Akron Public Library

Hailed by The New York Times as "a compelling dystopian look at paranoia from one of the most unique and perceptive writers of our time," this brief, captivating novel offers a cautionary tale. The story unfolds within a society in which all traces of individualism have been eliminated from every aspect of life — use of the word "I" is a capital offense. The hero, a rebel who discovers that man's greatest moral duty is the pursuit of his own happiness,...

A tale of an arresting, disquieting obssession. Swedish naval officer Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is charged with a secret mission to take depth readings around the Stockholm archipelago in preparation for Sweden's possible entry into World War I. During his mission he lands on the rocky isle of Halsskar and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to the half-wild, semi-literate woman who lives there.

Andrew Holleran's classic novel of loneliness, obsessive desire, unfulfilled dreams, and the loss of youth, set in the mid-1990s amid the ravaging AIDS crisis. Forty-seven, gay, and alone, Lark leaves behind his youth and dreams in New York City to care for his dying mother in Florida. Mourning the passing of his glamorous younger self to time and the lives of friends and acquaintances to AIDS, he looks back on his past, to years spent in pursuit...

"Love captures Paul Finley in, of all places, his own bedroom - literally waking him from his dreams. The night he discovers Laura Pettit standing at his windowsill, Paul is eleven years old, a boy naturally inclined toward seriousness, precociously adept at the art of watching the world without being watched. Laura is twenty-two, a fiercely passionate and independent poet already experiencing the first flickers of fame, a beautiful woman on the brink...

"The life of Baumgartner--phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor--has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now pushing 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Baumgartner and Anna meet as young...