Author Readings & Book Talks in Greater Boston
Now playing · Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm
Critic Emily Eakin on The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory, her account of arriving at Harvard in the late 1980s and falling under the spell of Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Althusser, Deleuze and Lacan. MIT's Bruno Perreau joins her on what those ideas still do in the culture wars.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:00pm
Theaster Gates and Henry Louis Gates Jr. discuss Theaster Gates's new book. Theaster Gates is an artist who buys derelict buildings on Chicago's South Side and turns them into archives; Henry Louis Gates Jr. directs the Hutchins Center at Harvard.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm
Richard Kurin, a Smithsonian scholar, discusses History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving of a 200-Year-Old Mystery, on the strand of hair found in Jefferson's Bible and what DNA analysis can settle about whether he fathered Sally Hemings's children. Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello, joins him.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Nghi Vo discusses her new novel The Scarlet Ball, "this all-consuming tale of ballrooms and bloodshed" that "weds The Gilded Age with the Gothic vision of Guillermo del Toro." Vo also wrote The Chosen and the Beautiful and Siren Queen. Cassandra Khaw, a Bram Stoker winner, joins her.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Marcia Chatelain, who won the Pulitzer for Franchise, discusses How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington, recovering the Black women artists and organisers "seen, but barely heard" at the 1963 march. Kellie Carter Jackson of Wellesley joins her.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Erik Mohn discusses his debut memoir Stranger in My Own Story, on coming of age as a transracial adoptee — born to a Black mother he never knew, raised by a white family in small-town Massachusetts — and finding in hip-hop "his first mirror and his first vocabulary." Co-presented by GrubStreet.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Gregory Maguire, the number-one bestselling author of Wicked, returns to the store to present Galinda, an origin story for Glinda the Good Witch that fills in the life behind the bubbly cliche. A notable draw given the ongoing Wicked film and Broadway prominence, this appearance offers Oz fans a new chapter in Maguire's long-running mythology.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:00pm
Douglas Stuart, whose debut Shuggie Bain, about a boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow, won the 2020 Booker Prize, is in conversation in Harvard's Writers Speak series. His second novel, Young Mungo, followed in 2022, and his third, John of John, in May 2026. Born in Glasgow, Stuart worked for two decades as a fashion designer in New York before turning to fiction.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Dahlberg discusses Breaking Point: When the Criminal Justice System Fails, on why innocent people confess. Working with six exonerees who each falsely confessed and served time, she sets out the interrogation tactics behind a leading cause of wrongful conviction — 13 percent of US exonerations between 1989 and 2024 followed a false confession. Daniel S. Medwed joins her.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:00pm
A launch party for The Witch, the new novel from Freida McFadden, whose thriller The Housemaid, about a woman just out of prison who takes a live-in job with a wealthy family, grew into a bestselling series and a 2025 film. McFadden is also a practising physician specialising in brain injury. The $36 ticket includes a signed hardcover to collect at the party, with swag while it lasts.
$36, including a signed hardcover
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Min Jin Lee, who wrote Pachinko, discusses her new book American Hagwon with Ilyon Woo, who won the Pulitzer for Master Slave Husband Wife. Belmont Books hosts it at the First Parish meeting house in Harvard Square rather than in the shop.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Edward Burns, the filmmaker who wrote, directed and starred in The Brothers McMullen, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1995, reads from The Marlboro Road Gang, his second novel. It follows his 2024 debut, which Harlan Coben called “a beautiful tribute to the last days of childhood.” Burns has also acted in Saving Private Ryan and created the television series Public Morals.
Tue Oct 6 · 7:00pm
Mel Thacker launches Scrubbing In, a debut memoir that runs from a childhood spent cycling through homelessness to becoming a surgeon, and then to the panic attacks in the operating room that made the identity she had built stop fitting. She is an ENT surgeon, a coach and a two-time TEDx speaker.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm
Carlton Champion, a local author, reads from his new memoir Notes to My Father, which is “told through a series of notes” and “explores fatherhood, absence, identity, and ultimately forgiveness and self-definition.” He reads several of the notes, tells the stories behind them and then opens the floor to discussion and questions. He gives a second reading at the Lower Mills branch on October 19.
Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm
Brian Cullman, a writer and musician, discusses How to Prepare for the Past: Travels In Music and Time, a memoir of life before the world went digital that takes in his friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin and Paul Bowles. Cullman is a three-time winner of the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award. He talks with Ken Field, a saxophonist and composer.
Tue Oct 6 · 6pm
Alice Hoffman, whose 1995 novel Practical Magic follows the Owens sisters, a family of witches, gives a talk followed by a screening of the original 1998 film adaptation. Tickets include two pre-signed books: Practical Magic 2 in its movie tie-in edition, and Grimoire Girl by actress Hilarie Burton Morgan. Lovestruck Books follows the evening with an optional after party at its shop.
$55.59–$105.99 (ticket options shown by organizer)
Tue Oct 6 · 1pm
Jennifer Perry Cheatham, Christina Grant and Ross Wiener discuss Superintendent as Civic Leader: Stewarding the Future of Public Education, the Harvard Education Press volume they edited, followed by a workshop. Cheatham, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, chairs the school’s Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader; Grant directs the Center for Education Policy Research, and Wiener is a vice president at the Aspen Institute.
Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm
Daniel E. Lieberman discusses Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. Lieberman is a Harvard paleoanthropologist and the author of Exercised, and his subject is the mismatch between the bodies we evolved and the lives we lead. In Hall D, free with an RSVP.
Wed Oct 7 · 7:00pm
Nathaniel Philbrick discusses The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, tying the Gold Rush to the war that followed. Philbrick won the National Book Award for In the Heart of the Sea and was a Pulitzer finalist. Ilyon Woo, who won the Pulitzer for Master Slave Husband Wife, joins him.
Ticketed
Wed Oct 7 · 7:00pm
Liam Callanan discusses Stone Age Astronaut: The Astonishing Adventures of America's Forgotten Flier, a biography of Lester Maitland, who in 1927 became the first person to fly to Hawaii and briefly shared Lindbergh's fame before vanishing from the record. Christopher Castellani, GrubStreet's artistic director, joins him.
Wed Oct 7 · 7:00pm
T.J. English discusses Blood in the Desert: The T. J. English Reader, a first collection of his literary journalism on true crime, jazz, boxing and police corruption across four decades, alongside new work. English wrote The Westies and Havana Nocturne; the Globe's Emily Sweeney joins him.
Wed Oct 7 · 7:30pm
Jennifer Welch, "a progressive atheist from a Bible Belt red state," discusses Not Today, Fascists, on how the far right has used religion, and especially the Evangelical prosperity gospel, to consolidate power and reinforce economic inequality. Every ticket includes a copy.
Ticketed; ticket includes a copy of the book
Wed Oct 7 · 6:30pm
Romance author Betty Corrello launches Back for Seconds, described as a sensory holiday story about how food, sex, connection, and community bring hope. The bookstore hosts a reading and conversation with the author, an audience Q&A, and a book signing. Starts 6:30 PM.
Wed Oct 7 · 7:00pm
Author Kathleen Reidy celebrates her novel Engineering a Love Story in an evening author event at Lovestruck Books & Cafe.
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.
Wed Oct 7 · 6pm
Scott Kerman tells stories from The Duke: Weekly Conversations with the Last Honest Politician, built from four years of Wednesday visits to former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and hundreds of hours of recorded conversation. Kerman, a comedian, has taken the show to the Brattle Theatre for Harvard Book Store and to the State House Library. He takes questions and signs copies; co-presented with the League of Women Voters Brookline.
Wed Oct 7 · 12:30pm
Elizabeth Lund reads from Un-silenced (Červená Barva Press, 2023), her debut poetry collection, which honours a beloved aunt and other women who suffered domestic abuse. Lund was for many years poetry editor of the Christian Science Monitor and later wrote a monthly poetry review column for the Washington Post. The monthly local-author series, run with Newton's Department of Older Adult Services, closes with questions from a moderator and the audience.
Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm
R. F. Kuang celebrates her new novel Taipei Story, about a Chinese American college freshman whose summer language program in Taipei unravels after her grandfather's death. The evening, presented with the Brattle, opens with a screening of Edward Yang's 1985 film Taipei Story, which inspired the book, then a discussion and signing. Kuang is the bestselling author of Babel, Yellowface and Katabasis, and has won Nebula and Locus awards.
Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm
Dylan Gottlieb discusses Yuppies, his history of how the rise of Wall Street in the 1980s “lured a generation of young upstarts to New York, unleashing a political and cultural transformation whose national repercussions are still felt today.” Gottlieb is assistant professor of history at Bentley University and cohosts Who Makes Cents, a history-of-capitalism podcast. Joel Suarez, who teaches history and social studies at Harvard, joins him.
$20
Wed Oct 7 · 6pm
Atiyab Sultan discusses Endgame of Empire, the biography of Sultan Khan written by Khan's son and granddaughter. Khan, a self-taught prodigy from colonial Punjab, beat the world's best players in the late 1920s and '30s, won the British Chess Championship three times and became the first Asian to reach the top of international chess. The historian Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts, chairs.
Wed Oct 7 · 12pm
Byron Williams discusses Liberty and Equality in America, his sixth book, which “examines the central tension between America's founding ideals of liberty and equality and the country's often contradictory history,” taking in slavery, westward expansion, capitalism and civil liberties. Williams is a columnist, adjunct professor and former NPR-affiliate host whose 1963: The Year of Hope and Hostility won the 2014 International Book Award for US History.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
Kevin Galvin discusses Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing of 1976, which "interweaves the stories of a revolutionary and a bombing victim to explore the roots and unintended consequences of political violence." Galvin was deputy national editor of the Boston Globe. Mitchell Zuckoff of Boston University joins him.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
Melissa King discusses The Girl Who Became King, "an intimate, captivating memoir about family" from the James Beard Award-winning chef. King also wrote the cookbook Cook Like a King: Recipes from My California Chinese Kitchen. Karen Akunowicz, chef-owner of Fox & the Knife in South Boston, joins her.
Ticketed
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
Two poets reading from new collections: Yona Harvey's third book Leap & Grow Feathers, written out of the COVID pandemic and "the static fraying our nerves," and Shara McCallum's Behold. Harvey won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her debut Hemming the Water.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
Hugo Dos Santos and Anthony Walton read, introduced by Meia Geddes. Walton, who teaches at Bowdoin College, is the author of Mississippi: An American Journey and the poetry collection Cricket Weather, and co-edited The Vintage Book of African American Poetry with Michael S. Harper. Dos Santos is a Portuguese-American poet and translator. The reading can be attended in the shop or joined online.
Thu Oct 8 · 6pm
Jayne Anne Phillips, who won the Pulitzer for Night Watch, on Small Town Girls — her ninth book and first work of nonfiction, a memoir in essays about Buckhannon, West Virginia, her mother, and the ties between the women of the town. Hosted by the Friends of the Jamaica Plain Library.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
K.T. Landon reads from Abide, which Kim Addonizio chose for the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize, with Carla Panciera, whose One Trail of Longing, Another of String was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and Scott Withiam, whose Waste Management Facility came from MadHat Press. The series runs on second Thursdays.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
A double launch in GrubStreet's debut series, presented with Porter Square Books: Yu-Mei Balasingamchow with Names Have Been Changed and Chital Mehta with Have You Seen Romit?. Both are first novels. The series pairs new writers rather than giving each a night, which is how the school introduces its debut authors.
Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm
Intan Paramaditha discusses her novel Night of a Thousand Hells, translated by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao, about three sisters left to grapple with grief and family secrets after the youngest, Annisa, straps a bomb to her chest. Paramaditha, an Indonesian author and Harvard Radcliffe Fellow, wrote The Wandering, longlisted for the Stella Prize. Mariana Enriquez calls the book “an unforgiving tale of political horror and womanhood.”
Thu Oct 8 · 6:30pm
Damario Solomon-Simmons, a civil rights attorney, signs Redeem a Nation, his account of representing three centenarians, the last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in a case for reparations that ran from the courtrooms of Tulsa to Washington. The book follows “a race against the calendar and the courts” alongside the stories of survivors and descendants. The $31 ticket includes a signed copy.
Thu Oct 8 · 4pm
Margie Lachman, a lifespan psychologist and professor at Brandeis University, discusses her new book Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife, which asks “What if midlife is the beginning of your prime?” Drawing on decades of research, she will “explore the realities of midlife, challenge common myths about aging,” and set out evidence-based strategies for thriving through adulthood. Wellesley Neighbors co-sponsors the talk.
Thu Oct 8 · 6:00pm
Emily Martin discusses her novel Winner Takes All with the library’s Meet Cute romance book club. Talent scout Eleanor Thompson wakes in Las Vegas married to Adam Shaw, the rival who poached her top artist, with hours to undo it while both still court the alt-rock band Dempsey. Martin, who lives in Boston, previously wrote the young adult novels Five Ways to Fall Out of Love and The Year We Fell Apart.
Thu Oct 8 · 5:30pm
The $50,000 Stone Book Award goes to one of three finalists, announced live: Ashley D. Farmer’s Queen Mother, on Black nationalist Audley Moore; Jarvis R. Givens’s American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation; and Jarvis C. McInnis’s Afterlives of the Plantation. GBH host Callie Crossley talks with the winner before a Q&A with all three. The first 100 arrivals receive a signed finalist book.
Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm
Simon Critchley discusses Heidegger Thinking: 'Being and Time' Explained, "an intelligent but approachable guide to the main concepts of Heidegger's magnum opus." Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School. Sean Kelly, Harvard's dean of arts and humanities, joins him.
Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm
Kyle MacLachlan discusses his memoir Fictional Selves, reflecting on the roles that shaped him — Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Dune, Sex and the City — and the line between performance and identity, from his work with David Lynch to fatherhood and fame. Here & Now producer Emiko Tamagawa moderates.
Fri Oct 9 · 6:00pm
A touring live show built around Are You There, God? It's Me, Menopause, the novel by Heather J. Robertson, a bestselling author and board-certified OB/GYN, presented with Empress Editions to mark its launch. After a reception and a short set from a comedian, Robertson reads, talks about the book's inspiration and midlife, and takes audience questions before a signing and an after-party with wellness exhibitors.
Fri Oct 9 · 6:30pm
The Worst Bestsellers podcast records its 300th episode in front of an audience, returning to the book its first episode covered, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, for a live re-read. The guest is Meredith Goldstein of the Boston Globe, who writes the paper's Love Letters advice column and is the author of the memoir Can't Help Myself: Lessons & Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist.
Fri Oct 9 · 6:00pm
Part memoir by Richard Pryor's daughter, part history of the word Pryor did more than anyone to put into American comedy and then publicly renounced after a trip to Kenya. The book moves between his life and the word's long use, and the shop presents it as a hybrid rather than a straight biography.
Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm
Cardboard House Press, which publishes Latin American poetry in bilingual editions, presents four poets: the Peruvian poets Victoria Guerrero-Peirano and Giancarlo Huapaya, with Judah Rubin and Honora Spicer, introduced by Jaime Francisco Matorras. The reading can be attended in person or online. Huapaya returns five days later to introduce William Rowe and Helen Dimos reading César Vallejo's Trilce.
Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm
Singer-songwriter Antje Duvekot and author Steve Edwards trade songs and stories about how they came to their art forms. Edwards wrote the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry, about seven months as caretaker of a remote homestead on Oregon's Rogue River, and his essay collection Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment is due in October. Duvekot won the Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Competition.
Fri Oct 9 · 6:00pm
Andrew R. Novo presents Where the Mountains Burn, a novel of World War II Italy whose protagonist, approaching his eighteenth birthday, must choose between conscription into Mussolini’s army and joining the partisans of the Resistenza. Novo is an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington and holds a doctorate in modern history from Oxford. Bordighera Press publishes the book.
Fri Oct 9 · 3:30pm
Megan K. Palmer, a Belmont author, reads her new picture book Mortimer's Magical Goo, about a boy who would rather not clean his room and discovers a magical goo that will do it for him, at a price. She then leads a discussion and a magical craft. Palmer, a licensed elementary school teacher, also wrote The Missing Piece, a Mom's Choice Awards gold recipient.
Sat Oct 10 · 11:00am
Three creators share new picture books: author Josh Funk and illustrator Renée Kurilla present The Dino Door, a rhyming dinosaur adventure, while author Michelle Cusolito celebrates Rooted in Wonder, a nonfiction look at twelve national trees. A multi-author family reading bringing together well-established Massachusetts-area children's book makers.
Sat Oct 10 · 10:00am
Inbal Alon reads two of her picture books: Maddy's Towers, about a girl whose best friend breaks her trust at school and how slowly that trust is rebuilt, and The Whys Get in Trouble, about Naomi, whose endless questions keep landing her in trouble in class. Alon taught first grade for twelve years and is now a school librarian in Cambridge.
Sat Oct 10 · 11:00am
Local author Monica Acker reads two of her picture books at a Saturday-morning story time: The Legend of Leo, written to be hammed up out loud, and Pirate Baby: A Booty-ful Tale, about Cally, a fearsome pirate captain who takes whatever she wants and gives nothing back while her crew do everything they can to please her.
Sat Oct 10 · 4:00pm
Eric Jay Dolin discusses The Wreck of the Mentor, which follows an American whaleship lost on a remote western Pacific reef in 1832 and the eleven surviving crewmen left with dwindling supplies. Dolin has written a long run of maritime histories, several of which have been New York Times bestsellers.
