The Rectors Daughter

The Rector’s Daughter is the story of Mary Jocelyn, a woman who fears life is passing her by. Having lost her mother and her beloved invalid sister, Mary shares her days in sleepy Dedmayne with her father, the severe and distant Canon Jocelyn. Then, with the arrival in the village of Robert Herbert, her quiet, ordered existence is changed forever.

A pious young woman grapples with a loss of memory—and of faith—in this sharp, witty novel by the author of 1984 and Animal Farm. Dorothy is the daughter of the Reverend Charles Hare, rector of St. Athelstan’s in Depression-era Suffolk, England. She serves as a dutiful housekeeper, performs good works, cultivates good thoughts—and pricks her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. But even as she toils away making costumes for the church school play, she is haunted by thoughts about the poverty that surrounds her and the debts she can’t afford to pay. Then, suddenly, she finds herself in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket, and cannot remember her own name . . . This novel of a woman thrust into a strange journey, struck by amnesia and grappling with questions of faith and identity in a world of unemployment and hunger, is a masterful work of satire by one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

“[A] certifiable masterpiece” from the acclaimed chronicler of New York City’s old money elite (The New York Observer). Widely considered Louis Auchincloss’s greatest novel, The Rector of Justin is an astute dissection of the social mores of the Northeast’s privileged establishment. The story centers on Rev. Frank Prescott, the charismatic founder and rector of a prestigious Episcopal school for boys. With laser-sharp insight, Auchincloss delivers a prismatic portrait of this commanding and complicated man through the eyes of those who knew—or thought they knew—him best. Seamlessly interweaving multiple points of view—from an adoring teacher to that of a rebellious daughter—The Rector of Justin presents a social history of the eighty years of his life: the sources of his virtues and failings, his successes, his love, and his crises of faith. As Jonathan Yardley put it in the Washington Post, “Auchincloss is one of the most accomplished and distinctive writers this country has known . . . [and] Frank Prescott is one of the great characters in American fiction.” “A daring and ambitious book . . . Its poise and taste and intelligence strike one on every page, as do its unerring knowledge and literary skill.” —The New Yorker “[The Rector of Justin] should sit on the shelf of any serious reader of American fiction.” —Jay Parini, The New York Observer “A taut and elegant study of a distinguished American whose closest friends cannot decide whether they like or detest him.” —The Times Literary Supplement “Fascinating . . . We do come to feel the reality, the complicated reality, of Francis Prescott.” —Saturday Review “My favorite of Auchincloss’s novels. Both decadent and demanding, high-hat and frank . . . A subversive in lace-up oxfords and rep tie.” —Amy Bloom

After twenty years of marriage, a priest's wife rebels and takes a job at a supermarket and gains a sense of her own worth, but the disapproval of her husband and parish.

A wounded soldier and a rector’s daughter discover strange goings-on in their sleepy English village in this Regency-era mystery series opener. Major Robert Kurland has returned to the quiet vistas of Kurland St. Mary to recuperate from the horrors of Waterloo. However injured his body may be, his mind is as active as ever. Too active, perhaps. When he glimpses a shadowy figure from his bedroom window struggling with a heavy load, the tranquil façade of the village begins to loom sinister… Unable to forget the incident, Robert confides in his childhood friend, Miss Lucy Harrington. As the dutiful daughter of the widowed rector, following up on the major's suspicions offers a welcome diversion—but soon presents real danger. Someone is intent on stopping their investigation. And in a place where no one locks their doors, a series of thefts and the disappearance of two young serving girls demands explanation… As Robert grapples with his difficult recovery, he and Lucy try to unearth the dark truth lurking within the village shadows, and stop a killer waiting to strike again… Praise for Death Comes to the Village “[A] delightful debut…Readers will hope death returns soon to Kurland St. Mary.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Lloyd combines a satisfying mystery with plenty of wit and character development.”—Booklist

In most college and university libraries, materials published before 1800 have been moved into special collections, while the post-1923 books remain in general circulation. But books published between these dates are vulnerable to deaccessioning, as libraries increasingly reconfigure access to public-domain texts via digital repositories such as Google Books. Even libraries with strong commitments to their print collections are clearing out the duplicates, assuming that circulating copies of any given nineteenth-century edition are essentially identical to one another. When you look closely, however, you see that they are not. Many nineteenth-century books were donated by alumni or their families decades ago, and many of them bear traces left behind by the people who first owned and used them. In Book Traces, Andrew M. Stauffer adopts what he calls "guided serendipity" as a tactic in pursuit of two goals: first, to read nineteenth-century poetry through the clues and objects earlier readers left in their books and, second, to defend the value of keeping the physical volumes on the shelves. Finding in such books of poetry the inscriptions, annotations, and insertions made by their original owners, and using them as exemplary case studies, Stauffer shows how the physical, historical book enables a modern reader to encounter poetry through the eyes of someone for whom it was personal.

The incredible and little-known story of Sarah Rector, once the wealthiest Black woman in America, from Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner Tonya Bolden Searching for Sarah Rector brings to light the intriguing mystery of Sarah Rector, who was born into an impoverished family in 1902 in Indian Territory and later was famously hailed by the Chicago Defender as “the wealthiest colored girl in the world.” Author Tonya Bolden sets Rector’s rags-to-riches tale against the backdrop of American history, including the creation of Indian Territory; the making of Oklahoma, with its Black towns and boomtowns; and the wild behavior of many greedy and corrupt adults. At the age of eleven, Sarah was a very rich young girl. Even so, she was powerless . . . helpless in the whirlwind of drama—and danger—that swirled around her. Then one day word came that she had disappeared. This is her story, and the story of other children like her, filled with ups and downs, bizarre goings-on, and a heap of crimes. Out of a trove of primary documents, including court and census records, as well as interviews with family members, Bolden painstakingly pieces together the events of Sarah’s life.

The Virgin and the Gypsy is a short story by English author D. H. Lawrence, about personal and sexual liberation. It was written in 1926 and published posthumously in 1930. The Virgin and the Gypsy has become a classic and is one of Lawrence’s most vibrant short novels.