Burlington Public Library

Hocus Pocus is the fictional autobiography of a West Point graduate who was in charge of the humiliating evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon rooftops at the close of the Vietnam War. Returning home from the war, he unknowingly fathered an illegitimate son. In 2001, the son begins a search for his father and catches up with him just in time to see him arrested for masterminding the prison break of 10,000 convicts.

"Tessa Kent, an exquisite and precocious fourteen, gives birth to an illegitimate daughter. Her parents, devout Catholics, raise the infant, Maggie, as their own child. At sixteen Tessa is discovered by Hollywood; by nineteen she's an international move star. Maggie lives for her glorious "sister's" infrequent whirlwind visits. Maggie is a captivating, independent eighteen when she accidentally learns the truth. Mortally wounded, she breaks all ties...

"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester...

When three-year-old Benji is plucked from the security of his home in Nagasaki to live with his American father, Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, and stepmother, Kate, on their farm in Illinois, the family conceals Benji's true identity as a child born from a liaison between an officer and a geisha. But when the truth about Benji surfaces, it will splinter this family's fragile dynamic, sending repercussions spiraling through their close-knit rural...

Erika's worst fear is realized when her well-kept secret shows up on her doorstep. As she reaches out to the daughter she gave up for adoption nearly twenty-two years ago, her husband pulls away, leaving Erika with an impossible choice.

"My name is Larkspur, and I am an Elemental. My people use the power of the earth to sustain life and defy our enemies. I should be at my father's side as a royal princess. But as a half-breed, bastard child, that isn't going to happen. In a world of lava and fire, I am about to face my hardest trial yet. Not one of strength, or power, but intrigue and manipulation. However, my tolerance level for anyone outside of my family is at an all-time low,...

Set during a period of revolution and turmoil, this is the first in a trilogy about Henrietta Lightfoot. At just 16 years old, circumstance and a passionate love affair tear her away from everything she knows, leading to a new life fending for herself on the streets of 18th-century London.

A recent bestseller in England, this bittersweet story of love and betrayal set in the Far East will be a Masterpiece Theatre miniseries airing in October. In 1903 a 20-year-old Scots girl sails to China to marry a British attache, but soon horrifies the British community by having an affair with a young Japanese count.

"The tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the characters' voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner's masterpiece"--Amazon.com.

Upon learning that she is an earl's illegitimate daughter, 1920s governess Rachel Woodley teams up with an associate who helps her infiltrate key social circles in order to contact her father and undermine her privileged half-sister's world.