Sat Oct 10 · 7:30pm
Kyreé Miller’s live storytelling show recounts five open-heart surgeries, two LVADs and, eventually, a heart transplant, and what came after: reclaiming his body, finding his voice and learning to advocate for himself as a patient. Part performance and part audience conversation, the evening includes a Q&A and time to meet afterward. Miller presents it with his company, Five Heartbeats Productions.
Sat Oct 10 · 1:00pm
Sean Foy signs his debut psychological thriller The Grotesque, long-listed for the Cheshire Novel Prize, in which a man sets out to reconcile the childhood memory of his mother's murder by reenacting the crime. Literary Titan wrote that "the writing has a raw, abrasive energy." Foy, also an award-winning filmmaker, was born in Defiance, Ohio, raised mainly in Pennsylvania and now lives in Massachusetts.
Sat Oct 10 · 11:00am
Jamaica Plain author Lori Lobenstine launches Dog Circus Block Party, the second Barking Puppy novel, in which Sophie and Juno, who write the Barking Puppy newspaper, take on a dog-hating new neighbor who wants the neighborhood more “upscale,” down to closing its school. Il Sung Na illustrates. The free family party adds face painting, balloon dogs, clowns and acrobats from Circus Up's Kirkos youth troupe.
Sat Oct 10 · 10:00am
Jeff Jarvis discusses Hot Type, his history of how the Linotype typesetting machine “upended 400 years of setting type by hand,” in a day co-hosted with the Museum of Printing. After lunch the event moves to the museum, where Jarvis and Chris Bradford demonstrate a working Linotype. Jarvis, founding managing editor of Entertainment Weekly and emeritus professor at CUNY’s Newmark journalism school, wrote The Gutenberg Parenthesis.
Sun Oct 11 · 10:30am
A story hour for H is for Hanukkah, Adina Oberman's alphabet board book of the holiday's foods, symbols and traditions — A is for applesauce, B is for biscochos, L for latkes — illustrated by Volha Kaliaha and aimed at the youngest readers.
Sun Oct 11 · 11:00am
Author E.A. Glaspie reads her picture book Little Pine at Hummingbird Books' Sunday Storytime. The weekly under-the-oak-tree session brings a local author into the Chestnut Hill store to share a recent release with young listeners and their families. No RSVP is required and the reading is free.
Sun Oct 11 · 9:30am
Kari Percival, who won the Ezra Jack Keats Award, reads Fall Day, All Day — a picture book about what shifts in the natural world and in us as the leaves turn. A morning story time at the Cambridge shop.
Sun Oct 11 · 2:00pm
Book Ends takes a spooky-themed book fair into Medford Brewing Company for an afternoon, with local authors signing throughout: Gillian Daniels, who wrote Jenny Will Eat You Now, and Lyndsay Ely, author of The Lost Reliquary. The shop runs the fair as a seasonal October event rather than a single-author reading.
Sun Oct 11 · 3:00pm
A monthly live-reading series in which graphic novel creators perform their work aloud, combining the text with the art on screen rather than simply discussing it. Local Boston-area cartoonists are featured alongside visiting creators. The Boston Comic Arts Foundation produces it with Just Book-ish, in the Dorchester shop.
Sun Oct 11 · 12:00pm
Vincent "Vinnie" Quealy signs Reflections of an Irish Grandson, his account of his grandmother Bridget Meade, one of fourteen children raised on a tenant farm in Miltown Malbay, County Clare, who arrived alone in Boston aboard the SS Saxonia in 1909. Quealy, born in Boston in 1953, is a 1975 Boston College graduate involved with its Ireland Business Council, and lives in Scituate.
Sun Oct 11
Raina Telgemeier talks about her career, from mini-comics and her graphic novel adaptations of The Baby-Sitters Club to autobiographical books such as Smile and Sisters, and signs afterwards, with a limit of two books per person. Her work helped carry children’s graphic novels out of comics shops and into bookstores, libraries and schools. The Boston Comic Arts Foundation presents the afternoon with Boston University and Brookline Booksmith.
Mon Oct 12 · 7:30pm
Becky Chambers reads from As You Wake, Break the Shell, the first of a new duology set on the resource-poor planet of Fortune, where a reclusive botanist and a pilot bonded to a living ship are pulled together by the danger her work invites. Chambers won the Hugo for her Wayfarers series; every ticket includes a copy.
Tue Oct 13 · 6:00pm
Anand Giridharadas discusses Man in the Mirror, which turns on the 2023 collision of two lives — Jordan Neely, "a homeless man known in better days for his Michael Jackson impersonations," and Daniel Penny, "an ex-Marine who had moved to the big city." Giridharadas wrote Winners Take All. Junot Díaz joins him.
Ticketed
Tue Oct 13 · 6:00pm
Stephen Graham Jones discusses Off the Reservation, in which a survivor of his bestseller The Only Good Indians joins three older Blackfeet to repatriate the bones of a boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and something terrible escapes with them. Paul Tremblay, the horror novelist, joins him.
Tue Oct 13 · 6:30pm
A Cognoscenti panel on Bad Bunny, fresh from a Grammy album of the year for Debí Tirar Más Fotos and a Super Bowl halftime, and his reckoning with race, LGBTQ rights and Puerto Rico. With Wellesley's Petra Rivera-Rideau, co-creator of the Bad Bunny Syllabus, and Berklee ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall; music and video throughout.
Tue Oct 13 · 7:00pm
Aruni Kashyap discusses his new novel How to Date a Fanatic, "set in contemporary India," in which "a young professor searches for connection and love during a time of political and cultural upheaval." Kashyap directs the creative writing programme at the University of Georgia and translates from Assamese. Neel Mukherjee joins him.
Tue Oct 13 · 7:00pm
Editor B.K. Jackson and contributors Aimee Seiff Christian, Nina B. Lichtenstein, and L.C. Coppola present readings from the anthology Relative Strangers at Hummingbird Books. The evening consists of a series of author readings from the collection followed by an audience Q&A. Admission is offered with or without a copy of the book.
Tue Oct 13 · 4:00pm
Cedar Pruitt presents a nonfiction picture book about the boy who found the Lascaux cave paintings, one of the most significant archaeological discoveries ever made, at a dark moment in the world. Kirkus gave it a starred review, calling it poetically told and luminously illustrated. Part of the shop's Squirrel Tales programme.
Tue Oct 13 · 7pm
V.L. Bovalino launches The Thief and the Traitor Bride, an epic fantasy romance set in the world of her earlier novel The Second Death of Locke, about a spy and a thief “who were married and are now estranged enemies forced to work together.” She talks about the inspiration behind the book and then signs copies. Tickets are sold through Eventbrite.
Tue Oct 13 · 6:30pm
Emily Franklin discusses her novel Love & Other Monsters, narrated by Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s “dangerously loyal stepsister,” who spent the stormy summer of 1816 on Lake Geneva with the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori, the months that produced Frankenstein and the modern vampire. Franklin has written more than twenty books, among them The Lioness of Boston, a novel based on the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Tue Oct 13 · 7:00pm
Lauren Shaw presents Traces of Impermanence, a photobook setting pictures of her own aging body, its “scars, bruises and marks,” beside images of growth and decay in nature, with essays by Lucy Lippard and Terry Tempest Williams. Shaw studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind and is Professor Emerita of Photography at Emerson College. Laura Blacklow joins her in conversation.
Wed Oct 14 · 6:00pm
Ayad Akhtar discusses his new novel The Radiance, in which "a mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and an investigation." Akhtar won the Pulitzer for his play Disgraced and wrote Homeland Elegies. Indira Lakshmanan of WBUR's Here & Now joins him at the Brattle.
Ticketed
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
Cal Hoffman discusses his new novel Judah Can't Tell, which opens "on the morning a powerful US senator is accused of a long-buried sexual scandal" and follows his son Harris, "a journalist, husband, and father." Hoffman also wrote Easy to Slip. Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year, joins him.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
Annalee Newitz discusses A Wall Is Also a Road, "a thought-provoking science fiction adventure" narrated by an amoeba grad student who shape-shifts to study the multicellular creatures of a backwater planet and befriends one in a city called Pompeii. Cecilia Tan joins them.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:30pm
Erin French discusses Seize the Supper, the third cookbook from her Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine — seasonal main dishes, bright salads and spiced desserts built around dining outside and in the moment. Dan Souza of America's Test Kitchen joins her; every ticket includes a copy.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
Debut author Claudia Hinz celebrates the release of her first novel, Safekeeping, at Hummingbird Books. The evening includes a 30-minute moderated interview followed by an audience Q&A, introducing readers to the new work. Tickets are available with or without a copy of the book and are non-refundable but transferable.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
Jason Prokowiew presents War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir, a braided account of his Russian father's adoption by the Nazis who murdered his family in World War II and the inherited trauma of fatherhood. The award-winning book is joined in conversation by memoirist Sara Faith Alterman, author of Let's Never Talk About This Again.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:30pm
David Ryan, whose story collection Alligator Kirkus credited with 'the precision and balance of a high-wire aerialist', reads with Nick Flynn, the memoirist of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Musicians Arto Vaun and Fuzzy play between them. Earfull runs the series as a reading-and-music evening at the Regattabar.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
Cortney LaCorte launches Oversharing, her cookbook of boards and grazing spreads. The Nashville food creator known online as @cheesegal began by building elaborate cheeseboards for country musicians and went viral for them. The event is ticketed rather than free, unlike most of the shop's author evenings.
Wed Oct 14 · 6:30pm
The former NFL player's debut novel follows Coltrane Davis, who climbs out of San Diego's back alleys into the city's halls of power as fixer to a crooked kingmaker, running multimillion-dollar scams until the arrangement turns. Hardy opens the Friends of the South End Library's fall author series, at Union Church on Columbus Avenue. Free.
Wed Oct 14 · 7pm
Ríoghnach Robinson celebrates Bad Words, a debut novel about critic Selina Chan, whose “blistering review turned Parker Navarro’s debut novel into the flop of the decade.” Four years later, her takedown of his second book sparks a viral literary feud. Robinson talks with local Bookstagrammer Jess Lee about writing romance born from rivalry and the culture of publishing and criticism, then signs copies.
$6.24–$37.74 (ticket options shown by organizer)
Wed Oct 14 · 7pm
Jonathan Edward Durham discusses his debut novel Winterset Hollow, in which friends visit the island that inspired their favorite book, a tale of animals preparing for an end-of-summer festival, and find the truth behind it “darker and more dangerous than they ever imagined.” Christopher Golden, a Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award winner whose novels include Road of Bones and Carry Me to My Grave, joins him.
$5 plus ticketing fee; redeemable as store credit that evening
Wed Oct 14 · 7pm
Robert Fitzgibbon discusses Murder in Salem Massachusetts: The Death of Frances Cochran, about a nineteen-year-old who stepped off a commuter bus into “a mysterious black automobile” and was found dead in a Salem lovers’ lane three days later. The killer was never caught, and the book ties the case to other unsolved murders, among them the 1947 Black Dahlia killing in Los Angeles.
Wed Oct 14 · 6:00pm
MrBallen, the former Navy SEAL whose YouTube channel and podcast retell strange, dark and mysterious true stories, meets readers and poses for photos to mark MrBallen Presents: The Terror Within: The Graphic Stories. Born John B. Allen in Quincy, he was wounded by a grenade in Afghanistan, retired from the Navy in 2017 and rose to fame on TikTok in 2020 with a story about the Dyatlov Pass incident.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm
William Rowe and Helen Dimos read from their translation of Trilce, César Vallejo's 1922 collection, published by New York Review Books with the Spanish original, a more literal English version and a gloss for each poem. The translation won the Premio Valle-Inclán for translation from Spanish. Rowe is a British scholar of Latin American poetry, and the Peruvian poet Giancarlo Huapaya introduces.
Wed Oct 14 · 6:00pm
Adrian Tinniswood discusses The Houses of Guinness, his history of the brewing family told through more than a dozen of its houses, from Farmleigh and Luggala in Ireland to Elveden in Suffolk and Kenwood on Hampstead Heath. The book was published to coincide with the Netflix series House of Guinness. Tinniswood, an OBE, directs graduate programmes in country house studies at the University of Buckingham; the Irish Georgian Society co-presents.
Wed Oct 14 · 7:30pm
The Moth StorySLAM is an open-mic storytelling competition in which names are drawn from a hat and each storyteller has five minutes, without notes, to tell a true story on the night’s theme, scored by teams of judges from the audience. The theme is enchantment: an “abracadabra” in a life that “rebuffs logical explanation,” whether great beauty or wild coincidence. WBUR is The Moth’s media partner.
$17
Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm
Sharon Weinberger discusses Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, which "reveals how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy." Weinberger was national security editor at the Wall Street Journal until 2026.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Ellen Warner discusses The Other Half: Forty Men Reveal Life After Fifty, "an insightful and intimate look at aging and masculinity" drawn from interviews and portraits "from a taxi driver to a prince, a fishmonger to a professional boxer." Warner's previous book, The Second Half, did the same for women.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Arrowsmith Press and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute co-present the Ukrainian poet Yaryna Chornohuz, who has served in Ukraine's armed forces since 2020, first as a combat medic, and whose collections include Dasein: The Defense of Presence, with the poet and scholar Amira El-Zein, author of Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. The novelist Askold Melnyczuk, founder of Arrowsmith Press, introduces.
Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm
Sammarco traces how Beacon Hill developed after the nineteenth century, past the Federal row houses and gaslit cobbles the neighbourhood is known for. He has written more than seventy-five books on the history of Boston, among them Beacon Hill Through Time, taught history at Boston University and the Urban College of Boston, and holds the Bulfinch Award and the Washington Medal.
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 15 · 7:00pm
Psychologist Tania Lombrozo on Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand — what happens when people demand a reason for traffic, for a friend's behaviour, for the colour of the sky. With Paul L. Harris.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Four novelists talk about new books centred on women who will not accept the status quo: Tara Badstubner's Every Room Remembers, about grief and the part the natural world plays in healing; Liz Collins' Whalespeak, about a long-distance swimmer with an uncanny connection to whales; Carol Hoenig's The Liberation of Jan; and a fourth new novel from the panel's remaining author.
Thu Oct 15 · 6:30pm
Geraldine Brooks discusses Memorial Days, her 2025 memoir of grief after the sudden death of her husband, the writer Tony Horwitz, with Rabbi Karen Thomashow of Temple Isaiah. Brooks won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for March; her other novels include Year of Wonders, People of the Book and Horse. It is a joint event of the Arlington, Bedford, Lexington and Lincoln public libraries and Temple Isaiah.
Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm
Carla Kaplan discusses Troublemaker, her biography of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, the aristocrat who fought fascism in Spain, became an American Communist and wrote the 1963 exposé The American Way of Death; Time called her “Queen of the Muckrakers.” Kaplan, Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern, drew on nearly fifty new interviews. Her earlier books include Miss Anne in Harlem and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.
Thu Oct 15 · 6:30pm
Brendan Donovan discusses his debut memoir HappySad: Getting Over the One That Got Away, which follows him from falling in love and getting engaged at 27 through depression, addiction and recovery, “from therapy and The Biggest Loser to opioids and everything in between.” Donovan is a Boston special education teacher who was a contestant on the show in 2010, and he self-published the book.
Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm
DotStories, an LGBTQ+ storytelling series that DotOut* presents for Dorchester's LGBTQIA+ community and its allies, meets on the third Thursday of each month around a theme; this month's is all things mystical. Kacie King and Juanita Cox curate the evening. No storytelling or public-speaking experience is needed to join in, nobody is obliged to speak, and anyone of any age, background or belief is welcome.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Rose Levy Beranbaum celebrates the release of her memoir, Ma Vie en Rose, in conversation with Kara Baskin of the Boston Globe and her husband and collaborator, Woody Wolston. Beranbaum has published fifteen books; her first, The Cake Bible, was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. The evening raises scholarship money for women in food, beverage and hospitality, and tickets include a signed book.
Thu Oct 15 · 6pm
Libbie Grant discusses her novel The Ended World, in which “a young woman’s vision over a Quebec lake sends her on a search to understand her relationship to the divine,” while a boy raised Mormon grows up to build an AI that appears sentient. As Olivia Hawker, Grant writes historical fiction and has made the Washington Post bestseller list. Judith Donath of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center joins her.
Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm
Palestinian American poet George Abraham, a two-time Arab American Book Award winner, wrote Birthright and the forthcoming When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America. Jess Rizkallah's the magic my body becomes won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize; Jess Yuan's Slow Render won the Airlie Prize; leena aboutaleb's debut collection Thalassa traces a descent into the Underworld in search of her brother.
Fri Oct 16 · 7:00pm
Liza Black discusses How Settlers Get Away with Murder, "a forensic history of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people crisis that unmasks the Americas' oldest and most relentless crime." Black teaches Native American and Indigenous studies at Indiana. Co-presented with the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights.
Fri Oct 16 · 7:00pm
Susan Neiman, a moral philosopher and author of Evil in Modern Thought, discusses Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, which argues that "naming and confronting evil" is essential to preserving democracy against demagogues. James Wood of the New Yorker joins her.
Fri Oct 16 · 6:00pm
Caldecott Honoree Shawn Harris presents Duel, a picture book using mirrored images to tell of two queens, two knights, and a shared hill. Harris earned his Caldecott Honor for Have You Ever Seen a Flower? and illustrated the Newbery-winning The Eyes and the Impossible. A reading from a prominent picture-book artist.
