Pierce County Library System
Information & Imagination

Paragon Hotel, The
(Faye, Lyndsay)
1921. "Nobody" Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Her sights are set on Oregon: the end of the line. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter, who leads her to Portland's Paragon Hotel. It's the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. She meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine. But the Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland, burning crosses, inciting violence, electing officials, and brutalizing blacks. And only the residents of the Paragon are willing to search for a missing mulatto child who vanished into the Oregon woods. -- adapted from jacket.

Patron saints of nothing
(Ribay, Randy)
Recommended for Grades 10-12. When seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more

Pax
(Pennypacker, Sara)
Recommended for grades 3-5. "After being forced to give up his pet fox Pax, a young boy named Peter decides to leave home and get his best friend back"-- Provided by publisher

Peak
(Smith, Roland)
Young Adult Fiction (246 pages) Recommended for Grades 6-10. A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. [Kit added 3/2010]

Pioneers, The: the heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal West
(McCullough, David G.)
Best-selling author David McCullough tells the story of the settlers who began America's migration west, overcoming almost-unimaginable hardships to build in the Ohio wilderness a town and a government that incorporated America's highest ideals. As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam.

Piranesi
(Clarke, Susanna)
"From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds"-- Provided by publisher

Plainsong
(Haruf, Kent)
A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver

Poppy
(Avi)
Junior Fiction (176 pages) Recommended for Grades 4-6. Poppy the deer mouse urges her family to move next to a field of corn big enough to feed them all forever, but Mr. Ocax, a terrifying owl, has other ideas. [Kit added 10/2011]

Power of myth, The
(Campbell, Joseph, )
The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people--including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the “song of the universe, the music of the spheres.” With Bill Moyers, one of America’s most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. This extraordinary book reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell’s work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture

Pride, prejudice, and other flavors: a novel
(Dev, Sonali)
Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco's most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that's not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules: never trust an outsider, never do anything to jeopardize your brother's political aspirations, and never, ever, defy your family. Trisha has been guilty of breaking all the rules, but finally has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn't repeat her old mistakes. Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha's arrogance. Then he discovers that she's the only surgeon who can save his sister's life. But before a future can be savored there's a past to be reckoned with.