Pines and Plains Libraries

"The girl who led an army, the peasant who crowned a king, the maid who became a legend. It is the fifteenth century, and the tumultuous Hundred Years' War rages on. France is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside destroying all who cross their path, and Charles VII, the uncrowned king, has neither the strength nor the will to rally his army. And in the quiet of her parents' garden in Domr�my, a peasant girl sees a spangle of...

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...

A biography of the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led a French army to victory against the English and was burned at the stake for witchcraft.

Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and town mayor. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector...

A biography of the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led a French army to victory against the English, witnesses the crowning of King Charles VII, and was later burned at the stake for witchcraft.

Tale of Li Cunxin, a peasant boy from rural China who beats impossible odds to become a world-renowned ballet dancer. Through talent and sheer determination, Li makes his way to the United States, but when he falls in love with an American woman, he must risk everything to remain in the U.S. Based on a true story.

A simple peasant has his life destroyed by the lie of an enemy who accuses him of a theft.

A gunfighter leads a team of the deadliest men in the West on a mission to free a peasant leader from a Mexican prison.

A timeless adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic romance. Tess Darbeyville, a beautiful young peasant, seeks her fortune with the wealthy D'Urbervilles, whom her family believes to be distant relatives.

"Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship with Hungary's Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda's housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda's household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come...