Fri Oct 16 · 4:30pm
Penfold leads art activities from Every Child Is an Artist, her book of simple making-and-moving projects for children. She is Chair of Arts and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has curated children's play spaces at Tate Modern, the Serpentine and MoMA, and directs Project Zero's Art/Play study.
Fri Oct 16 · 7:00pm
Ethan Tapper, who has worked as Chittenden County's forester in Vermont, discusses The Forest Year, billed as “a forest almanac for our time, rooted in a full year observing a rural woodland and its birds.” His first book, How to Love a Forest, set out what the shop calls “a pragmatic and hopeful vision for our relationship with forests and other ecosystems.”
Fri Oct 16 · 7:30pm
Opening night of the 2026 Boston Book Festival. Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short and Moneyball, discusses his new book Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State, an account of public servants targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks (Memorial Days). Every ticket includes a signed hardcover of Blockers. The free festival follows in Copley Square on Saturday 17 October.
$49.87, includes a signed hardcover
Fri Oct 16 · 6:30pm
Samantha Paige Rosen launches Living, Together, the anthology she edited on how people in the US are “thriving through collective care” amid the climate crisis, a hostile housing market and the loneliness epidemic. Contributors include Kristen Arnett, Rhaina Cohen and Kim Stanley Robinson. Rosen is joined in conversation by Rev. Jordan Harris, followed by audience questions and a signing; tickets are sliding-scale or include the book.
Sat Oct 17 · 10:00am
The Boston Book Festival returns to Copley Square, "gathering the Greater Boston community together with authors around the transformative joys of reading, the power of stories, and the exchange of ideas through a wide range of free programming." The line-up is announced nearer the date on the festival's own site.
Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am
Author-illustrator Maddie Frost reads The Stuffie Stand, her picture book about Moose, who sews stuffed animals in his shed and sells them to the neighbourhood. When orders outgrow him he has to ask for help from Mabel, a rival maker whose bedazzled stuffies he does not care for, and the competition turns into a partnership and a friendship. It is a half-hour story time for young children.
Sat Oct 17 · 1pm
Jay Raymond presents the research behind Mangle Boards of Northern Europe: A Definitive Guide to the Geographic Origins of Mangle Boards. A mangle board is a carved plank used from the sixteenth to the twentieth century to press wrinkles out of linen; Raymond surveyed more than seven thousand of them in museums across Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
Sat Oct 17 · 4:00pm
Liv Mae Morris reads from The Last Dragon House, her debut middle-grade novel and the first of a series from Abrams Children's — magic, humour, a great many dragons, and a labour movement. Morris is a bookseller as well as a writer; she grew up in Kentucky and now lives in Boston.
Sat Oct 17 · 7:00pm
Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel discuss The Man With Many Names: Stories, forty tales gathered over three decades and set in and around Bulgaria, among them a drifter convinced he is on television and a girl whose two eyes see only the past and only the future. Gospodinov and Rodel shared the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter; he has also won the Premio Strega Europeo.
Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm
Three first-time authors talk about their debuts with moderator Danielle Bradley, the library’s 2026 writer in residence, whose own novel Crying in Baseball is due in 2027. The panelists are Abigail Savitch-Lew, author of the novel Livonia Chow Mein; Meghana Mysore, winner of the Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction, who teaches English at Randolph College; and Laura Garden, a conservation biologist by training who works on a Massachusetts farm.
Sat Oct 17 · 1:00pm
Andrew and Mark Chauppetta sign Troy's Number 23: The Legacy Rolls On, a children's book in which Andrew carries on his late brother Troy's Number 23, keeping his spirit alive with every roll of the ball. The store describes it as "a tribute to friendship, perseverance, teamwork, and the opportunities that adaptive sports create for individuals with disabilities," introducing young readers to Power Wheelchair Soccer.
Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm
Nicole Graev Lipson signs her memoir Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, in which she "breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood," drawing on her literary foremothers to write about fidelity, female friendship, solitude and frozen embryos. Lipson's essays have appeared in The Best American Essays. Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, called the book "sensitive, searingly intelligent, and beautifully written."
Sat Oct 17 · 7:00pm
Elsa Sjunneson, a Deafblind author and disability rights activist, launches Dear Blind Lady, “an unfiltered disability advice book” answering the awkward and complicated questions disabled and non-disabled people meet in everyday life. Sjunneson's earlier book is the memoir Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism. Becky Jackson Curran, a disability inclusion advocate and author, moderates, followed by audience questions and a signing, with ASL interpretation.
Sat Oct 17 · 6pm
Mia Millefoglie and Mike Fiorito are the featured authors at this month's session of the Italian American Writers Association's Boston author series, which pairs its featured writers with an open mic for anyone who wants to read. The open mic starts the evening, and admission is free.
Sat Oct 17 · 1pm
Anne Pauly discusses her debut novel Before I Forget, which recounts the aftermath of her father's death and the task of mourning a man who was “at once a self-taught philosopher and romantic, and an alcoholic whose violence marked his family.” The book won the Prix du Livre Inter and was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. Bruno Perreau, Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at MIT, moderates.
Sat Oct 17 · 3:30pm
Susan Neiman discusses Call It Evil, in which she argues that evil is “a vital lens through which to understand the threats facing democracy today.” Neiman, a moral philosopher who has directed the Einstein Forum in Potsdam since 2000, has taught at Yale and Tel Aviv University. Sabine von Mering, director of Brandeis University's Center for German and European Studies, joins her in conversation; the Boston Book Festival co-presents.
Sun Oct 18 · 2:00pm
Caldecott Medalist Philip C. Stead shares his middle-grade debut, A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic, an illustrated tale full of running gags and broken fourth walls pitched to fans of Kate DiCamillo and Lemony Snicket. Stead won the Caldecott for A Sick Day for Amos McGee.
Sun Oct 18 · 2:00pm
Jenn Bouchard signs Palms on the Cape, a novel about Rachel Sinclair, who is about to turn forty and runs an upscale Cape Cod beach bar with a chosen family of staff and friends, including Carlos, whom she may love. When a Vermont business-school group called the A-List plans to take over her business, she must decide whether to join forces with an unlikely ally.
Sun Oct 18 · 11:00am
Kari Allen and Carrie Kruck read from their picture books at an hour-long morning storytime for families. Allen is the author of Maddie and Mabel Know They Can, illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss, and Whose Prints?; Kruck wrote Alfred Blooms, illustrated by Carmen Mok, and Iggy Who Breathes Fire, illustrated by Erika Meza. No registration is required.
Sun Oct 18 · 6:30pm
Yuvashri Harish launches her debut YA horror novel Kill Your Darlings, in which a teen girl “faces the horrors of misogyny and racism—plus an evil witch and her horde of monsters.” Its heroine, Thulasi, is the dutiful daughter left babysitting her seven-year-old cousin on Halloween night when the evening turns. Harish reads and talks with Sara Farizan, author of If You Could Be Mine, before audience questions and a signing.
Sun Oct 18 · 4:00pm
G’Ra Asim reads from his essay collection, drawing on “pop music, TV, literature, internet culture, Black feminist thought” and his romantic misadventures to examine what blocks lasting connection. His band Uppity, whose EP Code Ditching is a companion to the book, performs between reading and conversation. Asim teaches English at Washington University in St. Louis; his debut, Boyz n the Void, was a Kirkus best nonfiction book of 2021.
Sun Oct 18 · 5:00pm
Porter Square Books’ monthly Be the Change series turns to animal rescue with cozy mystery writers Cate Conte, author of the Cat Cafe Mysteries, and Elise Scott, of The Black Cat Detectives, and Sara Kimmel, cat foster coordinator for Broken Tail Rescue. Conte also writes as Liz Mugavero, whose first Pawsitively Organic Mystery was an Agatha Award nominee. The shop donates 20% of the evening’s sales to Broken Tail.
Sun Oct 18 · 11am
John Mulhern reads from Science in the Nursery at the shop's Sunday Storytime, a collection of "goofy science-based nursery rhymes" for kids interested in STEM, with a glossary of science terms and illustrations by Elisha Gillette. Mulhern, raised in Pawtucket and now based in Framingham, is a graphic designer in Rhode Island with an interest in astronomy and science fiction.
Sun Oct 18 · 1pm
Janice Bangs reads from her children's book Mama Duck's Lost Duckling: with one duckling missing as her eggs hatch, Mama Duck searches the wetlands, sitting on every egg she finds and learning that "not every egg holds what she’s looking for." Bangs spent 30 years in television producing and hosting segments, and her books blend humor with real science, each with Bonus Discovery Pages.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm
Kerry Kennedy discusses Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy, "a vivid, intimate biography of an American icon by her daughter, told through her firsthand memories and exclusive access to Ethel's personal papers." Kennedy is a human rights lawyer. Mark Gearan joins her at the Brattle.
Ticketed
Mon Oct 19 · 7:00pm
Julie Orringer discusses her new novel Luna, Phoenix, Queen, "a novel about varieties of infidelity, the provenance of a literary masterpiece, and the power of storytelling to shape identity and destiny." Orringer wrote The Invisible Bridge and The Flight Portfolio. Jayne Anne Phillips, a Pulitzer winner, joins her.
Mon Oct 19 · 7:00pm
Nichole Accettola discusses her second cookbook, Scandinavian Everyday, more than 85 recipes for bowls, salads, soups and desserts drawn from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Accettola, who cooked in Copenhagen for more than fifteen years, owns San Francisco's Kantine; her first book, Scandinavian from Scratch (2023), won an IACP Award. Jennifer Aaronson, formerly in charge of food and entertaining at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, joins her.
Mon Oct 19 · 7:00pm
Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss, discusses her new novel Sophie, Standing There, "a tender and hilarious novel about heartbreak" whose book-loving heroine, with a dream festival job and a husband she adores, has nonetheless been living alone and estranged since Christmas. Laura Zigman joins her.
Mon Oct 19 · 7:00pm
Author and professor Kayla Branstetter discusses her recent book, Don't Be An Athena, at Hummingbird Books. The event features a 30-minute moderated interview with an audience Q&A and a signing to follow. Ticket options include hardcover or paperback copies of the book, or general admission alone.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm
The Mexican novelist Álvaro Enrigue talks with Alejandra Vela Martínez in Harvard's Writers Speak series. His Sudden Death, built around a tennis match between Caravaggio and the poet Quevedo, won Spain's Premio Herralde in 2013; Now I Surrender followed the last years of the Apache wars, and You Dreamed of Empires (2024) stages Cortés's arrival at Moctezuma's court in 1519.
Mon Oct 19 · 7:00pm
Kathleen Reidy discusses Engineering a Love Story with fellow novelist Karen Winn. Reidy's book asks how much a capable woman can afford to risk when she is the only woman in the room, and the shop describes it as both witty and warm. Book Ends hosts the conversation on Main Street.
Mon Oct 19 · 8:00pm
Natalie Shapero reads from Stay Dead with Kathy Fagan, author of The Unbecoming. Shapero teaches at Tufts and her poems work a deadpan, self-interrupting register; Fagan has published collections over four decades and won the National Poetry Series. The Blacksmith House series has run Monday readings in Cambridge since the 1970s.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm
Carlton Champian, a Boston-area author, reads from and discusses Notes to My Father, “a deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, abandonment, identity, and the journey of confronting what we inherit.” The book, a memoir written as a series of notes, begins from the question of what happens when a father’s absence becomes part of who his son is. The reading is followed by discussion.
Mon Oct 19 · 7:30pm
Carolyn Marie Wilkins, a jazz pianist and vocalist who teaches at Berklee College of Music, pairs a conversation with a piano performance around her new Prohibition-era mystery, in which “a young psychic in small town Illinois helps the Black community fight crime and corruption.” Wilkins has toured internationally as a State Department Jazz Ambassador. Whitelam Books will sell copies for signing.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm
Steve Edwards, the library’s 2025 writer in residence, discusses Rare Good, essays written after his autism diagnosis in his mid-thirties that move between raising a disabled child, his own mind and “the contributions of disabled artists past and present.” His first book, the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry, recounts seven months caretaking a remote homestead on Oregon’s Rogue River; his essays have appeared in The Yale Review and Orion.
Mon Oct 19 · 7pm
Leila Sales celebrates Encore Performance, her first adult romance, about Emmy Gold, "the frontwoman of an indie-sleaze breakout band who’s since gone solo," back on tour with her former collaborator and first love, Bishop Ward. Sales has previously written young adult novels, including This Song Will Save Your Life. She is in conversation with Courtney Marzilli of the Books are Chic podcast.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:30pm
Maura McAdam discusses Permission Granted, a playbook for women entrepreneurs that draws on research and interviews with more than 300 female entrepreneurs to set out eight calls to action for starting, building and growing a business. McAdam is a professor and researcher in entrepreneurship and leadership. She is joined by investors Julianne Zimmerman, former Co-CEO of Adasina Social Capital, and Lata Setty, founding investor of The How Women Invest Fund.
Mon Oct 19 · 5:15pm
Mat Fournier presents his book Dysphoric Modernism, which questions “the entanglements of the modern gender binary with state power and colonial history.” Reading Gide, Genet, Colette and others, Fournier traces how narratives of sexual dissidence in the French modernist canon both deconstruct and reinforce exclusive definitions of masculinity and femininity, and argues that tracking that dysphoria shows gender's complicity with historical and contemporary fascisms.
Mon Oct 19 · 5pm
Linford Fisher discusses his new book, shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, which traces the enslavement of Indigenous people from the years just after 1492, when it began "ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas," and the ways Native Americans fought for their sovereignty. Fisher is professor of history at Brown University and the author of The Indian Great Awakening.
Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm
Sari Altschuler discusses Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship, which traces how differences we now call disabilities were often accommodated in America’s first century and later became grounds for exclusion and lesser degrees of citizenship. She is a disability studies researcher, and is joined in conversation by Suzanne Koven, MD, MFA, writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. A book signing follows; the event is also streamed on Zoom.
Tue Oct 20 · 6:00pm
Dino Martins discusses Hidden Creatures, a welcome to "the hidden, squirming world of parasites — some of the most misunderstood creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies)," the tapeworm among them. Martins is a Kenyan entomologist who teaches at Stony Brook. Free with an RSVP.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
Dariush Mozaffarian discusses his first book Food Is Medicine, "an urgent exposé of how the food we eat is making us sick, how we can heal, and the revolutionary new food system that can mend our health, economy, and planet." Mozaffarian is a cardiologist who directs the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women, discusses Damned if She Does, on the sixteen million American women who have left the church in the past decade — asking, as the book puts it, "why they leave--and where they land." Robby Robinson joins her.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
Mindy Misener discusses her debut novel Good Guys, in which two estranged sisters in a small New England town become "embroiled in a war crime involving a local hero" — a soldier killed in Iraq and famous for being a good guy, whose dark secret one of them uncovers. Mairead Small Staid joins her.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
Geisel Honor winner Kara LaReau presents her new middle-grade novel Licorice, a spine-chilling and heartwarming story of a frightened kitten, a grieving boy, and a ghost who refuses to be forgotten. A former Candlewick and Scholastic editor, LaReau also writes the Infamous Ratsos and ZomBert Chronicles series.
Tue Oct 20 · 1:30pm
Kelly Yang — author of the Front Desk series, New From Here, Finally Seen and the YA novels Parachutes and Private Label — talks about her work and meets young readers at the Adams Street branch. Part of the BPL's Author & Illustrator Series.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
Gretchen Powell Fox launches Shadow and Son, joined in conversation by fellow fantasy novelists Annie Paige-Stone, who writes as Sable Sorensen and wrote Dire Bound, and Vasilisa Drake, author of A Bargain So Bloody. Each ticket includes a signed copy. The evening is held in Hadley Hall at the Parish of the Epiphany.
Tue Oct 20 · 4:00pm
Kari Percival, who won the Ezra Jack Keats Award, presents a picture book about autumn — how the natural world shifts as the leaves turn and the air sharpens, and how people shift with it. The illustrations are digital woodcuts. The visit belongs to Beacon Hill Books' Squirrel Tales children's programme.
Tue Oct 20 · 7pm
Joanna Shupe celebrates The Gilded Rose, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast "set against the excess and opulence of Gilded Age New York." Shupe is a USA Today bestselling author of historical romance, and is joined in conversation by the bestselling romance novelist Sarah MacLean; the two talk about resilience and "the transformative power of love."
Tue Oct 20 · 7:00pm
K. S. Shay discusses her debut novel Portrait of a Witch Undone, in which a disgraced North Shore witch follows her best friend through the empty frame of a painting stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum into the Other Marsh, “a haunting, deadly realm” ruled by the folkloric Lady of the Fens. Tickets are $5, redeemable as store credit on the night, including toward the book.
Tue Oct 20 · 6pm
Donna French McArdle shares her new book If, a poetry collection "written to honor transformation and welcome the unfamiliar" that traces daily life through memory and stories told and retold. McArdle won the Watrous Prize for Poetry at Kirkland and Hamilton Colleges, studied with Richard Shelton and earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then worked as a copywriter, technical writer, journalist and writing coach.
Tue Oct 20 · 6:30pm
Kelly Yang celebrates the graphic novel adaptation of Front Desk, her debut novel about a first-generation immigrant child from China living and working in a motel, drawn from her own childhood; Kirkus Reviews named it "one of the best books of the 21st century." Yang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over 15 books, including Parachutes and The Take, went to university at 13.
