National Network for Equitable Library Service

"According to what we've been told, the source of all knowledge is somewhere just south of Sunset Boulevard. The problem is that Danny has lost the address." So begins Martyn Burke's tragi-comic novel of love and war. Danny, a Canadian sharp-shooter, and Hank, in the US Army, have been stationed in Kandahar, but they are in Los Angeles desperate to find the Hollywood psychic who will reveal the whereabouts of the women they love.

Living with her mole-obsessed, gun-happy father on a farm, Sally has her work cut out. But with the love of local farm boy Johnny Hutchins, life can be full of frolics. Devon Girl is a light-hearted look at farming with a fair sprinkling of colorful locals.

Natalie DeAngelo lost everything when her two sons were killed in a school shooting. For relief from her loss, she volunteers as a veterinarian on an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Still battling memories that torment her, Natalie must also find a way to heal an angry, injured elephant named Sophie. Can Natalie and Sophie heal together?

The allure of literary letters and rare first editions captures the imaginations of three professors of English literature and leads to tragedy in the wake of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995.

Lucy, a teenager from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis, Mariah, and their children. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade. At the same time Lucy is also unraveling her own mysteries of personal identity.

Lily Bart enjoys an equitable standing within the New York City elite. Although she desires a comfortable life and has received generous proposals from wealthy suitors, Lily remains single with hope for an honest and loving marriage. However, her life takes an unexpected twist when a nasty bit of gossip instigates her long descent down the social ladder. With her reputation plummeting, Lily escapes the city by joining an acquaintance on a European cruise. But this, too, causes irreparable damage to her reputation, and soon Lily finds herself disowned and friendless.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

It’s 1954 and young Sadie Wilder gets her big break at last – a chance to babysit for the posh Bannister family whose regular babysitter, Wanda Keeler, is down with the mumps. Sadie is certain she can deal with any obstacle, but little does she, or anyone else, for that matter, know that on that very night Hurricane Hazel, to this day, one of Canada’s worst natural disasters, is about to strike Toronto. Sadie is alone with the two small Bannister children, Bobby and Faith, as winds and floodwaters ravage the house.

Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour--a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust--must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.

Rae, young, unmarried, and far from home, awaits the birth of her first child. Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future, lost her own daughter many years earlier. When these two women meet in California. it's earthquake weather--the time when unexpected things happen.