Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

The classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir  that inspired Upstairs, Downstairs, and Dowtown Abbey
It's a true story of a maid who was born in 1907..She describes her life as a parlor maid, cooks helper, and finally s cook.   It's a way of life that is gone forever...

Last Train to Elkmont by Vic Weals

It's a history of the mountains when men were cutting timber and taking it out by train through Elkmont....A look at life on the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains...Lots of old black and white pictures taken       in the early 1900's .

Bible

 I just read the Bible from cover to cover.  I read the New Testament first in the Phillips Modern English version.  Then I read the Old Testament in the Living Bible Paraphrased edition.  Both were easy to read in the modern English. The Old Testament was a surprise to me.  I expected it to be mild and sweet like the New Testament, but I discovered otherwise...I would read a book every morning at the breakfast table and then discuss it with JMB ( my bible expert). He has read the Bible over and over for many years.  Now I'll start again  with the New Testament....

Lilibet

Lilibet... the Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II,  by Carolyn Erickson.     .Lots of books out right now about Elizabeth 11.  I liked this one. It portrays a highly spirited woman who loves her dogs and her horses and most of all her country .She doesn't see her children much when they are young....their grandmother keeps them....Phillip doesn't look good in this book...He isn't home much..he's out partying. 

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

I checked out this book because it mentions Knoxville as one of the places the author lived.  It's a biography of a girl growing up in Liberia.  She lived through Liberia's sad history as a child living in the wealthy class of the country then...Her life gets harder as the country changes.She comes to America and then goes back to Liberia years later....Sad...

Meigs Line by Dwight McCarter and Joe Kelly

I saw this book at the Sugarlands Visitor Center and I ordered it from the library...It's written by retired ranger McCarter and it describes journeys he and his friend made in the mountains to find the original boundary between the United States and the Cherokee Nation...The line went through the Smokies and into South Carolina and over the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The two men did not follow trails, they "shot" the historical line and walked through bushes and rhodendron hells and over bluffs and caves and through rivers...Reading the book is like taking a hike in the mountains....I loved it......

Smoky Mountain Magic by Horace Kephart

I saw this book at the Sugarlands Visitor Center...a book by Horace Kephart that I hadn't read, so I checked it out of the library.  It is fiction that he wrote in 1929, and his great  granddaughter inherited the manuscript .  She published it  with proceeds donated to Great Smoky Mountain National Park....It's about a man living in the mountains...semi-biographical.