Tue Oct 20 · 7pm
Marissa Fayer discusses Undervalued to Unavoidable, "the investment case and playbook for treating women's health as infrastructure," arguing that the global economy loses nearly $1 trillion a year by treating it as a cause rather than an investment. Fayer, a four-time venture-backed medtech CEO, leads DeepLook Medical and founded the nonprofit HERhealthEQ. Amanda Ducach, founder and CEO of the women's health AI company EmaEQ, moderates.
Tue Oct 20 · 7:30pm
Sherri Stepakoff discusses Sanctuary at Unity Farm, her debut poetry collection, drawn from her time as the first poet-in-residence at Unity Farm Sanctuary, a refuge for farmed animals in Sherborn; in "poems of grace and humor" she writes about the animals she visited there. Her work has appeared in Passagers and Off the Coast. Kathy Halamka, who cofounded the Sanctuary in 2016 with her husband John Halamka, joins her.
Tue Oct 20 · 6:30pm
Karl Stevens launches Pepper, the sequel to his graphic memoir Penny; he lives in Boston with his wife, Alex, and their cats Penny and Pepper. Stevens is an Ignatz Award nominee and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist whose comics have run in The New Yorker and the Village Voice. Joel Christian Gill, chair of Boston University's MFA in Visual Narrative and author of the memoir Fights, joins him.
Tue Oct 20 · 6pm
Poets Eleni Sikelianos and Julie Carr read. Sikelianos's Memory Rehearsal, the third book in her trilogy of ancestral encounters, was called by Kirkus “a moving family memoir and a triumph of cultural archaeology”; she has also translated Jacques Roubaud and Mohamed Leftah. Carr's recent books include The Garden, the first of her Overflow series; she teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-runs Counterpath in Denver.
Tue Oct 20 · 7pm
Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne read from their new collections, Meitner's Assembled Audience (Milkweed Editions) and Browne's I am Trying to Love the Whole World (BOA Editions), followed by a Q&A moderated by Anna V.Q. Ross, a poet and lecturer at Tufts. Meitner's earlier Holy Moly Carry Me won the National Jewish Book Award for poetry; Browne teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio.
Tue Oct 20 · 7pm
Historian Peter Mancall discusses his new book Contested Continent, a history of North America from 1000 to 1680 that traces the developments leading toward the eventual founding of the United States. Mancall, who teaches at the University of Southern California, is the author of Fatal Journey, on Henry Hudson’s final expedition, and The Trials of Thomas Morton. The evening is part of the Concord Festival of Authors.
Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm
Fuchsia Dunlop discusses her new cookbook Five Tastes, "a master class on harnessing the magic of traditional Chinese flavoring techniques to bring joy into everyday home cooking." Dunlop trained at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine and won a James Beard award for The Food of Sichuan. Free with an RSVP.
Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm
Natasha Singer discusses Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools. Singer has covered the tech industry's influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade and was a Pulitzer finalist for national reporting. Cathy O'Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, joins her.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Marcia Chatelain discusses How Bright the Path Grows, "the little-known story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington." Chatelain won the Pulitzer for Franchise and teaches Africana studies at Penn. Christian Hosam of Wellesley joins her.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Céline Leboeuf, a philosopher, discusses The Tyranny of Thinness, "a fearlessly feminist philosophical approach to defying diet culture," drawing on Beauvoir, Audre Lorde and Roxane Gay to unpack why thinness is framed as something to achieve. Charles More joins her.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Lindsay Turner, a poet and translator from the French whose collections include Songs & Ballads and The Upstate, is introduced by and in conversation with Nina MacLaughlin, the Boston-area writer whose books include Hammer Head, about leaving journalism to work as a carpenter, and Wake, Siren, a retelling of the women of Ovid. The reading can be attended in the shop or joined online.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand discusses her newest book, The Thoroughbreds, in an evening presented in partnership with the JCC Greater Boston in Newton. The moderated interview follows a 6 pm doors opening, with the onstage conversation beginning at 7. Admission is available with or without a signed copy.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Katherine Grandjean discusses Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution, which follows a string of violent deaths on the post-Revolutionary frontier and what they expose about the era's unrecorded violence. Grandjean teaches history at Wellesley College and wrote American Passage.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm
Dustin Renwick discusses The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2026, guest-edited by José Andrés, alongside his own book S'mores. The anthology ranges from Gaza to France to Blue Ridge, Georgia, with work by Priya Krishna, Ligaya Mishan, Dan Kois, Jordan Kisner, Lauren Collins and Lauren Oyler.
Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm
Madhushree Ghosh discusses Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the American West, which blends memoir and history to follow South Asian refugees and immigrants who settled the Southwest as farmers, truck drivers and diner cooks, told through four Punjabi women and their recipes. Ghosh, who holds a PhD in biochemistry, wrote Khabaar and founded the literary salon and supper club KhabaarCo.
Wed Oct 21 · 2:00pm
The Fowler branch’s Book-A-Mystery group, led by librarian Madeline, discusses The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton with its author, Jennifer N. Brown, who joins as part of the Concord Festival of Authors. The novel is “a dual-timeline murder mystery set in an English country manor,” in which an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess. No registration is needed.
Wed Oct 21 · 7pm
Peyton Corinne launches Undone, the fourth and final book in her Undone series, in which troubled hockey star Toren Kane, "fighting for one last chance at redemption," is forced back into the orbit of Lillian LaBlanc, his childhood best friend and first love. Corinne, a USA Today bestselling author, is in conversation with fellow romance authors Chelsea Curto and Chip Pons.
Wed Oct 21 · 7:30pm
Peter King discusses The Game, his new book on NFL football drawn from forty years of interviews and stories from sidelines, locker rooms and executive suites. King wrote the “Monday Morning Quarterback” column for Sports Illustrated from 1989 to 2018 and has been named National Sportswriter of the Year three times. Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy joins him. The $50 ticket includes a signed copy.
Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm
Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne read from their new collections, Assembled Audience (Milkweed) and I Am Trying to Love the Whole World (BOA Editions). Meitner, who directs the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Holy Moly Carry Me. Browne, a professor at Trinity University, was San Antonio's poet laureate and the 2017 Texas Poet Laureate.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Akbar Shahid Ahmed discusses Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza, "a powerful and authoritative account of how the Biden administration fueled atrocities in Gaza." Ahmed is diplomatic correspondent at NOTUS and covered the State Department throughout the war.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Joanne Chang, the James Beard-winning founder of Boston's Flour bakeries, discusses The Joy of Cookies: New Classics and Old Favorites to Share, with Rachel Leah Blumenthal. Signed copies remain available; Chang and Booksmith return to WBUR CitySpace on December 1.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Andrea L. Fry launches Pawn Shop of Coincidence, her third poetry collection, published by the shop's own imprint, Grolier Poetry Press. Fry spent seventeen years as a cancer nurse practitioner, most recently at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and is the author of The Bottle Diggers and Poisons & Antidotes. Rob Bowers introduces her and joins her in conversation; the reading can also be joined online.
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.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Sandy Bailey discusses She's On To Something, “a sharp, sapphic romantic thriller about justice, power, desire, and refusing to stay quiet,” which follows a butch SEC prosecutor onto a church-based investment scam draining money from working-class families, and toward the woman who could wreck her career. Bailey drove freight and passenger trains across New England and built houses before law school. Former Cambridge mayor Denise Simmons joins her in conversation.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Lara Salahi discusses News–Academic Partnerships, her study of what happens when newsrooms and universities work together. Drawing on a political-economy framework and case studies, she examines the power between media, academia and the public, and shows how such partnerships arose as a strategic response to the collapse of community news. Dan Kennedy, the Northeastern journalism professor and author of The Return of the Moguls, joins her.
Thu Oct 22 · 5:00pm
Elin Hilderbrand discusses The Thoroughbreds. She published a Nantucket-set novel nearly every summer for two decades before announcing she had finished with the island, and her books have sat on the bestseller lists throughout. Hummingbird Books runs the evening in New Bedford, in sittings across the evening rather than one.
Thu Oct 22 · 6:00pm
Willie Mae Brown reads from My Selma, stories of her childhood in Selma, Alabama, told through her twelve-year-old self as the voting-rights movement and the 1965 Edmund Pettus Bridge march unfold around her family; in one, she hears Martin Luther King Jr. speak in defiance of a court injunction. Brown left Alabama at seventeen for Brooklyn and began writing these stories in 2012. The Robbins House presents the event.
Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm
Meghan Quinn, the New York Times bestselling romance novelist, brings her Christmas Staycation Tour to a concert hall rather than the shop. Christmas Staycation, set in Kringletown, turns on “fake fiancés, family pressure, and accidentally falling for your ex’s brother”: Taran has agreed to a fake wedding with her ex to keep her family’s holiday intact, and Nolan, a major league baseball player, is the ex’s brother.
Thu Oct 22 · 12:00pm
Karin Martin discusses her new book Get Plum Island!, on Massachusetts's ten-year fight over the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, which local communities and the state nearly had abolished before Congressional hearings and a Truman pocket veto ended in a compromise that roughly halved it. Martin, who grew up in Amesbury, is the Mark A. Chesler Collegiate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.
Thu Oct 22
The tenth annual Authors and Innovators, a free day of talks for business readers curated and sponsored by the law firm Gennari Aronson with Wellesley Books, takes “The Nimble Entrepreneur” as its theme. More than a dozen authors and leaders appear, among them Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, the MIT Sloan economist Paul Osterman and Lita Nelsen, longtime head of MIT's Technology Licensing Office.
Thu Oct 22 · 5pm
Ian Marcus Corbin discusses To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World, on friendship with oneself, family, community, nation and species. Corbin examines Native American, African and early American cultures that made their people feel at home, and contrasts them with contemporary America's “paranoid, self-protective culture of ownership.” Countway Library hosts the talk in its Longwood Author Series with Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics.
Fri Oct 23 · 6:30pm
Eric Ripert, the James Beard-winning chef of Le Bernardin, discusses his cookbook Mindful Cooking: Simple Recipes for Nurturing Body and Soul, drawing on visits to Buddhist monasteries in Japan and Korea for more than seventy-five plant-based recipes. Morning Edition host Tiziana Dearing moderates.
Fri Oct 23 · 7:00pm
Neal Stephenson discusses D: Heavy Water, "the second installment in his monumental Bomb Light series — a gripping tale set on the eve of World War II, as nations race" for an elusive substance. Stephenson wrote Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon and Polostan.
Ticketed
Fri Oct 23 · 7:00pm
Jim Emison discusses Murder on the Hatchie, which "uncovers the 1940 lynching of NAACP leader Elbert Williams — America's first martyr for Black voting rights — and the federal failures that followed." Emison is a retired Tennessee trial lawyer who got the case reopened. Cornell William Brooks joins him.
Fri Oct 23 · 7:00pm
Maria DiLorenzo, a crime journalist, discusses Confessions of the Green River Killer, built from the hundreds of phone calls Gary Ridgway made to her over several years from prison, "the closest depiction of Gary Ridgway ever seen" and of what earning a serial killer's trust cost her. Dave Wedge joins her.
Fri Oct 23 · 6:00pm
A ticketed three-course dinner built around conversation with three local authors: Heather Abel (The Emilys), Yu-Mei Balasingamchow (Names Have Been Changed), and Evann Normandin (The Good Parts). The $82 ticket includes a copy of one featured book and a shared meal, pairing new-release literary fiction with an intimate author discussion.
Fri Oct 23 · 1:30pm
Tara Lynn Masih discusses The Silent Women, her first novel for adults, which follows a woman named Song from the dust bowl through the making of the atomic bomb to post-war Florida, a story of “courage, clandestine love, war trauma, and resilience.” Masih, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, wrote My Real Name Is Hanna and founded the Best Small Fictions series.
Sat Oct 24 · 7:00pm
Bonnie Garmus discusses her new novel Peck & Peck, "an irresistible, delightful, and tender literary novel set in the publishing world of 1980s New York City." Garmus wrote Lessons in Chemistry, which won sixteen international awards and became an Apple TV series.
Ticketed
Sat Oct 24 · 11:00am
Award-winning creators Hayley Rocco and John Rocco share their new picture book A Book for Everyone, in which the chipmunk Piper Waterstone returns to celebrate the joy of reading. Hayley wrote All the Books and How to Send a Hug; John is a Caldecott Honor recipient for Blackout. A family reading.
Sat Oct 24 · 2:00pm
Humphries discusses her new book on what a warming climate means for Boston: several feet of sea level rise this century on higher-emissions paths, tidal and storm flooding across low-lying neighbourhoods, heavier rainfall, and summers with most days above ninety degrees. She sets the city's mitigation and adaptation efforts against four hundred years of filling and building its shoreline.
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.
Sat Oct 24 · 8:30am
The Friends of the Library’s festival breakfast is a panel of novelists over a full buffet, moderated by Suzanne Koven, a Mass General primary-care physician and author of Letter to a Young Female Physician. Panelists include Christopher Castellani, whose novel Leading Men is being adapted for film by Searchlight Pictures; Gish Jen, whose sixth novel is Bad Bad Girl; and Hester Kaplan, author of Twice Born.
Sat Oct 24 · 2:00pm
Poets Nate Klug and Catherine Stearns read and take questions on their inspirations and craft. Klug, a Congregationalist minister at First Parish in Lincoln, reads from Hosts and Guests (Princeton, 2020) and has translated Virgil’s Eclogues as Rude Woods. Stearns, who headed the English department at Belmont Hill School, has a new collection, Out Toward Morning; her first book, The Transparency of Skin, was a Minnesota Book Awards finalist.
Sat Oct 24 · 1:00pm
Elin Hilderbrand signs The Thoroughbreds, a novel written with her daughter Shelby Cunningham and set at Tiffin Academy, where the senior class is in a season of college applications and "last hurrahs," and questions hang over an email a student sent before she died. Hilderbrand, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, is best known for her Nantucket novels. Tickets include a signed, personalized copy.
Sat Oct 24 · 3:00pm
Adam Wallenta signs and personalises copies of Punk Taco Adventures! Vol. 2: Big Problems, the second volume of his comics series about a sentient space-taco. Wallenta is an author, illustrator and publisher and the Senior Editor at Papercutz, where he oversees titles including Herobear and the Kid!, Three Thieves and The Smurfs. Preorders placed by October 20 come with a free original drawing at the signing.
Oct 21/24 · 6:00pm/2:00pm
Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm / Sat Oct 24 · 2:00pm
David Kruh discusses Little Mister Victory, the true story of a daughter’s search for the woman who abandoned her father on Boston Common on VJ Day, August 15, 1945. Kruh, a writer, historian and playwright, is best known for his two books on Scollay Square, Boston’s former entertainment district; he also wrote a musical about the Red Sox “Curse” that premiered at the Lyric Stage in 2001.
Sat Oct 24 · 7:00pm
Porter Square Books' third annual horror night pairs signing tables for five authors (Gretchen Felker-Martin, Nicky Gonzalez, Eric LaRocca, Rebecca Mahoney and Aaron Mahnke, creator of the Lore podcast) with a costume contest, a screening of Creature From the Black Lagoon and horror trivia. Each ticket includes a raffle entry for a poster signed by all five and $5 off a purchase that night.
Sat Oct 24 · 11:00am
Mary E. Cronin, the daughter of a firefighter, shares Trucks, Boots, and Bells: Firehouse Poems, a picture book of eighteen poems and fun facts in which firefighters pull on their boots and race through the city. The poems, in ballads, haiku and other forms with titles like "Pole Slider" and "Attack Hose," are illustrated by Aaron Marin. The storytime is aimed at children fascinated by firefighting.
Sun Oct 25 · 10:30am
An all-ages story hour for Robin and the Moon, the author-illustrator E.B. Goodale's picture book in which a small child, worried the moon is tangled in a tree's branches, drifts into a dreamy nighttime adventure. Goodale, a Salem printmaker, holds an Ezra Jack Keats Illustration Honor.
Sat Oct 24 – Sun Oct 25 · 11am
Sat Oct 24 / Sun Oct 25 · 11am
Author Cynthia Centerbar reads her Halloween-themed picture book, Poor Farm Meadow, at Hummingbird Books' spooky Sunday Storytime. She appears in the Chestnut Hill store across both weekend days to share the book with young listeners and their families. No RSVP is required and the reading is free.
Sun Oct 25 · 2:00pm
Susan Mara Bregman shares stories from New England Sweets: Doughnuts, Bonbons, and Whoopie Pies, which traces the region’s confections from a late-1700s chocolate mill on the Neponset River to Necco Wafers and Fluffernutters. Bregman has also written New England Neon and New England Candlepin Bowling for Arcadia Publishing; her most recent title is Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. The Belmont Historical Society co-presents.
Sun Oct 25 · 2:00pm
Kevin Gallagher, a Greater Boston poet and publisher who edits the annual spoke, reads from his latest collection, Diving at the Moon. Claire Conroy, Beat Poet Laureate of Maine for 2024–2026, published her third book, Inlets, this year. Eileen P. Kennedy’s Dread and Splendor: Paintings and Poems for a New Earth was a finalist for the International Book Awards. The reading is free; museum admission is separate.
Sun Oct 25 · 3:00pm
Scott Magoon, the New York Times bestselling illustrator whose own picture books include Breathe, The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot and Linus the Little Yellow Pencil, leads an afternoon story time. His newest book is The Bats on the Bus, Alison Jackson's Halloween reworking of “The Wheels on the Bus” with a busload of witches, ghosts and skeletons. He also illustrated Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Spoon and Ame Dyckman's Misunderstood Shark.
