Alamosa Public Library

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland....

At the heart of Lilac Lane is Keira Malone, who raised her three children alone after her first marriage broke apart, and who, after years of guarding her heart, finally finds love again. But that love is short-lived when her fianc šuffers a fatal heart attack. Grieving and unsure of what's next, Keira agrees to move from Dublin to Chesapeake Shores, Maryland, to spend time with her daughter, Moira, and her new granddaughter, Kate, as well as to...

For Sean Corrigan the past is simply what happened yesterday, until his twenty-first birthday, when he is given a journal left him by his father's brother Michael-a man he had not known existed. The journal, kept after his uncle fled from New York City to Ireland to escape prosecution for a murder he did not commit, draws Sean into a hunt for the truth about Michael's fate. Sean too leaves New York for Ireland, where he is caught up in the lives...

Sixth-grader Grace, her mother dead and her only sister ill with diabetes, learns to be brave like the pirate queen Grace O'Malley, whom her Irish cousin says she resembles.

"Were living in a sensitive age, Cuke, and Im not altogether sure youre fully attuned to it." So says Irish-American politician Frank Skeffington-a cynical, corrupt 1950s mayor, and also an old-school gentleman who looks after the constituents of his New England city and enjoys their unwavering loyalty in return. But in our age of dynasties, mercurial social sensitivities, and politicians making love to the camera, Skeffington might as well be talking...

It is the spring of 2002 and a perfect storm has hit Boston. Across the city's archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care. In Faith, Jennifer Haigh explores the fallout for one devout family, the McGanns.

The Saga Begins...The War Between the States has ended. Now, driven from Texas by carpetbaggers, former CSA Colonel Shamus O'Brien sets off for a new frontier-New Mexico. Here, where land is cheap, bandits shoot to kill, and rustlers rule the night, it takes more than one man to run a ranch. So he offers a partnership to his eldest son, Jacob, with equal shares going to his sons Sam, Patrick, and Shawn. Together, the brothers O'Brien will defend their...

The powerful odyssey of a man of passionate principles in a decadent age...A valiant man, haunted by forbidden yearnings. An innocent Pennsylvania town, under siege by the forces of corruption. a widening net of scandal and tragedy, threatening both the good and the evil alike.