Orem Library

A Malayan mother becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII—causing shocking consequences to rain upon her community and family.

Captured by a psychopath posing as an interested house buyer, realtor Annie spends a brutally traumatic year in captivity in a remote mountain cabin and recounts her experiences and dramatic escape to her therapist while agonizing over the ongoing policesearch for her captor.

In a time when darkness covered the land, a boy named Weget is born who is destined to bring the light. With the gift of a raven's skin that allows him to fly as well as transform, Weget turns into a bird and journeys from Haida Gwaii into the sky. There he finds the Chief of the Heavens who keeps the light in a box. By transforming himself into a pine needle, clever Weget tricks the Chief and escapes with the daylight back down to Earth.

In this brilliantly illuminating work exploring the realities and legacies of empire, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of what we consider to be modern Britain is actually rooted in its imperial past. In prose that is at once both clear-eyed and full of acerbic wit, Sanghera shows how the past is everywhere in the United Kingdom, also drawing critical links to similarities in the United States and around the world. Empire--British or otherwise--informs...

The inspiring and true life story of Kimiko Murakami, a Japanese-Canadian pioneer and internment camp survivor, beautifully illustrated for a young audience. Ganbaru is a Japanese word that means to keep going during hard times and never give up. During the Second World War, she was among the 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were sent to live in internment camps because they were seen as "enemy aliens." This book celebrates her achievements, courage,...

At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing...

Winchester, England, has always been home for Flora, but when her mother dies after a long illness, Flora feels untethered. Her family expects her to apply to university and take a larger role in their tea-shop business, but Flora isn't so sure. More than ever, she's the chaotic "hurricane" in her household, and she doesn't always know how to manage her stormy emotions. So she decides to escape to Miami without telling anyone--especially her longtime...

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When 'Willie' Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary, Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his...