Sun Oct 25 · 6pm
Amra Brooks launches her memoir Mother Is a Place, published by Dopamine Books in September, in conversation with the poet Danielle Vogel. Brooks directs the Creative Writing Program at Stonehill College, where she curates the Raymo Literary Series, and wrote the novella California (2008). Vogel, author of four hybrid poetry collections including the lyric memoir A Library of Light, teaches at Wesleyan University.
Mon Oct 26 · 6:00pm
Emily St. John Mandel discusses her new novel Exit Party. Mandel has written six novels, among them Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility. Allegra Goodman joins her. Note the venue: moved from the Brattle Theatre to First Parish Church to accommodate more ticket holders.
Ticketed
Mon Oct 26 · 7:00pm
Thomas Frank discusses The Creativity Con, "a bold indictment of America's chronic obsession with creativity and innovation, tracing how these beloved ideas came to dominate our political and economic conversation while serving to mask inequality." Frank founded The Baffler and wrote What's the Matter with Kansas?
Mon Oct 26 · 6:30pm
Launch celebration for Malavika Kannan's Unprecedented Times, a novel on friendship, family, and self-narrative for young American women. Kannan reads and appears in conversation with author Laura van den Berg, followed by an audience Q&A and a signing by both. Begins 6:30 PM.
Mon Oct 26 · 6:30pm
Ariel Lawhon discusses The Pirate Queen, historical fiction built on the life of Grace O'Malley, the sixteenth-century Irish chieftain and seafarer who negotiated with Elizabeth I in Latin. Lawhon is a New York Times bestselling novelist whose previous books include The Frozen River. Parkside Bookshop presents the event at Arlington Street Church.
Mon Oct 26 · 8:00pm
Robert Clinton reads from Wasteland Honey alongside Roland Pease, whose most recent collection is The Song(s) of Roland. Pease also spent years as an editor and publisher of poetry in the Boston area. The Blacksmith House series pairs two poets each Monday evening at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.
Mon Oct 26 · 7:00pm
Heather Morris discusses her new novel The Piano Teacher of Montparnasse, in which eleven-year-old Josephine flees the 1942 arrest of her Jewish family in occupied Paris to her piano teacher, André Levallois, a secret Resistance operative. Morris, a New Zealander living in Australia, wrote The Tattooist of Auschwitz, adapted as a 2024 miniseries; her books have sold over nineteen million copies. Tickets include a copy of the book.
Mon Oct 26 · 6:00pm
Julie Carrick Dalton discusses her novel The Forest Becomes Her, set in Concord, where “a centuries-old forest has been removed to make way for a new, eco-friendly housing development” and three women are drawn together to save the last remaining oak. Dalton, a former organic farmer and forest manager, also wrote The Last Beekeeper and Waiting for the Night Song, and teaches in Drexel University’s creative writing MFA program.
Mon Oct 26 · 6:00pm
Ted Widmer discusses The Living Declaration: A Biography of America's Founding Text, a Library of America anthology that traces how the Declaration of Independence has shaped democratic aspirations, through sixty-eight writings by figures including John Locke, Frederick Douglass, Hannah Arendt and Ho Chi Minh. Widmer, a former speechwriter and senior adviser to Bill Clinton, is the author of Lincoln on the Verge.
$20
Mon Oct 26 · 12:30pm
JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine launch Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry, on tech worker activism, Silicon Valley's shifting labour politics and the rise of today's tech oligarchs. It argues that workers, "when united," can build the leverage to push back. Tan is a doctoral student in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Tue Oct 27 · 6:00pm
Four contributors to The Practice of Wisdom, a collection on what wisdom might mean across different fields, discuss the book: Davíd Carrasco, a Harvard historian of religion in Latin America; the medical anthropologist and psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman; Stephanie Paulsell, who teaches Christian studies at Harvard Divinity School; and Michael Puett, who teaches Chinese history and anthropology at Harvard. The event is free with an RSVP.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Taylor Grothe discusses their adult debut Lethal Kiss, "a blood-soaked love story of rage, revenge, and belonging" and "a sapphic horror/romance that's as grotesque as it is beautiful." Grothe writes horror and dark fantasy and studies medieval literature and Norse saga. Christa Carmen joins them.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Kojo Koram, a legal scholar, discusses The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, "a gripping global investigation" tracking how criminalized drugs are being rebranded into a billion-dollar industry, from Louisiana's Angola prison to Silicon Valley's psychedelics boom. Historian Quinn Slobodian and Shaleen Title join him.
Tue Oct 27 · 6:00pm
Levitt, a sociologist at Wellesley College, discusses Move Over, Mona Lisa, which asks why museums, libraries and classrooms change so slowly when audiences are asking for a wider range of work. She calls the obstacles an “inequality pipeline,” and reports from Argentina, Lebanon and South Korea on people building alternative routes rather than waiting. A signing follows.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Kathleen Carr Foster launches her debut novel The Jewel of Corlivo on its publication day; it sends a runaway courtesan and her disgraced suitor hunting treasure through a reimagined Byzantine empire. Carr Foster teaches writing at UMass Boston. She holds an MFA from Boston University, where she won the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Prize, and has an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Four local novelists — Jenna Blum (Murder Your Darlings), Elizabeth Searle (Lock Her Up), Jessica Treadway (Lacy Eye) and Erica Ferencik (The Blooming) — read briefly, then argue out what a literary thriller actually is, how a literary novelist crosses into the genre, and what the hybrid offers a reader. At Porter Square's Boston Edition inside GrubStreet.
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.
Tue Oct 27 · 6:00pm
Novelists Jenn Bouchard and Kathleen Reidy read from new books with New England settings and talk about how place shapes their fiction. Bouchard wrote Palms on the Cape, about a Cape Cod beach-bar owner whose business is threatened by a visiting business-school group. Reidy, a Concord librarian, sets her first novel, Engineering a Love Story, among software engineers at the end of the dot-com boom.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm
Rebecca Podos leads a book-club discussion of Homeward for a Spell, a cozy queer romantic fantasy in which a ranger leading her first adventuring party and a bard escaping an arranged marriage fall for each other on a winter quest. The shop credits the book to Podos and Jamie Pacton. Podos, a Lambda Literary Award winner for her YA novels, is also a literary agent.
Tue Oct 27 · 6:30pm
Becca Freeman discusses her second novel, Back Where We Started, a second-chance romance in which a Hollywood actress returns to her Pennsylvania hometown for Christmas and keeps running into Drew, her first love. Freeman, author of The Christmas Orphans Club, co-hosts the podcast Bad on Paper. She is joined by Emma Brodie, the New York Times bestselling author of Songs in Ursa Major. Tickets include the book.
$20
Tue Oct 27 · 7pm
Carla Vass discusses her novel The Rally, in which a young tech entrepreneur, ousted from the dating app she built, escapes on a European car rally where “she must contend with the excesses of the über-rich, betrayal, and love.” Vass worked at Goldman Sachs, Uber and Waymo before founding the startup Civi. Emily Everett, author of the Reese’s Book Club pick All That Life Can Afford, moderates.
Tue Oct 27 · 6:00pm
Anne Habiby discusses Daring to Hope: Witness From Gaza, which chronicles the war on Gaza through thousands of real-time messages between her and Mohammed Balah, the footballer known as the "Ronaldo of Gaza," who moved his family of fifteen between shelters in 2023–24. Habiby, a Palestinian American economist, co-founded AllWorld Network and spent a decade as economist to the Royal Commission for Riyadh City.
Tue Oct 27 · 7:30pm
The Moth’s monthly Boston StorySLAM is an open-mic storytelling competition: anyone may put their name in to tell a true five-minute story on the night’s theme. October’s theme is “Frenemies,” about “the razor-thin line between friend and foe” — besties turned competitors, siblings who keep the score. PRX and WBUR are the media sponsors, and seating is first-come, first-served.
Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm
Wendy S. Walters discusses A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, "an impassioned, boundary-pushing work of criticism traversing fine arts, design and architecture, taking aim at the ubiquity of white paint in our society." Walters teaches nonfiction at Columbia and wrote Multiply/Divide.
Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, whose story collection Heads of the Colored People was longlisted for the National Book Award, discusses her debut novel The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, "a sly, spry, tall tale" about the murder of an infamous Oklahoma moonshiner and the competing stories a small town tells about it.
Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm
Clinical psychologist Yael Schonbrun discusses Why Don't You Understand Me?, examining the science of miscommunication from intimate relationships to geopolitical conflict. A Brown University clinical assistant professor and co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock, Schonbrun previously wrote Work, Parent, Thrive. A talk grounded in behavioral-science research on human connection.
Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm
Lu discusses her fantasy novel Mortal Things, in which Rose Lin Fairchild is bound as Harbinger to Raven, the god of Death, and is thrust forward as his heir when a murder unsettles the immortal realm — with a rival Harbinger, Étienne Beauchard, set to test her. Lu wrote the Legend and Young Elites series. Fin Leary joins her.
Wed Oct 28 · 6:00pm
Boggs discusses Baldwin: A Love Story, his biography of James Baldwin, which won the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography and the Randy Shilts Nonfiction Award, and which Time and The Atlantic named among the ten best books of 2025. Programmed for LGBTQ+ History Month; a signing with Trident Booksellers follows.
Wed Oct 28 · 6:30pm
Martin Swirko discusses and signs All Routes Are Amber: A Soldier's Experience in the Iraq War, which starts with his first days in the Army Reserves in the 1980s and follows the slow administrative process by which he was mobilised into the regular army and sent out. The Next Chapter hosts in Quincy.
Wed Oct 28 · 11:30am
Historian Brooke Barbier discusses Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution, which argues that the colonists’ culture of drink and taverns helped foster the rebellion against Britain. The library’s monthly nonfiction book club, Fowler in Fact, moves from the branch to the Wright Tavern for this festival session; copies can be borrowed beforehand, and bought and signed at the event.
Wed Oct 28 · 6:00pm
Lindsey Fitzharris discusses Sleuth-Hound, the story of Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon Arthur Conan Doyle credited as the model for Sherlock Holmes, whose work as a medical detective drew him into the hunt for Jack the Ripper. Fitzharris, who holds an Oxford doctorate in the history of science and medicine, wrote The Butchering Art and The Facemaker. Catherine Prendergast, author of The Gilded Edge, joins her.
$20
Wed Oct 28 · 7pm
Cole Brauer discusses First Light, her memoir of the 130 days she spent alone at sea in 2024, when she became the first American woman to race solo around the world, finishing second in a forty-foot boat through mechanical breakdowns, food poisoning and the Southern Ocean’s cold. She is interviewed by the yacht racer David Southwell, winner of the 2024 Original Single-handed Transatlantic Race.
Wed Oct 28 · 7pm
A panel on horror romance with the authors Gillian Daniels and Clay McLeod Chapman. Chapman has written the horror novels Whisper Down the Lane, Ghost Eaters and What Kind of Mother.
Wed Oct 28 · 7pm
An evening to meet Kat Gonso, named the library’s 2026–2028 Dr. Herb Voigt Writer-in-Residence, who will offer workshops and events throughout her residency. Gonso’s short prose has won the Gover Flash Fiction Prize and The Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest and made the Wigleaf Top 50. She is a Professor of the Practice in English at Boston College and teaches in Emerson College’s graduate creative writing program.
Wed Oct 28 · 6:30pm
Steven A. Holmes discusses Black Messiahs, which follows two Black American soldiers and a young Jewish Holocaust survivor whose lives intersect during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, asking "what happens when the struggle against fascism abroad collides with the fight for equality at home?" Holmes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who worked as a reporter and editor at Time, the New York Times and CNN.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm
Raj Panjabi discusses Safer: A Playbook — Turning Fear into Action and Crisis into Community, "the essential guide for navigating crisis and uncertainty from the acclaimed physician who led the White House response to the world's most dangerous health emergencies." Panjabi fled Liberia's civil war as a child and founded Last Mile Health.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm
Alex Gonzalez discusses his novel The Man of Wind and Moss, "a folk horror tale" in which six college friends on a woodland getaway make supernatural deals to survive, pitched as "The Blair Witch Project meets Cabin in the Woods." Paul Tremblay, the horror novelist, joins him.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm
Adam Grant discusses his new book VIBE: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, on "the surprising science of human connection" and building stronger relationships in an increasingly disconnected world. Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and Give and Take.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:30pm
The Moth's curated touring Mainstage — five storytellers, true stories told live without notes, on the theme TIGHTROPE — comes to the Wilbur. This is the produced, directed evening, not an open-mic StorySlam: tellers are selected and coached, and the form at its best is as gripping as any play.
from $57
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 Oct 29 · 6:30pm
An evening of true stories told live, recorded at GBH's Calderwood Studio for the series Stories from the Stage. The theme is the brief meeting that stays with a person for years afterwards. Tellers are selected and directed rather than drawn from the floor, and the audience is part of the recording.
Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm
Petra Hůlová and Carolina Pihelgas discuss two feminist novels. In Hůlová’s The Long Version, a Czech author in her fifties faces her daughter’s discovery of a youthful affair with an older writer; Pihelgas’s The Cut Line follows a woman ending a toxic fourteen-year relationship on a farmstead near a NATO base on the Russian border. Hůlová has won the Magnesia Litera; Pihelgas was named Tartu’s City Writer Laureate.
Thu Oct 29 · 6:00pm
Joseph Finder, Jule Selbo and Janet Raye Stevens make up the Friends of the Library’s annual crime-fiction panel. Finder has written 17 suspense novels, most recently The Oligarch’s Daughter, and saw High Crimes and Paranoia filmed; Selbo writes the Dee Rommel mysteries and was a television writer-producer; Stevens won a Daphne du Maurier award for A Moment After Dark. Kate Flora, author of twenty-four books, moderates.
Thu Oct 29 · 6:30pm
Camille de Peretti discusses her novel Portrait of an Unknown Woman, which starts from a true episode: in 1910 Gustav Klimt painted a young woman, then painted over her portrait, and the canvas, stolen in 1997, resurfaced two decades later. De Peretti imagines the woman behind the painting and the generations that follow her. MIT's Global France Seminar presents the talk with Literature at MIT and the French Library.
Thu Oct 29 · 3pm
Jelena Golubović launches her first book, Inner Zone: The Untold Violence of Retribution in Besieged Sarajevo, which “unearths a buried history of retributive violence that unfolded inside besieged Sarajevo,” drawing on interviews with Bosnian Serb women whose suffering the dominant narrative of the war leaves out. She discusses victimhood, nationalism and contested histories of violence in conversation with Sasha Sabherwal. Copies sell at a 30 percent discount.
Thu Oct 29 · 6pm
R.F. Kuang discusses her new book, Taipei Story. Kuang is the No. 1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface and Katabasis, and her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford and British Book Awards. She is the Millard Distinguished Writer in Residence at the College of the Holy Cross. Northeastern's Global Asian Studies program hosts.
Thu Oct 29 · 7pm
Nathaniel Philbrick discusses his new book The Rush, which recasts the Gold Rush as “the origin story of America’s modern contradictions: capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty.” Philbrick won the 2000 National Book Award for In the Heart of the Sea and is the author of Mayflower, Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition.
Thu Oct 29 · 6:00pm
Editors Alexandra Natapoff and Guy-Uriel Charles and contributors discuss America Unfinished: 250 Years of Law and Governance, a collection of 62 essays by more than 50 Harvard Law School faculty marking the nation’s 250th anniversary. The essays take up the expansion of executive power, democratic accountability in a market-driven economy, and governance amid rapid technological change. Contributors include Stephen Breyer, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jill Lepore and Cass R. Sunstein.
Fri Oct 30 · 7:00pm
Edward Steed discusses Happy Hour: A Book of Drawings, in which "a generational talent's old cartooning soul returns for a second round." Steed draws for the New Yorker and has a Grammy for a Father John Misty album cover. Ruth Lichtman, an Emmy-nominated director, joins him.
Fri Oct 30 · 7:00pm
Michelle Lerner, a Harvard-educated lawyer, discusses her memoir A Series of Opinionated Animals, on a life of "loving, chaotic service" to rescue animals — beginning with a neurologically impaired squirrel who insisted on being sat on by his rabbit roommate.
Fri Oct 30 · 10:30am
Two Massachusetts picture-book authors lead a storytime, then sign. Amanda Davis's new Chasing the Light, illustrated by Faryn Hughes, follows a mother and daughter who play “a game of hide and seek with the Northern Lights” on a winter night. Megan Litwin, a former classroom teacher with a master's in children's literature from Simmons, wrote Twinkle, Twinkle, Winter Night, a winter twist on the nursery rhyme.
Fri Oct 30 · 7:00pm
Emily Ladau, a disability rights activist and writer, launches the updated second edition of Demystifying Disability, her guide to being “a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people,” with practical steps on what to say and do, and what not to. The launch includes a moderated discussion, audience questions and a signing, with ASL and CART services provided and sliding-scale tickets available.
Sat Oct 31 · 2:00pm
Paul Tremblay signs copies of Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, billed as "Philip K. Dick meets the Coen Brothers": a former semi-professional gamer takes a temp job chaperoning a man in a vegetative state, with proprietary AI implanted in his head, from California to the East Coast. Tremblay's earlier novels include Horror Movie and The Cabin at the End of the World, filmed as Knock at the Cabin.
