Tom Hanks
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Cyril's son Danny and his older sister Maeve are exiled from...
8) Forrest Gump
Series
Language
English
Description
Forrest Gump is not a "smart" man. But the young Alabaman with an IQ of 75 is a thoroughly decent man, who manages to become involved in every major event in American history. And he survives them all with only honesty and niceness as his shields. Thanks to his where-there's-a-will-there's-a-way Mama, Forrest believes in himself. This sees him through being taunted by bullies, playing college football, the army, a business, and -- amazingly -- many...
9) Ithaca
Pub. Date
2016
Language
English
Description
Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his four-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain, and death, to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one...
Pub. Date
[2012]
Language
English
Description
Toula is a quiet, devoted daughter in a big, crazy Greek family. Working in her father's restaurant, she hides behind her family and keeps the world at a distance. One day at the restaurant she finds herself pouring coffee for a man who inspires her to change her life, and the way she sees the world ... forever.
11) Elvis
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
Elvis Presley rises to fame in the 1950s while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
12) Saving Mr. Banks
Series
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
When P.L. Travers travels from London to Hollywood in 1961 to finally discuss Walt Disney's desire to bring her beloved character Mary Poppins to the motion picture screen (a quest he began in the 1940s as a promise to his two daughters), Disney meets a prim, uncompromising sexagenarian not only suspect of the impresario's concept for the film, but a woman struggling with her own past. During her stay in California, Travers' reflects back on her difficult...
13) Cloud atlas
Pub. Date
[2013]
Language
English
Description
An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution. The story is a time-shifting weave of six interlinking narratives, with diverse settings from the savagery of a Pacific Island in the 1850s to a dystopian Korea of the near future.
Language
English
Formats
Description
Billy longs to believe in Santa Claus, but he finds it quite difficult to do so. His family has a dogged insistence that all of it, from the North Pole, to the elves, to Santa himself, is all just a myth. This all changes, however, on Christmas Eve, when a mysterious train visits Billy in the middle of the night, promising to take him and a group of other lucky children to the North Pole for a visit with Santa. The train's conductor along with the...
Pub. Date
[2012]
Language
English
Description
Oskar is convinced that his father, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has left a message for him hidden in the city. Feeling disconnected from his grieving mother and driven by an active mind that refuses to believe in things that can't be observed, Oskar begins searching New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key he found in his father's closet. His journey through the five boroughs takes him beyond his loss to a...
16) Angels & demons
Pub. Date
[2009]
Language
English
Formats
Description
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon discovers evidence of the resurgence of the most powerful underground organization in history, the Illuminati. Upon learning of an unstoppable terrorist act against the Vatican, Langdon travels to Rome and joins forces with Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra and together they will follow the 400-year-old Path of Illumination that leads to the Vatican's only chance for survival.
Pub. Date
[2010]
Language
English
Formats
Description
Max has an active imagination, who will throw a fit if others don't go along with what he wants. Following an incident with his sister Claire and her friends, Max throws a tantrum when his mother pays more attention to her boyfriend than to him - runs away from home. Wearing his wolf costume at the time, Max not only runs away physically, but runs toward a world in his imagination. This world, an ocean away, is inhabited by large wild beasts, including...
18) Volunteers
Pub. Date
[1999]
Language
English
Description
Lawrence Bourne III escapes the bookies to whom he owes $28,000 by swapping places with a friend and going to Thailand with the Peace Corps.
20) The Pacific
Language
English
Description
The extraordinary experiences of three men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain forests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day.