The Connecticut Library for Accessible Books publishes its newsletters every two months. On these pages, you will find newsletters available in HTML, accessible PDFs, and accessible Word documents. In addition to these formats, you can elect to receive the newsletter by email and mail (hard copy Large Print and hard copy braille). To request a newsletter in these formats, contact CT LAB by phone at (860) 704-2220 or (800) 842-4516 or by email at csl.AccessibleBooks@ct.gov.
The current issue of the CT LAB newsletter is available below on this page. Use the links below to access back issues of the newsletter.
July and August 2025
The next CT LAB book club will meet virtually on Wednesday July 23, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The title we will be reading is How to Read a Book: a Novel by Monica Wood. This title is available as a Talking Book cartridge and from BARD as DB 121701. A summary of the book follows.
Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed. When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland-Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman-their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways. How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
Please register for the book club by calling Paula McLean at (860) 704-2216 or (800) 842-4516. Participants will receive the Zoom meeting link or dial in phone number approximately one week before the book club meeting.
Read below for a selection of locally produced Talking Books now available on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service from the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS). These books can also be sent to patrons on a Talking Book cartridge. Connecticut Talking Books are recorded by volunteers at the studios of Talking Books CT/CVSBH.
Written by Varian Fry. Marseilles, France. August 1940. The Gestapo's blacklist was thousands of names long. How many people could he get out before Hitler sealed the frontiers? Varian Fry didn't know any more about being an undercover agent than what he'd seen in the movies. But, he was the one man who could get into Vichy France, where thousands of people had fled Hitler's Germany. Unless he could get them out, they'd be trapped-turned back to the concentration camps and death camps. An exciting, true story of World War II, Varian Fry describes the methods he used to get thousands of hunted men and women to safety. Nonfiction. World History.
Download DBC 06255 from BARD.
Written by Terese Karmel. Karmel, the UCONN women's basketball beat writer from the Meriden Record-Journal for more than twenty years shares her favorite memories of this beloved team. Together you'll relive the highs and lows and become reacquainted with some of the team's all-time greatest heroes and legends including Kerry Bascom, Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurassi, and Geno Auriemma. Nonfiction. Sports.
Download DBC 28327 from BARD.
Written by Sandra Rodriguez Barron. When young Monica's mother dies in an accident at sea, she must leave the tropical paradise in El Salvador that was her home. Grieving, Monica and her American father move to Connecticut vowing not to look back. But years later when an intriguing stranger enters Monica's life bearing an unusual request, Monica is propelled back to her past. Retracing the shadowy last days of her mother, a marine scientist whose research is being corrupted, Monica's discoveries will shatter the family's truce. Fiction.
Download DBC 28049 from BARD.
Written by Elizabeth Peters. A good salary and an all-expenses-paid summer spent at a sprawling Arizona ranch is too good a deal for fledgling anthropologist D.J. Abbott to turn down. What does it matter that her rich new employer/benefactor, Hank Hunnicutt, is a certified oddball who is presently funding all manner of off-beat projects, from alien conspiracy studies to a hunt for dragon bones? There's even talk of treasure buried in the nearby mountains, but D.J. isn't going to allow loose speculation -- or the considerable charms of handsome professional treasure hunter Jesse Franklin -- to sidetrack her. Until Hunnicutt suffers a mysterious accident and then vanishes. On a high desert search for the missing millionaire, D.J. is learning things that may not be healthy for her to know. The game someone is playing goes far beyond the rational universe -- and it could leave D.J. legitimately dead. Fiction. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance.
Download DBC 06322 from BARD.
Written by William Kowalski. With the recent death of his only son, Eddie, Grandpa Mann believes he is the last surviving member of a once-great family, until the morning he finds an abandoned baby in a basket on his doorstep with a note identifying the occupant as "Eddie's Bastard". What follows is the bittersweet story of an old man who raises his grandson steeping him in a complex heritage. Fiction. Historical Fiction.
Download DBC 28052 from BARD.
BARD, the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download website, now offers expanded functionality and will serve as a gateway for new services in the future.
If you use BARD on the web, you will have access to BARD 2 in late July. Features of the new BARD website include:
Access to the new BARD website requires a change in login procedures. CT LAB will contact BARD web users and provide instructions for login procedures.
Please contact CT LAB if you have questions, would like to register for BARD, need assistance, or would like to tell us about your experience with BARD 2. To contact CT LAB, please call (860) 704-2220 or (800) 842-4516.
NLS staff members offer tips, answer questions, and demonstrate new features of BARD, the BARD Mobile app, and BARD Express each month during The Many Faces of BARD. This online event is open to all patrons and is held at 7 p.m. eastern time on the second Thursday of every month.
Get program details, login information, and recordings of previous programs at the Many Faces of BARD web page.
NLS presents a monthly program called That All May eRead on Zoom. This program, scheduled monthly for the last Tuesday night of each month, focuses on using the NLS Braille eReaders. Each session begins with a brief demonstration of a feature or use case. The rest of the hour is spent answering patron questions about any aspect of the Zoomax or HumanWare Braille eReaders. Get program details and access recordings of previous programs at the That All May eRead web page.
July 4, 2025 – Independence Day
September 1, 2025 – Labor Day
October 13, 2025 – Columbus Day
November 11, 2025 – Veterans Day
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