Sun Nov 1 · 10:30am
A story hour for What Marcel Found: The Incredible Discovery of the Lascaux Cave Paintings, Cedar Pruitt's nonfiction picture book about the boy who, in occupied France in 1940, found a tunnel leading to cave paintings made seventeen thousand years ago. Pruitt is a local author.
Sun Nov 1 · 9:30am
Padma Venkatraman reads Faraway Family at a morning story time — a picture book about visiting relatives in another country after a long separation, and how the reconnecting takes longer than the travelling. Venkatraman has won awards for her middle-grade novels, several set in India.
Sun Nov 1 · 1:00pm
Kathleen Carr Foster signs her debut novel, The Jewel of Corlivo, set “in a reimagined Byzantine empire.” Anna, raised to be a courtesan in mountain-ringed Corlivo like her vanished mother, catches the eye of Sebastianus, an explorer who thinks she has found a clue to a lost city of treasure in an ancient book. They flee to the imperial court, where Anna uncovers a secret tied to her mother's fate.
Mon Nov 2 · 7:00pm
Deni Elliott discusses Catching Sight: How a Guide Dog Helped Me See Myself, "one woman's journey through progressive blindness and the extraordinary guide dog who kept her safe along the way." Elliott is an ethics scholar, co-director of the National Ethics Project and professor emerita at the University of South Florida.
Mon Nov 2 · 8:00pm
Pádraig Ó Tuama reads from The Weight of Time with Susan Stewart, whose most recent book is Bramble. Ó Tuama is an Irish poet and theologian who presents the podcast Poetry Unbound; Stewart is a MacArthur fellow and former Princeton professor who writes criticism as well as poems.
Mon Nov 2 · 7pm
Kerri Maher joins a book-club discussion of her novel Summer of Love, in which two sisters, a Berkeley poet and a Napa winemaker, make life-changing choices in San Francisco’s 1967 summer, and Dawn Hartley, fifty years later, hunts the anonymous author of novels that seem to know her family’s secrets. Maher wrote the USA Today bestseller The Paris Bookseller. Co-presented with the British International School; the discussion includes spoilers.
Mon Nov 2 · 7pm
Kathleen Foster and Emily Franklin, two writers with ties to Milton, discuss finding novels in the stories missing from the historical record. Foster’s debut The Jewel of Corlivo is a historical fantasy set in a world inspired by the early Byzantine empire; Franklin’s Love & Other Monsters tells the origin of Frankenstein through Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister. Franklin also wrote The Lioness of Boston, about Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Mon Nov 2 · 6pm
Munis D. Faruqui discusses his new history of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (r. 1658–1707), the last of the so-called great Mughal emperors, castigated by some for religious intolerance and hailed by others as a Muslim hero. Drawing on a large archive, the book covers his rise to power, his administrative and religious policies, and the imperial eunuchate and harem. Ayesha Jalal, Tufts' Mary Richardson Professor of History, chairs.
Tue Nov 3 · 7pm
Danielle L. Jensen, a #1 New York Times bestselling author known for the Bridge Kingdom series, marks release day for Defy the Dusk, set in the Sundered world, "where there are two options: ride the dawn, or face what rises in the night." She is in conversation with Elise Kova, also a #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books include A Deal with the Elf King.
Tue Nov 3 · 7:30pm
An open-mic storytelling competition from The Moth: names are drawn from a hat, and each storyteller gets five minutes, without notes, for a true story on the theme, judged by teams from the audience. The theme is the holiday season, from “the chaos of family gatherings” to “take-out for one,” and what belonging, or not belonging, looks like. Holiday stories from any season are welcome.
$17
Wed Nov 4 · 6:00pm
Joanne Chang discusses The Joy of Cookies: New Classics and Old Favorites to Share, "a warm, stunning, celebratory baking book of favorite cookies, classic and new." Chang has a James Beard award and founded Flour Bakery + Cafe and Myers + Chang in Boston. At the Brattle, ticketed.
Ticketed
Wed Nov 4 · 7:00pm
Christy Scott Cashman discusses her new novel What Happened in Beulah, in which "a teenage girl uncovers the dark secrets of her Smoky Mountain town while searching for a missing classmate." Cashman is a Boston-based author, actress and producer, and founded the youth arts nonprofit YouthINK.
Wed Nov 4 · 7:00pm
The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo discusses Countertenor, on his life, his training and the history of his voice, tracing the countertenor from the Baroque to today with Jeremy Eichler, the former Globe classical critic. Costanzo also performs select arias during the evening.
Wed Nov 4 · 7:00pm
Joey Clift, a Peabody- and Emmy-nominated comedian of the Cowlitz tribe, discusses his debut We've Been Here the Whole Time!: A Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America, a comic, illustrated tour through Native history, people and culture, from Pocahontas to the Land Back movement. Vanessa Lillie joins him.
Wed Nov 4 · 7:00pm
Lucy Foley discusses Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a new Miss Marple novel written with the Christie estate's blessing, which sends Christie's detective abroad. Foley wrote The Guest List and The Midnight Feast and has topped the New York Times list. GBH records the conversation in front of an audience at its Brighton studios.
Wed Nov 4 · 12:00pm
Jelena Diab Golubović discusses Inner Zone, on the violence committed inside besieged Sarajevo rather than from the hills around it — a history the city's own account of the siege largely leaves out. She is assistant professor of anthropology and international affairs and did her fieldwork across the former Yugoslavia.
Wed Nov 4 · 6:30pm
Michael Blanding discusses The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, an investigation of the Green family, whose money has taken religious-liberty cases to the Supreme Court, funded institutions behind the repeal of Roe v. Wade and stocked the Museum of the Bible with illegally trafficked antiquities. Blanding, a Boston investigative journalist and former Harvard Kennedy School senior fellow, wrote the New York Times bestseller The Map Thief.
Wed Nov 4 · 12:30pm
Jean Duffy reads from and discusses Soccer Grannies: The South African Women Who Inspire the World, her book about South Africa's teams of soccer-playing grandmothers. The session is part of the library's monthly Author Talk series, in which local writers give the background to a book, read excerpts and take questions from a moderator and the audience. It runs in partnership with Newton's Department of Older Adult Services.
Wed Nov 4 · 6:30pm
Katherine A. Sherbrooke discusses her fourth novel, This Much is True, in which a veterinarian on her fifty-eighth birthday recognises her daughter’s future father-in-law from “an incident during high school that changed the trajectory of her life.” Sherbrooke’s Leaving Coy’s Hill was a New York Times notable book and a Massachusetts Book Award finalist, and she chaired GrubStreet’s board. Family counselor and novelist Lynne Reeves Griffin joins her.
Wed Nov 4 · 6:00pm
Jacob Weisberg discusses Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era, whose title inverts John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Weisberg chairs the Committee to Protect Journalists, was for many years editor of Slate, and co-founded the podcast company Pushkin Industries with Malcolm Gladwell; his earlier books include The Bush Tragedy. The Cambridge Public Library co-presents, and a signing follows.
Wed Nov 4 · 7:00pm
Kathryn Silver-Hajo discusses Spinning: Love, Family and Other Strange Entanglements, her new story collection, with the flash fiction writer Claudia Monpere. Silver-Hajo is the author of the flash collection Wolfsong and the young adult novel Roots of the Banyan Tree, a 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medalist. Monpere, who won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize, is the author of the flash collection The Periodic Family.
Wed Nov 4 · 6:00pm
Comedian and columnist Scott Kerman brings his Last Honest Politician Tour, a live storytelling show drawn from four years of Wednesday visits with former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Those hundreds of hours of recorded conversations became his book The Duke: Weekly Conversations with the Last Honest Politician. The evening mixes stories, some not told publicly before, with audience interaction, and ends with a Q&A and book signing.
$12.51 (Eventbrite price incl. fees)
Thu Nov 5 · 7:00pm
Stephen Kinzer discusses Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine, "the untold history of America's secret seventy-five-year struggle in Ukraine that set the stage for today's war." Kinzer reported from more than fifty countries for the New York Times and is a senior fellow at Brown's Watson Institute.
Thu Nov 5 · 7:00pm
Audrey Henderson and Alan Smith Soto present the Collected Poems of Mark Smith-Soto, the Costa Rican-American poet who edited International Poetry Review at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for many years and whose earlier books include Any Second Now and Berkeley Prelude. The reading can be attended in the shop or joined online.
Thu Nov 5 · 6:00pm
Linford D. Fisher discusses Stealing America, which traces the enslavement of Indigenous people from the years just after 1492, “ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas,” nearly 600,000 of them in North America, through the boarding schools that followed its 1867 ban. Fisher, an associate professor of history at Brown, wrote The Indian Great Awakening and leads the Stolen Relations project.
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.
Thu Nov 5 · 7pm
Weina Dai Randel discusses her novel The Lost Kingdom of Daughters, set in a matriarchal society based on China’s Moso people “where marriage doesn’t exist and free love is the tradition,” whose heroine meets two stranded American brothers. Randel wrote The Last Rose of Shanghai, optioned for film, and won the RWA RITA Award. Karen Kirsten, author of the National Jewish Book Award finalist Irena’s Gift, joins her.
Thu Nov 5 · 7pm
David Tuch discusses his debut book, The Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade. Drawing on newly declassified records, Tuch tells the story of his cousin Harold Derber, whose smuggling operations “helped shape the modern drug trade and the war on drugs that followed.” He is joined in conversation by journalist Dick Lehr, co-author of Black Mass.
Thu Nov 5 · 6:30pm
Janis Robinson Daly discusses her novel Under Two Flags, in which eighteen-year-old Josephine Therese Marzynski leaves Boston in 1916 to study opera in Berlin and, when America enters the war in 1917, goes "from welcomed student to enemy of the state." The book retells Marzynski's own memoir, first ghostwritten by Daly's grandfather, Eliot H. Robinson Sr. Daly's first two books, both award winners, concern pioneering women in medicine.
Thu Nov 5 · 6:30pm
Franny Choi discusses We Radiant Things, their first essay collection, which blends lyric memoir and cultural criticism to ask "what sci-fi representations of Asian femmes reveal about race, gender, sexuality, disability, labor, technology, and language." Choi, who teaches literature at Bennington College, is the author of the poetry collections Soft Science and The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On. Writer Maria Pinto joins them in conversation.
Fri Nov 6 · 7:00pm
Riley Black discusses Tyrant Lizard Queen, "an imaginative celebration of T. Rex from hatching to adulthood" — an animal "exceeding 40 feet in length and weighing over 9 tons." Black is science correspondent for Smithsonian and wrote The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.
Fri Nov 6 – Sun Nov 8
Fri Nov 6 · 4pm / Sat Nov 7 · 12pm / Sun Nov 8 · 11am
The country's antiquarian booksellers bring rare books, manuscripts, maps, photographs and ephemera to the Hynes for the 48th Boston fair — three days of browsing material that ranges from affordable curiosities to five-figure landmarks, with dealers happy to talk provenance with anyone who asks.
$25 Friday (valid all weekend), $15 Saturday, $10 Sunday; students free with ID
Sat Nov 7 · 2:00pm
Two middle-grade authors appear together: Diane Debrovner presents Roxie in Color, about a girl with blind parents, typeset in a low-vision font, while debut author Wendy Lu shares Casting April, about a disabled sixth grader chasing a Broadway role. Both books center disability and identity; Lu is a New York Times deputy editor.
Sat Nov 7 · 1:00pm
Tara Lynn Masih discusses The Silent Women, a novel drawn from the Manhattan Project's Oak Ridge — the closed town where thousands worked without being told what they were building. Her protagonist, Song Holloway, is ordered to inform on the women around her. Masih has won the Julia Ward Howe Prize.
Sat Nov 7 · 4:00pm
Anna Housley Juster reads How to Train Your Amygdala and The Best Good Thing: Discovering Joy on a Very Bad, Smad Day. She is a licensed child and adolescent mental health clinician who began as a Head Start teacher and has spent twenty-five years in curriculum development and family support.
Sat Nov 7 · 10:00am
Children's author Ellen Mayer reads from Flutter, Flap, Fly, Cake Day and Yellow, Red, Green — Go with banjo player Malcolm Pittman accompanying. The shop is explicit that the children are expected to sing along rather than sit and listen, so it runs closer to a singalong than a reading.
Sat Nov 7 · 1:00pm
Sandy Bailey discusses She’s On To Something, a sapphic romantic thriller in which a butch SEC prosecutor, Jaye Brannigan, uncovers a church-based investment scam draining millions from working-class families. Bailey drove freight and passenger trains across New England before law school, then prosecuted white-collar and domestic-violence cases in New Mexico and corporate fraud in Boston and Washington. Rozzie Bound asks for an RSVP.
Sat Nov 7 · 1:00pm
Michael Carini signs Tyler Madison and the Secret of Washington's Treasure, an adventure novel in which Tyler inherits a pocket watch from his grandfather, a former president. The watch has passed through the hands of every commander in chief since John Adams, and the secret it carries leads Tyler and his friends into the White House, an ancient secret society and the buried truth about George Washington.
Sat Nov 7 · 2:00pm
Christopher Mirabile signs two novels in his Silas Lopez mystery series, set in Provincetown. In The Washashore, a fatal late-night hit-and-run draws interim police chief Silas Lopez, “a fifteenth-generation ranch hand turned plain-spoken cop,” from the dunes and cranberry farms to the docks of New Bedford. The Holdfast, out September 15, follows an elderly homeowner’s suspicious death into shell companies and shadowy real-estate deals.
Sat Nov 7 · 11:30am
Kelly Riera reads her picture book What Trucks Love to Do 2: Help and Serve Crew, a celebration of community helpers "and all they do to keep our towns rolling." A crew races, rescues, fixes, cleans and serves its way through town, from fire trucks that spray to garbage trucks that munch and food trucks that sizzle. It is the second What Trucks Love to Do book.
Sun Nov 8 · 10:30am
An all-ages story time for Animals of the Chinese Zodiac: An Illustrated Guide to the 12 Signs, with its illustrator Ping Zhu — a hand-painted introduction to the twelve animals for readers six to nine, with a flowchart quiz to find your match and a fold-out retelling of the Great Race.
Sun Nov 8 · 2:00pm
Debrovner introduces her middle-grade novel Roxie in Color, which grew out of her Parents magazine article “What Blind Parents Want You to See.” She is joined by Aria Mia Loberti, the actress and UNICEF ambassador who narrates the audiobook and wrote I Am Ingrid: The Adventures of the World's Greatest Guide Dog, about her own guide dog. Audience questions and a signing follow.
Sun Nov 8 · 11:00am
Mark Epstein signs Cape Dreams: A Season with the Brewster Whitecaps, his account of the team's 2024 summer in the 101-year-old Cape Cod Baseball League. Epstein followed the club all season under manager Jamie Shevchik, writing about players, coaches, volunteers and host families. He spent nearly 30 years in the Charleston County School District, and the book was chosen for the Baseball Hall of Fame's 2026 Author Series.
Mon Nov 9 · 6:00pm
Francine Berman discusses Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace. Berman founded and heads the Public Interest Technology Initiative at UMass Amherst and co-chairs the Berkman Klein Center working group on the subject. Free with an RSVP at the Harvard Science Center, co-presented with Harvard Library.
Mon Nov 9 · 7:00pm
Lloyd Schwartz reads from his new collection Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948) and Other Poems. Schwartz won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, served as Poet Laureate of Somerville, and is professor emeritus of English at UMass Boston.
Mon Nov 9 · 7:00pm
Tom Drury, the award-winning author of The End of Vandalism, discusses West of Loveland, his fourth novel set in Midwestern Grouse County across four decades, "a warm and polyphonic portrait" of a community assembled by a roadside discovery. Jayne Anne Phillips, who won the Pulitzer for Night Watch, joins him.
Mon Nov 9 · 7pm
Edith Netter presents The House at Schumannstrasse 7: A Memoir, a Holocaust survivor’s story told in the voice of her grandmother, Alice Rothschild Netter. The story takes in a home seized by the Nazis, a German concentration camp, British internment camps, the Kindertransport and a fraught journey by “sealed train.” Netter, a retired lawyer, spent years researching the family’s past, even retracing her grandmother’s route to freedom.
Mon Nov 9 · 7pm
Jenn Bouchard, a Massachusetts novelist who writes stories set in New England, talks about her path to publication and “embracing life’s second acts.” Bouchard did not publish her debut novel until she was 44; at 49 she is releasing her third, Palms on the Cape, while still teaching high school social studies full-time and raising a family. She has close to 100 book events behind her.
Mon Nov 9 · 7:00pm
Kasey Lansdale discusses her debut novel First Chance, which introduces Chance Kirby, a former journalist turned private investigator in Hopeful, Texas. Her first case, the unsolved killing of a client's sister, uncovers a string of young women murdered the same way. Lansdale, a singer-songwriter and the daughter of the novelist Joe R. Lansdale, is joined by Christopher Golden, the Massachusetts horror writer whose Ararat won the Bram Stoker Award.
Mon Nov 9 · 7:00pm
Sarah Cavanaugh discusses Peaceful Exit: A Guide to Reimagining Your Final Chapter, which “invites readers to prepare for death as an act of service — both to themselves and to the people they love.” Cavanaugh hosts the Peaceful Exit podcast, where she has interviewed Alua Arthur, Anne Lamott and Patti Davis. She is joined by Heather Myers, a friend since seventh grade who advises endowments on investment strategy.
