Accessible World

For Tuesday, August 3, 2010, Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman, who will be our
guest to talk about her many beloved historical novels.
12th Century England, Wales and France
The passionate and turbulent relationships in English King Henry II's life: his wife
the remarkable Eleanor of Aquitaine and the mercurial and ambitious Thomas à Becket.
Penman is known for her painstaking historical research and accuracy and her ability
to tell one fine story. This one is long, so get to it as soon as you can.
Available in accessible formats from:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
Post World War II England.
London, 1946. Writer Juliet Ashton corresponds with Dawsey Adams and other members
of a literary society created as a front during the Nazi occupation of the British
channel island Guernsey. Through letters, Juliet learns about their wartime experiences.
Intrigued, Juliet sails to Guernsey, where she finds new inspiration. Bestseller.
2008.
Available in accessible formats from:
National Library Service via your local library on RC and DB67526. Read by Corrie

For Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Walking Drum

By Louis L’Amour

Medieval Spain and Middle East.

In twelfth-century Brittany, young Mathurin Kerbouchard, escaping from he evil baron who has slain Mathurin's mother and plundered their estate, is forced into galley slavery. Quickly gaining control of the boat, the bold adventurer lands in Moorish Spain and attempts to rescue his corsair father. Journeying across Europe to Asia, Mathurin becomes a famed scholar, merchant, doctor, and lover. Bestseller 1984.

Available in accessible formats from:

For Tuesday, May 4, 2010, Helen of Troy by Margaret George.
The story, in her own words, of the legendary woman whose "face launched a thousand ships". The daughter of Leda and a swan, Zeus in disguise, faces a destiny she cannot resist, throwing her entire world into war for twenty years.
Author Margaret George plans to visit the chat to talk about her work and answer your questions.
Available in accessible formats from:
National Library Service via your local library on RC and DB 64785.
Kindle2
Audible.com
BooksonTape.com
Bookshare.org
Nan Hawthorne, Group Facilitator

March’s book is The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan, late 19th
century/early 20th century India RC and DB 68367
The novel concerns a young woman in India who marries very young and is widowed nearly
as young. She is required by her Brahman birth to shave off her hair and live isolated.
She chooses to go against tradirion to live on her own with her children. The book
covers the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. It’s writing style will
be different for most American readers, shifting as it does from presnt to past tense
and back again.

This month we are reading one of Ann Parsons’ favorite novels, The River God by Wilbur
Smith. From Publishers Weekly says of River God, “A bestselling writer in England
but not as yet well-known here, Smith (Elephant Song) may attract a wider audience
with this compulsively readable historical novel based on the little-known facts
behind the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, circa 1780 B.C. Containing all the standard
elements of great adventure--intrigue, romance, greed, cruelty and furious action--the
yarn is spun by the clever eunuch Taita, who reports on events with an irony akin

This month we are reading one of Ann Parsons’ favorite novels, The River God by Wilbur Smith. From Publishers Weekly says of River God, “A bestselling writer in England but not as yet well-known here, Smith (Elephant Song) may attract a wider audience with this compulsively readable historical novel based on the little-known facts behind the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, circa 1780 B.C.

Many of us will be occupied with holiday activities in December, we chose The
Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer so that even if you can’t read the whole
book, you can read the stories you want and report back to the group. Singer won
a Nobel Prize for Literature for his work depicting Jewish life both in Eastern Europe
and the Americas. Among the forty-seven stories in this collection, all selected
by Singer himself, is a tale of pious but tormented Hassidim, isolated intellectuals
in New York, fanciful tales of demons, and realistic stories of human frailty.