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A Moment in Time - Summer Adventure 2025

These books for adults all focus on a different moment in history, ranging from ancient Greece to late 20th-century Sri Lanka. AC Library invites everyone to participate in our 2025 Summer Adventure. Complete activities, reading, and more to receive a book gift and prize drawing entries. Start building your own Summer Adventure June 1 at any AC library location (including our mobile library stops) and online at aclibrary.org/summer.

User from Alameda County Library

14 items

  • Fiction, set in Syracuse in 412 BCE. From the publisher: "Set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War but told in contemporary Irish dialect, Glorious Exploits follows Lampo and Gelon, best friends since childhood. Thrilled to have…
    Book, 2024New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2024 — Fiction LENNON,F
  • Fiction, set in Renaissance Italy. From Goodreads: "Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to…
    Book, 2022New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2022 — Fiction O'FARRELL,M
  • Fiction, set in Korea against the backdrop of its independence movement. From Goodreads: "In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an…
    Book, 2021New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2021] — Fiction KIM,J
  • Erebus

    One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time

    Palin, Michael,
    Nonfiction, set during the Antarctic expeditions of the 1840s. From the publisher: "Michael Palin brings the fascinating story of the Erebus and its occupants to life, from its construction as a bomb vessel in 1826 through the flagship years of…
    Book, 2018Vancouver : Greystone Books, [2018] — 919.804 PALIN
  • Fiction, set around the time of the Civil War. From the publisher: "Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three…
    Large Print, 2020Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2020 — LT Fiction ATAKORA,A
  • Fiction, set in West Africa during the rise of European colonialism. "Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe…
    Book, 2017New York, New York : Penguin Books, 2017 — Fiction ACHEBE,C
  • Fiction, set in Panama during the building of the Panama Canal. From the publisher: "It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign…
    Book, 2024New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2024 — Fiction HENRIQUEZ,C
  • Fiction, set during WWI. From the publisher: "June 1917. Arriving in France, General John Pershing found himself unable to communicate with troops in the field. Pershing needed operators who could swiftly and accurately connect multiple calls, speak…
    Book, New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2022] — Fiction CHIAVERINI,J
  • The Worst Hard Time

    the Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

    Egan, Timothy
    Nonfiction, set during the Great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. From Goodreads: "The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and…
    Book, 2006Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006 — 978.032 EGAN
  • Fiction, set in pre-WII, Japan-controlled Taiwan. From the publisher: "May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She's been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the…
    Book, 2024Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, [2024] — Fiction YANG,S
  • Buses Are a Comin'

    Memoir of a Freedom Rider

    Person, Charles,
    Nonfiction, set during the Civil Rights Movement in the US. From the publisher: "A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward-written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers. At 18, Charles Person…
    Book, 2021New York : St. Martin's Press, 2021 — B PERSON,C
  • Nonfiction, set during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. From the publisher: "In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the coming-of-age story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the…
    Book, 2003New York : Pantheon Books, c2003 — B SATRAPI,M
  • Fiction, set in the midst of the Sri Lankan Civil War. From the publisher: "Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida--war photographer, gambler, and closet queen--has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in…
    Book, 2023New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, 2023 — Fiction KARUNATILAKA,S