Tue Nov 10 · 6:00pm
Alice Hoffman discusses The Witches of Cambridge, "the brand-new series from the bestselling author of Practical Magic, following two brilliant young women in 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they become immersed in a mysterious secret group of witches at Radcliffe." Hoffman has written thirty works of fiction.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
David Weinberger discusses Beautiful Particulars, "a fresh and eye-opening new explanation of AI — and how its focus on specifics is changing our ideas about ourselves and our world." Weinberger researches at Harvard's metaLAB, is a long-time Berkman Klein affiliate and wrote Everyday Chaos.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
Amanda Foody and C.L. Herman, the bestselling authors of All of Us Villains, discuss A Destiny So Cruel, "the heart-wrenching epic finale" to the fantasy duology begun in A Fate So Cold, in which a Chosen One and the boy she killed are resurrected into a second, destined duel.
Tue Nov 10 · 10:30am
The author and illustrator Grace Lin discusses her work and meets young readers. Lin has written and illustrated dozens of children's books, among them Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the Ling and Ting series, and holds Newbery, Caldecott and Theodor Geisel Honors.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
A poetry reading with two authors sharing new collections: Ilan Mochari presents Playthings, and Rosemary Herbert reads from Sisters in Time, centered on her experience unearthing a fourth-century Roman-era pagan burial in Winchester, England. Mochari, a novelist and Pushcart nominee, and Herbert together anchor an evening devoted to contemporary poetry.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
Joanne Chang, the James Beard Award-winning baker who founded Boston's Flour bakeries and co-owns Myers+Chang, discusses The Joy of Cookies: New Classics and Old Favorites to Share. Known as the “cookie girl” at Harvard, she opens the book with “a baker’s dozen of baking questions” before chapters of bars, sandwich cookies and savoury ones. Ashley Stanley, founder of the food-rescue nonprofit Lovin' Spoonfuls, joins her.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
Sarah Bruhn launches Holding On to Home, built on five years of fieldwork and more than a hundred interviews, on how immigrant women's care work in families, schools and neighbourhoods is what makes sanctuary mean anything in practice. Bruhn researches how public policy shapes immigrant families' chances of inclusion.
Tue Nov 10 · 6:00pm
Jay Vogt reads from A Walking Life: A Memoir in Seventeen Walks, including a six-mile Sunday loop from his Concord door past the Old Manse and the Old North Bridge into the Estabrook Woods, and pieces on the Camino and an alpine pass. Vogt, founder of the consulting practice Peoplesworth, then draws on forty years as a facilitator to gather attendees’ own walking stories. Registration opens October 10.
Tue Nov 10 · 7pm
Daphne Elliot marks release day for Wood You Be Mine, a small-town romance in which a “determined elementary school principal moves in next door to grumpy lumberjack Henri Gagnon” with one year to prove herself and save her job. She is in conversation with fellow romance author Brittanée Nicole, then signs the new book and up to two titles brought from home.
Tue Nov 10 · 7pm
Randy Ross, a Boston-area novelist, storyteller and comedian and the author of God Bless Cambodia, tells how a homebody’s sixteen-week solo trip around the world in 2007, with four continents and three bungee jumps, turned into a comedy novel and a one-man show. His one-man shows have played libraries, youth hostels, senior centers and more than 30 fringe festivals in the U.S., Canada and Edinburgh.
Tue Nov 10 · 7:00pm
Alyson Mosquera DuTemple discusses her debut story collection, in which an amateur herpetologist is swindled by women he meets on lizard-care message boards and a dental hygienist makes a doomed trip to a sham psychic on the Atlantic City boardwalk. DuTemple's stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review and Colorado Review. Leah de Forest, who teaches fiction at the Harvard Extension School, joins her.
Tue Nov 10 · 7pm
Former Boston Globe and Washington Post film critics Ty Burr and Janice Page talk through the Oscar frontrunners and recent festival hits and misses, and Page discusses her memoir Year of the Water Horse, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice she worked on as the 2023 Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger resident at Yaddo. Burr, a 2017 Pulitzer finalist for criticism, is the author of Gods Like Us.
Wed Nov 11 · 7:00pm
Sofia Franklyn created Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper in 2018 and left two years later, after which Cooper took the show on alone in a deal reported at $60 million. Franklyn now runs Sofia with an F; Daddy Issues: A Memoir is her account of what happened.
Wed Nov 11 · 7:00pm
A Veterans Day edition of Fish Tales, the Gloucester Writers Center's storytelling showcase in the manner of The Moth, in which local people tell true stories on a set theme. The series began in 2013; a volunteer storyteller-in-residence recruits and coaches each cast with the centre's staff, and ticket proceeds help fund its free and low-cost readings, workshops and open mics.
Wed Nov 11 · 6:30pm
Laura Zigman discusses her new novel The Author Weekend, in which bestselling mystery writer Faye Wader, her sales slipping, hosts her first fan weekend on Great Misery Island, only for a rival novelist to crash it and an attendee to turn up dead. Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry and Separation Anxiety, also collaborated on Eddie Izzard’s bestseller Believe Me. The Friends of the South End Library present the talk.
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.
Wed Nov 11
Rachel Maddow discusses The Department of Fate, a history of the Justice Department that finds “heroism and treachery in equal measure” and ends with the case for rebuilding what it calls “our battered democracy.” Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on MS NOW and is the author of Prequel, Blowout and Drift. Each ticket includes an unsigned copy of the book.
Wed Nov 11 · 7:00pm
Dan Moren launches Eternity's Tomb, a comic science-fiction heist in which an ex-con named Z, his ursine partner Graham, a "genetically engineered murder bird" and a floating brain in a jar go after a tomb "hurtling through space towards a black hole." Moren, a former Macworld senior editor and two-time Jeopardy! champion, is the author of All Souls Lost and the Galactic Cold War space-opera series.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:00pm
Dana Mashoian Walrath discusses The Book of Genocides, a graphic narrative in which "a descendant of genocide survivors brings history's darkest horrors to life, calling on us to remember, repair, and resist." Walrath is a medical anthropologist and artist whose earlier graphic memoir Aliceheimer's drew her mother's dementia.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:30pm
Trisha Paytas, one of the internet's first influencers, discusses her memoir Crying on the Kitchen Floor, "a raw and uproarious" account of a career of reinventions, feuds and reality-TV cameos and the search for identity behind them. Ticketed, with a copy included.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:00pm
Tom Cole appears in conversation with Michael Bronski, who teaches women, gender and sexuality studies at Harvard. Bronski has written about gay culture and politics since the 1970s, from Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (1984) to A Queer History of the United States, which won a Stonewall Book Award.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:30pm
The novelist Claire Messud gives a reading and audience Q&A as Boston University's Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer, with a reception, book sale and signing to follow. Messud is the author of the best-selling The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs, and teaches creative writing at Harvard.
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.
Thu Nov 12 · 6:00pm
Robert M. Thorson, professor of Earth sciences at the University of Connecticut, lectures and reads from The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau, which tells how Thoreau “resuscitated Walden with a sharp swerve toward science” and reads the book against climate change, water supply and technology. Thorson also wrote Walden’s Shore and The Boatman. The Thoreau Alliance and the Walden Woods Project co-sponsor.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:00pm
Kip Wilson launches her middle-grade debut, Backpack, Boy, Berlin, a verse novel based on the true story of a boy delivering secret anti-Nazi messages in wartime Berlin. Janae Marks, the New York Times bestselling author of the Zoe Washington series, presents Starting Now, about a tween who uncovers a family secret after moving in with her estranged half-brother. Wilson’s earlier books include White Rose.
Thu Nov 12 · 5:00pm
Lauren Klein and Tanvi Sharma discuss their new book, Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science, which “returns to the history of data visualization to expose the power of charts and maps.” Klein, an Emory professor, co-wrote Data Feminism; Sharma is an art director at Apple. Arvind Satyanarayan, who teaches data visualization at MIT, joins them in conversation.
Thu Nov 12 · 7pm
Trisha Blanchet discusses her new mystery Murder Like Magic, set in Lowell, in which Tess Tulley, a “charmingly grouchy private eye” and a witch whose mind-reading is unreliable, investigates a victim “found in a pool of someone else’s blood.” Blanchet wrote the Neath trilogy and hosts A Mighty Blaze Podcast. Novelist Jane Roper, author of The Society of Shame and Eden Lake, joins her in conversation.
Nov 12, Dec 14 · 6:30pm/7pm
Thu Nov 12 · 6:30pm, Lecture Hall (Waltham) / Mon Dec 14 · 7pm, Bonsignore Hall (Medford)
Wildlife ecologist Brad Timm draws on his book Wildlife Out Your Window to show the hidden behaviours, adaptations and ecological roles of New England’s most familiar birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Illustrated with photographs, videos and stories from his years of fieldwork, the talk also offers science-based ideas for making a yard, neighbourhood or community more welcoming to wildlife.
Thu Nov 12 · 7:00pm
M. T. Anderson discusses Stealing Saint Nick, his history of Nicholas of Myra, traced from a third-century child of "a fringe Jewish cult" to Father Christmas, by way of the Great Persecution, the fall of Rome and two thefts of his bones. Anderson won the National Book Award for Octavian Nothing: The Pox Party; the book grew from research for Nicked, his adult debut.
Fri Nov 13 · 6:30pm
Mona Chalabi, the Pulitzer-winning data journalist, discusses Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, for which she followed ten people over five years to ask how much wealth it takes to feel safe in America — a question sharpened by her own mother's sudden illness. A signing follows.
Fri Nov 13 · 7:00pm
Charrise Barron discusses The Platinum Age of Gospel, "the story of gospel music's chartbusting mainstream success and the accompanying shifts in Black Christian theology," beginning with "the clandestine spirituals of the enslaved." Barron is a minister, a gospel artist and an assistant professor of music at Harvard.
Fri Nov 13 · 7:00pm
Emerson Whitney, author of Heaven and Daddy Boy, launches O Mother — written out of a return home they had not planned to make, to a childhood shaped by their mother's addiction. RSVP requested and, if the room fills, required.
Fri Nov 13 · 6:30pm
Four romance writers — Cecilia Tan, May Furhst, Lauren Burka and MJ Etkin — perform dramatic readings of each other's work and argue about where romance stops and erotica starts. Tan founded Circlet Press and has written on the subject for decades. The event is restricted to adults and falls on Friday the thirteenth.
Sat Nov 14 · 11:00am
Author Heidi E.Y. Stemple and debut illustrator Annie Gregoire launch their picture book E. Norm Moose, a read-aloud about a moose searching for a friend. Stemple, daughter of author Jane Yolen, has published nearly fifty books. Members of the Islandport Press team join the launch, making it a full publication celebration.
Sat Nov 14 · 11:30am
Carrie Finison reads Even Steven: A Book About Sharing, a picture book about a boy who likes everything split perfectly even, until he meets things that cannot be halved, like a nickel, a book or a slide. Taking turns helps, but Steven is left wondering whether some things can be even but not fair. Finison and her illustrator also made Don't Hug Doug.
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.
Sun Nov 15 · 4pm
Caitlin Green launches her debut book, Tame Your Inner Critic, with an author talk, workshop exercises, audience Q&A and a signing. The session, aimed at an inner critic that shows up as perfectionism, self-doubt or people-pleasing, blends “storytelling, practical psychology, mindfulness, and guided reflection.” Green is a self-trust coach, yoga teacher and former special educator who works from evidence-based psychology and mindfulness.
$20 – $25
Sun Nov 15 · 2pm
Megan Marshall discusses After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart (2025), essays mixing memoir, biography and cultural history on the art of biography and the lives that shaped her work, from Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to the Black Power activist Jonathan Jackson. Marshall won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life; the Wellesley Historical Society co-presents.
Mon Nov 16 · 6:00pm
Terence Tao discusses Six Math Essentials, in which "the 'Mozart of mathematics' invites readers on a brief tour of six core ideas — numbers, algebra, geometry, probability, analysis, and dynamics." Tao is a Fields medallist and professor of mathematics at UCLA. Free with an RSVP, in Hall D.
Mon Nov 16 · 6:30pm
Sean Sherman, the James Beard-winning Oglala Lakota chef known as the Sioux Chef, discusses Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. He joins Tamika Francis of Food & Folklore on Indigenous foodways and food sovereignty; guests get a bite from the book afterward.
Mon Nov 16 · 7:00pm
Shaul Magid and Zev Mishell discuss Jewish Anti-Zionism: A Historical Anthology, "a collection of texts illustrating the complex reasons why Jews have contested or rejected the Zionist ideal over more than a century." Magid teaches modern Judaism at Harvard Divinity School; Mishell is a graduate student in the study of religion.
Mon Nov 16 · 7:00pm
Andrew Janjigian launches Breaducation: The Science and Practice of Baking Bread at Home, a guide to baking bread in a home kitchen. Janjigian, a former editor at Cook's Illustrated, writes Wordloaf, a newsletter devoted to bread. Dan Souza of America's Test Kitchen joins him in conversation. RSVP is requested, and becomes required if the room fills.
Mon Nov 16 · 8:00pm
Jennifer Barber reads from her new collection A Prevalence of Angels with David Orr, author of The Marvels. Barber founded and long edited the literary journal Salamander at Suffolk University. The Blacksmith House series runs weekly through the autumn in the Cambridge Center for Adult Education's Brattle Street house.
Mon Nov 16 · 7:00pm
Ryan Holiday, founder of The Daily Stoic and host of its podcast, gives a keynote drawing on his newest book, Wisdom Takes Work, followed by audience Q&A. Holiday's books on Stoic philosophy, among them The Obstacle Is the Way, Stillness Is the Key and The Daily Stoic, have sold over ten million copies. The Painted Porch Bookshop runs a pop-up, and VIP tickets add a pre-show meet-and-greet.
Mon Nov 16 · 6:00pm
Melissa Clark discusses her new cookbook, The Big Book of Dinner: Recipes and Rules (and How to Break Them). Clark is a staff writer for the New York Times Food section, where she has long written the A Good Appetite column, and a winner of James Beard and IACP awards; her New York Times bestsellers include Dinner in One. Book-included tickets are available.
Mon Nov 16 · 7:00pm
Joanne Chang discusses The Joy of Cookies: New Classics and Old Favorites to Share, which opens with answers to basic baking questions and then sorts its recipes by kind, from drop cookies and bars to sandwich and savory cookies such as Parmesan Chive Coins. Chang founded the Flour bakeries in Boston, co-owns the restaurant Myers+Chang, and won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker in 2016.
Mon Nov 16 · 6pm
Elisa Shua Dusapin discusses her novel The Old Fire, about “two estranged sisters, a childhood home, and all that remains unspoken between them.” Dusapin, who was born in France to a South Korean mother and grew up between Paris, Seoul and Switzerland, writes in French; Winter in Sokcho, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. MIT and the French Library co-present.
Tue Nov 17 · 6:00pm
James Gleick discusses The Telephone: A New History, "a sweeping history of the instrument that created modern life," beginning in 1876 with Bell saying "Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you." Gleick wrote Chaos and The Information and was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.
Ticketed
Tue Nov 17 · 7:00pm
Janet Rich Edwards discusses her debut novel Canticle, a national bestseller longlisted for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize and a New York Times Editors' Choice, newly in paperback. Edwards is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard who works in women's health at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
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.
Tue Nov 17 · 7:00pm
Allison King launches Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, her official novelisation of the new animated film. King is a Cambridge writer and software engineer who writes code for the MBTA; her novel The Phoenix Pencil Company was a 2025 Reese's Book Club pick, and her stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine and LeVar Burton Reads. The event is held in the library's Hunneman Hall rather than the shop.
Tue Nov 17 · 7:00pm
Joanne Chang launches The Joy of Cookies: New Classics and Old Favorites to Share. She won a James Beard award and founded the Flour bakeries in Boston; the book opens with a baker's dozen of basic questions before working through cookies from the familiar to the unlikely. One of three Boston-area dates on her tour.
Tue Nov 17 · 7pm
Meghan Nesmith, a Boston writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe and the Guardian, appears for A World Apart, her first novel. It is a queer romantasy set in London in 1866, in which a miscast spell opens a doorway into the Veil, a realm where a family has been trapped for 800 years since a bargain with the Faerie Queen.
Tue Nov 17 · 7pm
Nathaniel Philbrick discusses The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, which begins with the 1848 strike at Sutter’s Mill and traces how California’s rise “helped push a fractured nation toward war.” Philbrick, whose In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award, talks with Randall MacLowry, the filmmaker behind The Gold Rush for PBS’s American Experience.
Tue Nov 17 · 7:00pm
Askold Melnyczuk's With Madonna in Kyiv collects essays, reviews and remembrances, among them recollections of Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott; Mary Cappello's Frost Will Come: Essays from the Bardo is a memoir in lyric essays about caring for her poet mother through terminal cancer. Cappello is a Guggenheim and Berlin Prize Fellow; P. Carl, who teaches at Emerson and wrote the memoir Becoming a Man, joins them in conversation.
Wed Nov 18 · 7:00pm
Omékongo Dibinga discusses Trigger Words, which "examines how language in the United States has been manipulated and politicized to sow division and dehumanization, rather than to encourage inclusion" — from "woke" to "DEI" to "CRT." Dibinga is a trilingual poet, rapper and professor of intercultural communication at American University.
