National Network for Equitable Library Service

After earning a graduate degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, Tracy Chevalier was immediately recognized for her literary talent. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, she recreates the 17th-century world of Johannes Vermeer. This haunting work of historical fiction received rave reviews in publications as diverse as The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor. In 1664, sixteen-year-old Griet enters the Vermeer household as a servant. Daughter of a Delft tile maker, she has a natural eye for color and design.

Seventeen-year-old Christina McBurney has led a sheltered life. But when her twin brother, Jonathan, dies of consumption, Christina, unwilling to be farmed out as a nursemaid or teacher, runs away from home and her destiny. In Owen Sound she boards the Asia, a steamship that transports passengers and freight throughout the Great Lakes. She doesn't really have a plan other than to get to Sault Ste. Marie. She'll figure things out once she's settled. But a violent storm suddenly rises on Georgian Bay, and the overloaded and top-heavy steamship begins to sink.

In Shakespeare's time, women were not allowed to appear on stage, and so female parts were played by boy actors. In I Was Cleopatra, readers meet John Rice - perhaps the most beautiful and acclaimed boy actor of them all. It is believed by many that John Rice originated the roles of Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra and Cordelia, and this fictional memoir explores his life both on and off the stage.

Told in two volumes, Arise the Dead--part memoir, part historical fiction--spans the period between 1914 and 1945. The two books concentrate on the lives of real people--the author's parents, the author, a young pilot from New Jersey in WW1, and others--as well as some fictional characters, all of whom lived through one or both of the wars and were profoundly affected personally by them. Arise the Dead II focuses on the Second World War and how the war affected the author's family living just outside of London and in the path of the German bombing missions.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: reluctant father of the atomic bomb, enthusiastic lover of books, devoted husband and philanderer. Engaging with the books he voraciously read, and especially the Bhagavad Gita, his moral compass, this lyrical novel takes us through his story, from his tumultuous youth to his marriage with a radical communist and the two secret, consuming affairs he carried on, all the while bringing us deep inside the mind of the man behind the Manhattan Project.

When her father and sister are killed, a distant relative invites Salome and her mother to live with his family in Jerusalem. Quickly betrothed to a pagan prince half her age, Salome questions God's plan. But when she suddenly finds herself being crowned queen of Judea, she learns that a woman committed to God can change the world. Born in the small village of Modein, a town made famous by the warrior Maccabees, Salome Alexandra knows better than to harbor grand dreams for her future.

This program includes a bonus interview with the author. A Well-Behaved Woman is the riveting audiobook about iron-willed Alva Vanderbilt and her illustrious family as they rule Gilded Age New York, from the New York Times bestselling author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. Alva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America's great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts.

This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov'an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity. "The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved.

A sweeping debut novel set in Paris in the 1930's about the love story between Vogue model turned photographer Lee Miller and the artist Man Ray. Their romance unfolds against the backdrop of bohemian Paris, with nights spent at smoky cabarets, opium dens, and Surrealist parties, and days spent working together to discover radical new photography techniques. But as Lee asserts herself, and moves from a muse to an artist, Man's jealousy spirals out of control, and soon their mutual betrayals threaten to destroy them both.

A captivating novel following the exploits of Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, the forgotten and rebellious daughter of one of America's greatest political dynasties. London, 1938.The effervescent "It girl" of London society since her father was named the ambassador, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy moves in rarified circles, rubbing satin-covered elbows with some of the 20th century's most powerful figures.