GREAT READS

San Miguel, which lies off the Southern California coast across from Santa Barbara, is now part of the Channel Island National park. In the 1880s and fast-forward to the 1930s and 1940s it was a bleak rainy, foggy and isolated island only fit for she...

In 1963, I was a young mother with two daughters, ages two years and six months. I was looking for a book to read and enjoy during the girls' nap time. At the Rising Sun Library I spotted "The Moonflower Vine" by Jetta Carleton on display. The librar...

"The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity" by Time editors, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy is a readable and informative history of the little-known relationship between past and present presidents of the U.S.

This unique club...

No one escapes loss -- loss of a parent, sibling, mate, friend or a pet. Loss and remembrance is stitched into the fabric of our lives. The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman portrays these feelings vividly. The book is based on a real happening told to the...

Geraldine Brooks writes books of fiction around unknown fragments of history and her readers are captivated. This book recounts the story of Caleb Cheeshahleaumuck, a Native American who graduated from Harvard College in the 17th century. His life is...

If you like biographies, American history, politics and an enduring love story, pick up "A Being So Gentle" by Patricia Brady. This is the frontier love story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson.

Much has been written about the Jackson's courtship and mar...

It's 1938 in Threestep, Georgia and 11-year-old Gladys Cailiff is mesmerized by the new teacher for the one-room school. Miss Spivey has traveled all over the world and is especially enthralled with the Middle East and with Baghdad. She shares Arabia...

Elsie and Mairi were extraordinary woman. They met at a motorcycle club in 1912 in England. In 1914 they took off for London to "do their bit" for the war effort. Eighteen-year-old Mairi and thirty-year-old Elsie left for Belgium in September 1914 an...

An engaging plot (especially if one is interested in the woes of the Irish during the Irish Civil War and the quest for Home Rule). Plausible and enduring characters, along with picturesque images of this island country make this historical novel an...

Set in the city of Mesto, Czechoslovakia, love, betrayal, sex, art, war, and architecture combine to engage the reader in this novel of a marriage going stale, mimicking the culture of the 1930s and 1940s hastening into decline and war.

Wealthy Jewis...

Cells from Henrietta Lacks are alive today in research laboratories all over the world.

In 1951, researchers and physicians at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD harvested these cells upon Henrietta's death from cancer without her consent or th...

Olive Kitteridge is an enigma. Mostly contentious but occasionally worthy of the reader's sympathy, perhaps because we see her in ourselves. Set in coastal Maine described over a period of years in its rugged beauty and hardship, this novel-in-storie...

Reminiscent of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, thirteen-year-old Berry tries to make sense of her family life, hometown life, and prejudices in a small town in Florida in the 1950s. She lives close to swamps, snakes, quicksand and smoldering adult re...