Wed Nov 18 · 7:00pm
Dr. Barak Benaryeh discusses The Vet Will See You Now, pitched as "Kitchen Confidential meets All Creatures Great and Small" — irreverent stories from inside a fast-changing veterinary profession, threaded with practical advice for pet owners. Indu Mani joins him.
Wed Nov 18 · 7:00pm
Alfred Corn and Marilyn Hacker read, introduced by Lloyd Schwartz. Hacker won the National Book Award for Presentation Piece and has translated widely from the French; Corn has published a dozen collections since All Roads at Once in 1976; Schwartz is a Pulitzer-winning critic.
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.
Wed Nov 18 · 6:00pm
Daniels discusses Jenny Will Eat You Now, a horror-romance in which the river monster Jenny Greenteeth follows an academic around Boston after a chance meeting leaves her hungry and curious about the world she has been avoiding. Daniels's poetry and short fiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than thirty publications.
Wed Nov 18 · 6:00pm
Carter Wilson discusses his new thriller, When They Find Me, in conversation with Hank Phillippi Ryan, then signs. Wilson is the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of eleven standalone psychological thrillers, among them Tell Me What You Did and Mister Tender's Girl. Ryan, an on-air investigative journalist with 37 Emmys, has written 17 thrillers; All This Could Be Yours won the 2026 Mary Higgins Clark Award.
Thu Nov 19 · 7:00pm
Rodrigo Nunes discusses Anatomy of Disintegration, which "dissects the global far right's appeal through the lens of Bolsonarismo, tracing its roots to the social disintegration caused by the crisis of neoliberalism and looming climate change." Nunes teaches philosophy at PUC-Rio in Brazil.
Thu Nov 19 · 6:30pm
GBH WORLD records another Stories from the Stage evening at its Brighton studio, this one on the occasions when laughter is the only reasonable response left. The tellers are ordinary people whose stories have been selected and shaped for the broadcast rather than stand-up comedians working material.
Thu Nov 19 · 6:00pm
A panel on Elizabeth Garver Jordan, the reporter known for covering the 1893 Lizzie Borden trial, who became an editor, suffrage activist and mystery novelist. Sharon M. Harris, author of the new biography Her Life in Ink, joins Jane Carr and Lori Harrison-Kahan, editors of the Penguin Classics The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings, and Betsy Devine, Jordan’s namesake and a Concord resident.
Thu Nov 19 · 7:30pm
Phoebe Judge, host of the podcast Criminal, which tells stories about people “who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle,” turns the format on herself in a new stage show. She tells stories about her own eccentric, unpredictable family in Chicago, the secrets she discovered growing up, and how they shaped her work as a journalist and true-crime host.
Thu Nov 19 · 7:00pm
Ibtisam Azem discusses The Sleep Thief, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, which follows Gharib Haifawi as he comes of age, is drawn into resistance and "dreams of a Palestinian identity that will transcend sorrow." Azem, a New York journalist and 2026–27 Radcliffe Fellow, was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize for The Book of Disappearance. William Granara, professor of Arabic literature at Harvard, joins her.
Thu Nov 19 · 4pm
Min Jin Lee returns to Harvard Radcliffe Institute to discuss her new novel, American Hagwon, which she worked on as the Catherine A. and Mary C. Gellert Fellow in 2018–2019. Lee is the author of Pachinko, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, and Free Food for Millionaires. She is joined in conversation by Jared Bowen, WGBH's executive arts editor and host of The Culture Show.
Fri Nov 20 · 7:00pm
Brian D. Goldstein discusses Max Bond: The Life and Work of the People's Architect, "the first biography of a preeminent postwar architect who championed the cause of freedom through architecture." J. Max Bond Jr. was also a civil rights activist and educator. Goldstein chairs art history at Swarthmore.
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.
Fri Nov 20 · 7pm
Keltie Knight tours her first solo book, The F∗ck Them Theory: Self-Help for People Who Are Done Being the Bigger Person, in conversation with Holly Madison, author of the memoir Down the Rabbit Hole. The night adds a writing and manifestation workshop and a Q&A, and admission includes a pre-signed book. Knight, a three-time Emmy winner, hosts E!’s Live From the Red Carpet and co-created the podcast LadyGang.
Fri Nov 20 · 12:45pm
J. Jarpa Dawuni, a political scientist at Howard University, discusses her new book African Women in Law: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2026), which takes up the issues African women face in the legal profession in national, regional and international courts. Dawuni founded the Institute for African Women in Law and co-edited Gender and the Judiciary in Africa. The Mandel Center for the Humanities hosts.
Sat Nov 21 · 1:00pm
Gabrielle Rossi reads Lizzie Learns to Ride, about a girl who is frightened of riding and finds the nerve to try anyway. It comes from Strong Girl Publishing, a press set up to make books for young female athletes. Rossi is an educator and founded an organisation for girls in sport.
Sat Nov 21 · 10:30am
The Weston Community Children's Association presents local author Yola Thorp, creator of the Sightseeing Sophie series, in an interactive reading for children from preschool through third grade and their families, followed by a conversation about Sophie, travel and how her books came to be. Children can ask questions and join a simple story- or travel-themed activity, and the morning ends with a book signing.
Sat Nov 21 · 11:30am
Phaea Crede returns to read All I Want For Christmas: A Holiday Countdown, a picture book for ages 3 to 7 and the first in her Holiday Critter Countdown series, in which animal friends count down to holidays. With twelve days to go, Reina the Reindeer sets off across the North Pole in search of her two front teeth and finds friendship instead.
Sun Nov 22 · 2pm
Bill Leeman, a professor at Salve Regina University, discusses The Long Road to Annapolis and the story of John Paul Jones, the Scottish émigré who became a Revolutionary War sea captain and argued for better education and training for American naval officers. Largely forgotten afterward, Jones was reclaimed as “Father of the American Navy” by Theodore Roosevelt, who was building support for a larger navy.
Mon Nov 23 · 7:00pm
Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico's senior health care reporter, on Side Effects: How Abortion Bans Impact Everyone's Health — years of reporting on how losing abortion access has degraded care across the whole American health system, including services with nothing to do with pregnancy.
Mon Nov 23 · 8:00pm
John Skoyles reads from That's Where You Come In with Clay Ventre, author of Excellent Wildlife Photos. Skoyles taught for many years at Emerson College and served as poetry editor of Ploughshares. The Blacksmith House pairs an established poet with a newer one most weeks of the series.
Tue Nov 24 · 10:30am
Chad, a cartoonist who has been making comics since 2006, visits to talk about his work with children. He draws the Bikeman comics and titles in the Get to Know Your Universe! science comics series, and takes his subjects from science, giant robots, math, monsters, friendship and trust. Part of the library's Author & Illustrator Series.
Tue Nov 24 · 7:00pm
The seventh annual edition of this storytelling night presents true stories by adult storytellers on identity, origin, separation and reunion, drawn from adoption, foster care, donor conception and unexpected family discoveries. It was created by Lisa “LC” Coppola, a DCF adoptee and author of Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees, whose debut novel Monster Flower is forthcoming. Kristal Parke, a filmmaker and transracial adoptee, also appears.
Mon Nov 30 · 7:00pm
Sandro Galea discusses his memoir Alien: Reflections on Being an Immigrant, "a personal treatise on the indelible effects of being an immigrant — and what it means for the greater good." Galea left Malta at fourteen and is now dean of the school of public health at Washington University in St. Louis.
Mon Nov 30 · 8:00pm
Robert Pinsky, whose latest books are The First Two Books of Poems and On Poetry, Culture, and Democracy, has the evening to himself; the season's other Mondays each pair two writers. Pinsky served three terms as Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project, translated Dante's Inferno and has long taught at Boston University. Admission is $5 at the door.
Mon Nov 30 · 7:00pm
Anderson launches Stealing Saint Nick, which traces Nicholas of Myra “from his humble origins as a child born into a fringe Jewish cult” in the third century through sainthood to his transformation into an icon of capitalism. The book grew out of research for Nicked, his adult debut. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing: The Pox Party won the National Book Award, and Feed the LA Times Book Prize.
Tue Dec 1
Joanne Chang, the James Beard-winning baker behind Flour Bakery and Myers+Chang, returns to CitySpace to talk about cookies — the subject of her new book. Her third Boston appearance for the same title this season, after the Brattle and Brookline Booksmith dates.
Wed Dec 2 · 7:00pm
Launch of the twelfth issue of spoKe, the Boston poetry annual Kevin Gallagher founded in response to the 2013 Marathon bombing, with readings by Kristin Prevallet, John Mulrooney and Nimi Wariboko, introduced by Gallagher, a poet and professor of global development policy at Boston University. Prevallet's books include I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time; Wariboko, born in Nigeria, teaches social ethics at Boston University's School of Theology.
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.
Wed Dec 2 · 12:30pm
Rosie Sultan reads from and discusses All the Small Surrenders in the library’s monthly Author Talk, in which local writers give the background to a book, read excerpts and take questions from a moderator and the audience. Sultan won a PEN Discovery Award for fiction, wrote the novel Helen Keller in Love, and has taught writing at Boston University. The series runs with Newton’s Department of Older Adult Services.
Wed Dec 2 · 7:30pm
The Moth StorySLAM is an open-mic storytelling competition: names are drawn from a hat, and each storyteller has five minutes, without notes, to tell a true story, scored by teams of judges from the audience. This one throws out the theme, so any story is fair game, including one that never fit a past Moth theme or comes from “the archived memories.” WBUR is The Moth’s media partner.
$17
Thu Dec 3 · 7:30pm
The poet Claudia Rankine gives a reading in Boston University's Bay State Road Reading Series, followed by a catered reception and a book signing. Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, and a MacArthur Fellow.
Thu Dec 3 · 7:00pm
Author Katie Naymon celebrates her new romance In Every Future, It's Us, a dual-timeline story of two best friends and a yearly New Year's Eve game. She is joined in conversation by USA Today bestselling author Chelsea Curto, with book influencer Grace Vogt-Alwardt moderating this holiday-themed romance evening.
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.
Thu Dec 3 · 6pm
Tufts University Art Galleries launches Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader, co-published with No Place Press, with a panel pairing the artist and Pamela Lee, Carnegie Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Yale, moderated by TUAG curator and co-interim director Laurel V. McLaughlin. Edited by Rachel Churner and designed by Geoff Kaplan, the book gathers writing by Gregg Bordowitz, Huey Copland, Kevin Killian, Ed Roberson, Lynne Tillman and others.
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.”
Sat Dec 5 · 11:00am
A holiday reading with two authors and an illustrator: Cynthia Platt shares Santa in Disguise from her Holidays in Disguise series, while Vivian Kirkfield and illustrator Jill Weber present Pippa's Hanukkah Hunt, a companion to Pippa's Passover Plate. A seasonal event pairing Christmas and Hanukkah picture books for young readers and families.
Sat Dec 5 · 2:00pm
Lewis, professor emeritus at Boston College, discusses his book on how Poe's “The Raven” became the most famous American poem. More than 5,300 poems appeared in American magazines in 1845; he asks why this one was reprinted, attacked and parodied so relentlessly, in versions swapping the raven for owls, turkeys, pigs and bedbugs, and what Poe's own reputation had to do with it.
Sat Dec 5 – Sun Dec 6 · 11am
Sat Dec 5 / Sun Dec 6 · 11am
MICE brings several hundred independent comics artists and small presses to BU's School of Visual Arts for a weekend of tabling, panels and workshops. It is the largest event of its kind in New England and is free to attend, with the programme aimed at readers and makers rather than collectors.
Mon Dec 7 · 8:00pm
J. Allyn Rosser reads from Chronic Transience with Kate Stearns, author of Out Toward Morning. Rosser has won the Morse Poetry Prize and the New Criterion Poetry Prize and edits New Ohio Review. The reading closes the Blacksmith House series' autumn run at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.
Wed Dec 9 · 7:00pm
Diego Perez, the #1 New York Times bestselling author who writes as Yung Pueblo, presents Journey: The Year That Changes Everything — 365 daily reflections on self-awareness and inner peace. Harvard Book Store hosts at First Parish Church; tickets include a pre-signed hardcover.
Ticketed (includes a pre-signed hardcover)
Wed Dec 9 · 6:30pm
Jason Allison discusses his debut novel The Killing Yards, set in 1993 New York, where reformed drug trafficker Jimmy Lettner runs a Manhattan nightclub while his right-hand man deals ecstasy inside it and a rookie cop goes undercover. Allison, born and raised in the Bronx, spent twenty years with the NYPD, mostly as a homicide detective. The talk closes the Friends of the South End Library’s fall series.
Thu Dec 10 · 7:00pm
Four poets read: Rosemary Carroll, Miguel Coronado, Rob Macaisa Colgate and Nay Saysourinho. Colgate's debut, Hardly Creatures (Tin House, 2025), is built as an accessible art museum, its sections laid out as gallery rooms about life in a disabled body. Saysourinho's The Capture of Krao Farini, from Ugly Duckling Presse, is written in the imagined voice of a real sideshow performer brought to the United States around 1900.
Thu Dec 10 · 6:30pm
The December edition of Stories from the Stage takes the holidays that go wrong and the people who turn up anyway. GBH WORLD records the series before a studio audience at Calderwood Studio; the tellers are members of the public whose stories have been selected and directed for broadcast.
Thu Dec 10 · 6:30pm
Max Heinegg, Medford's Poet Laureate for 2025–2027, and friends combine a poetry reading with musical performances of seasonal poems and songs. Heinegg is a poet and songwriter who has also released records; his books include Good Harbor (2022), Going There (2023) and Keepers of the House (2025). Registration opens November 1.
Sat Dec 12 · 11:00am
Two authors share new winter picture books: Cathy Stefanec Ogren presents Winter Solstice Hill, about a family's wishing-on-a-star tradition, and Amanda Davis reads Chasing the Light, a nighttime hunt for the Northern Lights in the spirit of Owl Moon. Davis is a Massachusetts Secondary Art Educator of the Year. A family reading.
Sat Dec 19 · 2:00pm
Matt Tavares reads Dasher, his picture book about the reindeer who leads Santa's team, takes questions and demonstrates drawing before signing copies. The event marks a new animated-special cover edition, and the shop expects to show a preview of the adaptation. Tavares has written and illustrated many picture books, several on baseball history.
Sun Dec 20 · 5:00pm
Author-illustrator Matt Tavares shares his bestselling Dasher: How a Brave Little Doe Changed Christmas Forever, being reissued as a special edition with poster and ornaments from the animated adaptation. After the reading, the store screens the 45-minute Disney+ holiday special. Pajamas are encouraged for this family evening with a New York Times bestselling creator.
Thu Jan 21 · 4:30pm
Ted Widmer discusses his latest book, The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text. Widmer, a Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, formerly directed Brown’s John Carter Brown Library and was a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton. His Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington won the 2020 Lincoln Forum Book Prize, and he helped create the New York Times’s Disunion series on the Civil War.
Thu Jan 28 · 6:00pm
Rob Quinn discusses On the Other Side of the Street, his first book, an account of living through HIV, addiction and the loss of a career and identity, organised around the image of a street crossing. Quinn shares passages and opens a community conversation. A Hyde Park resident, long-term survivor and advocate, he founded R4 Style and has worked with children and families in hospitals.
Tue Feb 23 · 10:15am
De la Peña, who won the Newbery Medal for Last Stop on Market Street, visits to talk about his work with children. His young adult novels include Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here and Superman: Dawnbreaker; his picture books include Love. He took an MFA at San Diego State and attended the University of the Pacific on a basketball scholarship.
Tue Mar 9 · 10:30am
Magoon visits to talk about her work with children and teenagers. She writes novels and nonfiction on identity, community and social justice; her books include the NAACP Image Award-nominated young adult novel The Rock and the River, The Secret Library, The Season of Styx Malone and the Robyn Hoodlum adventure series.
Tue Mar 23 · 7pm
Margot Grey marks release day for Raven’s Wrath, a dystopian paranormal romance from Alcove Press in which “a demon and a demon hunter forge an unlikely alliance in the ultimate fight for agency and freedom.” After a demon invasion leaves women with few choices, Raven joins a brotherhood of demon hunters and is ordered to kill Dax Morningstar, the half-demon son of Lucifer, and fails.
Sun Apr 11 · 7:00pm
Casey Sherman tells the story of Helltown, his true-crime book about Tony Costa, the Cape Cod serial killer behind the disappearance of several women from Provincetown in the late 1960s, a case that drew in Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Sherman's 19 books include Hunting Whitey, Boston Strong and A Murder in Hollywood. Proceeds go to Miles for Military, which flies junior enlisted service members home.
$30–$55
Tue Apr 27 · 10:30am
Knisley visits to talk about her comics with children. She has published more than a dozen titles for readers from infancy to adulthood, mostly about food, found family and cats, among them the New York Times bestsellers Relish: My Life in the Kitchen and French Milk, and the Peapod Farm series.
Sat May 1 · 11:00am
The store's fifth annual free festival celebrating graphic novels for young readers, running an all-day program. Details and creator lineup are still to come, but the recurring event has been a fixture on the store's calendar. A save-the-date listing; reservations are required through the store's dedicated festival page.
Tue Jun 8 · 1:00pm
Lincoln Peirce, the New York Times bestselling cartoonist, visits to talk about his work and meet children. Peirce created the Big Nate comic strip, which he has drawn since 1991, and writes and illustrates the Big Nate novels for young readers, along with the graphic-novel series Max and the Midnights. He has also written animated shorts for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.
