray when Diana divorces her wealthy husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows her sister's lead all the way to Munich, inciting rumors that she's become Hitler's mistress. As the Nazis rise in power, novelist Nancy Mitford grows suspicious...