Burlington Public Library

The wayward traveler -- Lemuel Gulliver -- ends up on a series of bizarrely populated islands. First he is a giant among little people, but then sees the situation reversed when he's surrounded by giants twelve times his size. Next he finds himself in the clouds, in a society of devoted but ultimately hapless mathematicians. Lastly, his journey brings him to an island where incredibly noble horses must deal with a race of uncouth, reviled ape-men:...

Has any other love story become so enmeshed in our culture as the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet? In fair Verona the families of Montague and Capulet are locked in a long-standing, bitter blood feud when young Romeo Montague slips into a masquerade party at the Capulet's. During the dance he glimpses Juliet, the daughter of the house, and is struck by love at first sight. She returns his passion and they promise each other everlasting love notwithstanding...

"At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers— one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found...

"This convenient single-volume edition contains all three parts of Dante's 14th-century poem; Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; in an acclaimed translation by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Combining classical and Christian history as well as medieval politics and religion, this trilogy of sublime verse is among Western civilization's most important artistic works and essential reading for students of literature and history. Dante's allegory...

A woman of intellect and ambition describes growing up on an Australian ranch, coping with her father's death and her mother's depression, her intellectual awakening at the university, and her path to becoming Smith College's first woman president

The little-known true story of the unexpected and remarkable contributions to astronomy made by a group of women working in the Harvard College Observatory from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s.-- "In the late nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group consisted of the...

A deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led her not only to the edge of madness but to the doors of those who practice the dark arts and commune with the spirit world. In accepting the assignment, Maisie finds her spiritual strength tested, as well as her regard...

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer--his 'Keltjin potatoes' are justifiably famous--has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although...

To the cowboy the world was a circus of creation and nothing was beyond the scope of his laughter. His fertile imagination could produce trail drives of dry-land terrapins, cowboy firing squads for fighting game roosters, and a breed of "honk-honk birds" that could outrun a horse. He used humor to express his fondness for the West, to exchange sarcasms with railroaders, to teach lessons to tenderfeet, and even-sometimes-to laugh at death.In The Humor...