Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A group of Utopians, unhappy with dissolute, mid-nineteenth-century America, takes to the pastoral life; but the members find little satisfaction in farmwork and communal life because of competing ambitions and idealism. Instead of changing the world, they pursue self-centered paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Absorbing 1852 novel about love, idealism, and politics bristles with Hawthorne's perceptive wit and intelligence.
2) Arcadia
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding a commune on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. They include Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah's only child, Bit, born soon after the commune. Through Bit, Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and beyond....
3) Paradise
Author
Language
English
Description
As the novel begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby assault the nearby Convent and the women in it.
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain," assault the nearby Convent and the women...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row. When a teenage boy runs away from his father's mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six people all desperate for hope and love, scattered across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to L.A....
Author
Language
English
Description
When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she's fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother but without any money or relatives to help, she's left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a "perfect...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
When her ex-girlfriend Kay is murdered and everyone in her old commune is a suspect, Dora, while investigating, discovers Kay's death is one of several terrible incidents and is drawn into a twisted conspiracy while trying to stop a potential war between two nefarious companies.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life-with potentially fatal consequences--in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved places on the West Coast: a magnificent house in vast formal grounds, home to a family that shaped California--and fought hard to conceal the turmoil and...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Emmy, Niall, and Sita and Jonathan miss their train back to London from a Somerset wedding, escaping Britain's worst rail crash in sixty years. Upon reflection of their mortality, the friends reevaluate their lives, and come to a decision. They will all, along with Emmy's daughter Lila, Niall's girlfriend Kat, and Sita and Jonathan's children Jay and Asha, move into the ramshackle manor house Emmy recently inherited in Cornwall. In the idyllic setting,...
Author
Series
Hainish series volume 1
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart....
11) The red grove
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
"When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community"--
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Business has never been better at the O'Connell Organic Farm and Spa in Blossom Valley, California. But a murder has two of its top employees ploughing for clues at a commune where tree-huggers are wary of the modern world--and a killer may be disturbing their peace…
When Dana Lewis and Zennia Patrakio go to the Blossom Valley farmer's market, they expect to find luscious fruits and vegetables to delight the spa's guests. They are not expecting...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
On author Charlotte Carter's debut Cook County mystery, the New York Times said she "blends street savvy with wry urbanity and delivers a truly modern big-city crime tale." This suspenseful novel goes back to Chicago after the social and political upheavals of the Summer of Love, when three unassuming sleuths began working on a startling new case.
14) Family
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In the 1960s, seventeen-year-old Melinda leaves an abusive home for San Francisco, meets the charismatic Henry, and follows him to his desert commune where sex and drugs are free, but soon his "family" becomes violent against rich and powerful people and she is compelled to join in.
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. But Ursa's powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In landlocked Gainesville, Florida, in the hot, fraught summer of 1999, a college dropout named David sleepwalks through his life--a dull haze of office work and Internet porn--until a run-in with a lost friend jolts him from his torpor. He is drawn into the vibrant but grimy world of Fishgut, a rundown house where a loose collective of anarchists, burnouts, and libertines practice utopia outside society and the law. Some even see their life as a...
18) The Ash family
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
When a young woman leaves her family, and the civilized world, to join an off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this lush and searing debut novel. At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place...
19) Schooled
Author
Language
English
Description
Homeschooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, tasted a pizza, or even heard of a wedgie. But when his grandmother lands in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a guidance counselor and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dyeing and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
""It's time to come Home. All five of you. Or else." Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was entranced by the tang of sourdough starter; the midnight call of the loons; the triumph of foraging wild mushrooms from the forest floor. But most of all she was taken with Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends....
Didn't find it?
Didn't find it in the Minuteman Library Network? Request it from other Massachusetts library systems.
Can't find what you are looking for? Recommend it to your local library as a future purchase. Suggest a Purchase