Upcoming Author Events & Readings
16 upcoming author events and readings from Newtonville Books, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All readings in Greater Boston →
Wed Oct 7 · 7:00pm
Searle discusses her novel Lock Her Up, of which Tom Perrotta writes that she “gracefully walks the knife's edge between wild satire and ripped-from-the-headlines realism.” She has published six previous books of fiction, most recently The Drama Room, and wrote Tonya & Nancy: the Rock Opera. The actress and essayist Marianne Leone joins her.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Wilson discusses Fail Sons, a comic novel in which two estranged brothers drive their father's cryonically frozen body across the country — the shop calls it a twenty-first-century As I Lay Dying. Tom Perrotta joins him and talks about Ghost Town, his own novel about a summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey seen from middle age.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Foreman presents The Scallop Plot, in which an investigative reporter and a Cape Cod fisherwoman set out to stop a wind-farm developer poisoning the scallop beds. Foreman wrote a health column for the Boston Globe for years, has published four works of nonfiction and one earlier novel, and holds a George Foster Peabody Award.
Sat Oct 24 · 4:00pm
Jannie Ho signs Pumpkin and Beetle: Super Secret Garden, an early graphic novel about two vampire cats who sleep by day, eat only red foods and go to school at night. Here Beetle finds a mysterious treasure; they bury it, and soon their whole town is covered in hungry vines. Ho, who lives in Boston, worked as a designer and art director at Nickelodeon, Scholastic and TIME for Kids.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Two decades of clinical practice and a pile of relationship science behind her, Dr Schonbrun traces the hidden forces that bend what we perceive, how we read it, and why we keep defending our version of an argument long after it stops holding up — then says what to do instead. In conversation with Lindsay Gibson.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm
LaHines discusses Miracle Grow of the Mind, a novel about a couple whose son is born prematurely and the years of pediatric neurologists, sensory therapy and evaluations that follow, and about deciding which treatments are worth their cost. Her The Vixen Amber Halloway won a 2024 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award. Rick Moody joins her.
Thu Nov 5 · 7:00pm
Matson discusses Winnowing, which alternates essays on what it means to own things with a day-by-day “Winnowing Log” of her own attempt to reduce what is in her house. She has written several novels, among them The Tree-Sitter and The Hunger Moon, and three books of poetry, most recently As Creatures.
Wed Nov 11 · 7:00pm
Mari Howes, a lawyer and Georgetown Law graduate, discusses her debut thriller The Tribes, the story of “a cult member accused of a shocking crime and the lawyer who chooses to defend her,” in which a jury must decide whether Heather’s indoctrination makes her victim or perpetrator. Jenna Blum, author of the novel Murder Your Darlings and co-founder of the author-interview platform A Mighty Blaze, joins her.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:00pm
Terrill presents her debut novel The Violin Maker, which runs two stories against each other: a 1950s Manhattan violin dealer asked to appraise an old Italian cello by a fellow veteran, and Pietro Guarneri in 1693 building the only cello of his career. Janet Rich Edwards, author of Canticle, joins her.
Sun Nov 15 · 11:00am
The third annual Newton Children’s Book Festival brings more than 100 authors and illustrators of children’s and, for the first time, young adult books to sign copies, with Toadstool Bookshops selling books and a craft table for children. Those taking part include Raul the Third, Padma Venkatraman, Brian Lies, Josh Funk and Rajani LaRocca. The festival has moved this year to American Legion Nonantum Post 440.
Tue Nov 17 · 7:00pm
Brooke presents her debut novel Madeline McKnight Signs Off, about a friendship between two women a generation apart and a late attempt at making amends. She took an MFA at the Bennington Writing Seminars and has published in The Threepenny Review and Passages North. Emily Franklin, who wrote The Lioness of Boston about Isabella Stewart Gardner, joins her.
Wed Nov 18 · 7:00pm
Tillman presents Lucy Miles' Photogenic Mind, a magical-realist mystery in which a teenage boy, a suspended Boston police officer and a Cape Cod snack-shack owner go looking for a friend who vanished after the deaths of her parents. Tillman is Associate Director of the Writing Program at UMass Amherst. Beth Castrodale joins him.
Fri Nov 20 · 7:00pm
Anderson discusses Stealing Saint Nick: A Legendary Corpse, a Notorious Theft, and the Stories that Shape the World, on the man who became Father Christmas by way of the Great Persecution, the fall of Rome, and his bones being stolen twice. Anderson won the National Book Award for Octavian Nothing: The Pox Party and the LA Times Book Prize for Feed.
Wed Dec 2 · 7:00pm
Mandy Silverman, known to her followers as Mandylicious, presents Twisted, her first cookbook: more than 60 sweet and savory recipes for challah and babka, setting traditional recipes and techniques beside newer inventions. Over more than a decade she has developed upward of 600 flavors and built a following of tens of thousands of home bakers. She teaches and bakes from her kitchen in Sharon, Massachusetts.
Thu Dec 3 · 7:00pm
Hoefling discusses Dryads: Spirits of the Trees, on spirits distilled from tree sap, an old category the book names “dryads,” covering their history, culture and production and adding some sixty cocktail recipes. A Cambridge spirits writer raised in Newton, Hoefling founded the Herzog Cocktail School; his The Cocktail Seminars was a 2022 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award finalist. Katie Stryjewski, a PhD ornithologist who posts cocktails as @garnish_girl, joins him.
Fri Dec 4 · 7:00pm
Salesses presents To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time, a memoir written after his wife died of stage four stomach cancer, weaving together his identities as “adoptee, Asian American, husband, father, and, finally, widower.” Salesses, adopted from Korea, teaches in the Virginia Tech MFA program and is the author of The Sense of Wonder and Craft in the Real World. Hanif Abdurraqib calls it “impressively honest and vulnerable.”
