Bent Northrop Memorial Library

Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, showing how each room has figured in the evolution of private life.

Passive solar heating and passive cooling—approaches known as natural conditioning—provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved.

Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date

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In the crosshairs of a political bribery investigation, Dempsey Jo Killebrew suddenly finds herself unemployed and the victim of a sleazy smear campaign by her former boss. Dempsey decides to take up her father's offer of flipping a recently inherited family home in Guthrie, Ga., where she quickly slides into the renovation groove, fits in with the locals, and embarks on a romance.

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

100 energy saving tips for everything in your home or business!

Did you know . . .

• Heating and cooling account for about 56% of the energy use in a typical home
• Energy-efficient light bulbs last about 12 times longer than ordinary bulbs, and consume about 1/5 of the energy
• If we all turned off our TVs and other gadgets that are kept on stand-by, we could shut down a couple of power stations in the United States, with huge

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Working alongside his mother and brother restoring a historic hotel in Boonsboro, Maryland, Owen Montgomery falls for a childhood friend.

Moving into an inherited mansion in Maine with their mother and stroke-afflicted father, three siblings uncover a mystery involving hidden passageways, family rivalries, and healing waters.

How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law...

"Summer begins with Mary Kay Andrews, in this delightful summer read about flipping houses, and finding true love. Hattie Kavanaugh went to work helping clean up restored homes for Kavanaugh & Son Restorations at eighteen; married the boss's son at twenty; and was only twenty-five when her husband, Hank, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Broken hearted, but determined to continue the business of their dreams, she takes the life insurance money,...

After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is faced with some hard decisions. First order of business: go to Gideon's Cove, Maine, to sell the only thing she now owns - a decrepit house in need of some serious flipping. When her father's wingman, James Cahill, asks to go with her, she's not thrilled, even if he is fairly gorgeous and knows his way around a tool box. Having to fend for herself financially...