While all of our book clubs welcome any attendees, the Brown Bag Talking Book Discussion is designed for patrons with visual challenges. These readers utilize either the large print book format or a recorded version provided through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Impaired (NLS), a part of the Library of Congress. These are books the group has read and appreciated over the last few years. If you’re interested in joining our Book Discussion group check our event calendar for our next meeting or visit our Braille and Talking Book page for more information on joining the program.
11 hours, 11 minutes. Three decades after a kidnapper took her twin six-year-old sister, Atlee Pine works for the FBI as the lone agent responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon. So when one of the canyon mules is found stabbed to death–and its rider missing–Pine is called in to investigate. (The group liked this one enough to also read its sequel, A Minute to Midnight DB97355, by the same author.)
15 hours, 54 minutes. Chronicle of the women employed during World War I as watch dial painters–requiring the use and ingestion of radium-laced paint–and their legal fight for compensation. Discusses the often gruesome physical deformities and pain the women experienced and their determination to receive justice.
12 hours, 14 minutes. In late 1969, when Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home.
12 hours, 10 minutes. The author re-opens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in US history. On April 29, 1986, a fire broke out at the Los Angeles Public Library and destroyed or damaged more than a million books. Examines the evolution of public libraries while celebrating their value in society.
10 hours, 5 minutes. Priests and nuns in Detroit are being killed in pairs during the Lenten season. While the homicide squad makes no headway in catching the killer, a shrewd priest who is also a mystery buff attempts to break the madman’s code.
9 hours, 4 minutes. The thirty-ninth president of the United States reminisces about growing up in rural Georgia during the depression. Traces his family genealogy; examines social mores of the segregated South. Describes his experience of daily life in a small, close-knit farming community until his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.
7 hours, 37 minutes. Journalist Tom Langdon takes a cross-country train from the East Coast to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his girlfriend. On the trip he meets a host of zany characters, including one who happens to be his former lover. Sparks fly until Tom’s girlfriend shows up in Chicago.
9 hours, 24 minutes. A 101-year-old laborer who learned to read at age 98 chronicles his life in the South and provides a personal retrospective on the African American past. In collaboration with a history teacher, Dawson recalls significant developments of the twentieth century, including the advent of two world wars.
12 hours, 48 minutes. In the world of 1950s and 1960s New York, Truman Capote rules the social world, with his “swans” surrounding him, including Barbara “Babe” Paley, the wife of the president of CBS. They share their secrets with him–until Truman betrays their trust and publishes the gossip.
9 hours, 56 minutes. Helena Pelletier’s mother was kidnapped as a teenager by Helena’s father and kept in a remote cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Over twenty years later, Helena’s father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. Helena may be the only one capable of finding him.
11 hours, 31 minutes. At the age of sixty-three, Britt-Marie has left her cheating husband. Socially awkward and aggressively neat, Britt-Marie gets a job as the caretaker of a recreation center in the small Swedish town of Borg, where she is put in charge of the town’s losing soccer team.
8 hours, 47 minutes. Thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Bruce Cable owns a bookstore in a sleepy resort town on Florida’s Camino Island and dabbles in stolen books and manuscripts. Young novelist Mercer Mann is commissioned by a mysterious woman to learn Cable’s secrets.
10 hours, 15 minutes. Elmwood Springs, Missouri. After octogenarian Elner Shimfissel falls off her ladder and dies, the townsfolk reminisce about her. When Elner meets her late sister Ida in heaven, Ida is still fuming over her bad-hair day at her funeral–then a miracle happens.
13 hours, 11 minutes. In 1931, nine-year-old Lilly Blackwood is given to a circus after being kept isolated in her family’s home her entire life. She finds friendship and an affinity with animals. Twenty-five years later, Julia Blackwood searches for what happened to the young girl in her mother’s photos.