Arcadia Public Library

An "A" for "adultery" marks Hester Prynne as an outcast from the society of colonial Boston. Although forced by the puritanical town fathers to wear a bright red badge of shame, Hester steadfastly resists their efforts to discover the identity of her baby's father. The return of her long-absent spouse brings new pressure on the young mother, as the aggrieved husband undertakes a long-term plot to reveal Hester's partner in...

Annie, the illegitimate daughter of Kate Hannigan, battles her way out of the slums of turn-of-the-century England and into the arms of a loving doctor and a poor Oxford-educated man who lives down the road.

Miranda Fox has devoted much of her life to caring for her elderly father. After his tragic death, she starts to make plans for her future, funded by the inheritance she is sure will be coming her way, but it seems her arrogant and domineering half-brother has very different ideas ... Then a chance encounter with a man who has been given months to live boosts Miranda's confidence, and as their friendship grows she finally learns to stand up for herself...

"Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, Connecticut. But their mother's death from cancer fifteen years ago tarnished their golden-hued memories, and the sisters drifted apart. Their one touchstone is their father, Bill Sweeney, an internationally famous literary lion and college professor universally adored by critics, publishers, and book lovers. When Bill dies unexpectedly one June...

The classic novel explores the divisions of culture and class in late-Victorian England through the story of a disputed inheritance.

The illegitimate child of a Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Noriko "Nori" Kamiza is an outsider from birth. Though her grandparents take her in, they do so only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. But when chance brings her legitimate older half-brother, Akira, to the estate, Nori finds in him the first person who will allow her to question, and the...

In 1885, a lonely illegitimate American boy and a lonely Chinese American boy develop an unlikely friendship in the midst of prejudices and racial tension in their coal mining town of Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Four years ago author Melissa Henderson bought a house in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts-- weather-beaten, shabby and in serious need of repair-- but it was her salvation. When the hundred-year-old Victorian home is threatened by a wildfire and appears on the news, Melissa receives a call from her estranged sister, Hattie. After all these years Hattie, a nun, is on a mission: to track down the child Melissa was forced to gave up when she...

"Melissa Henderson leads a quiet life. Once a bestselling author, she now pours all her energy into renovating a Victorian house in the foothills of rural New England. Six years ago, her life was derailed by tragedy and she stopped writing. The house has given her new purpose. When her beloved home appears on the news, Melissa receives a call from her estranged sister, Hattie. They were close once, but that was before Melissa withdrew from the world....

"When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman." Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena's son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration,...