Boston Author Readings & Book Talks

Tue Oct 13 · 6:00pm

Anand Giridharadas at The Brattle Theatre

by Anand Giridharadas

Harvard Book Store · The Brattle Theatre · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Paul Tremblay: Off the Reservation

by Stephen Graham Jones

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner Theatre · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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

WBUR CitySpace: Cognoscenti Presents: The Cultural Phenomenon of Bad Bunny

by Cognoscenti Presents

WBUR CitySpace · Kenmore · Boston

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Aruni Kashyap

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

An Evening with B.K. Jackson & Friends

Hummingbird Books · Hummingbird Books · 55 Boylston Street · Chestnut Hill · MA · Chestnut Hill

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

Squirrel Tales Author Visit: Cedar Pruitt

Beacon Hill Books & Café · Beacon Hill Books & Cafe · 71 Charles Street · Boston · MA 02114 · Beacon Hill · Boston

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

The Thief and the Traitor Bride Book Bash with V.L. Bovalino

Lovestruck Books · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Local Author Book Talk - Emily Franklin

Dedham Public Library · Main Library - Piano Space · Dedham · MA · Dedham

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, author of Traces of Impermanence, in conversation with Laura Blacklow

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

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.

Tue Oct 13 · 7pm

Matthew E. Henry: Promises to Keep

Weymouth Public Libraries · Meeting Room 133 · Tufts Library · Weymouth

Poet Matthew E. Henry reads from Promises to Keep (Wayfarer Books, 2026), a series of persona poems in the voices of a modern prophet, his family and God, in which the prophet “attempts to speak truth to power about immigration, LGBTQAI+ rights, poverty, racism” and more. Henry, author of seven poetry collections, is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and a poetry editor at American Poetry Journal.

Wed Oct 14 · 6:00pm

Ayad Akhtar at The Brattle Theatre

by Ayad Akhtar

Harvard Book Store · The Brattle Theatre · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Cal Hoffman

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Cecilia Tan: A Wall Is Also a Road

by Annalee Newitz

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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 with Dan Souza: Seize the Supper

by Erin French

Brookline Booksmith · The Wilbur · Theatre District · Boston

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

An Evening of Conversation with Claudia Hinz

Hummingbird Books · Hummingbird Books · 55 Boylston Street · Chestnut Hill · MA · Chestnut Hill

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

An Evening with Jason Prokowiew, in conversation with Sara Faith Alterman

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Earfull: David Ryan & Nick Flynn, with Arto Vaun and Fuzzy

Earfull · The Regattabar at The Charles Hotel · 1 Bennett St · Harvard Sq · Cambridge MA · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 a.k.a. "Cheese Gal" author of Oversharing

Porter Square Books · First Parish Church · 1446 Massachusetts Ave. · Cambridge · MA 02138 · Porter Square · Cambridge

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

Author Talk: Andre Hardy — Tear the City Down

Boston Public Library · Union Church (Connection Room) · 485 Columbus Ave · South End · South End · Boston

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

Bad Words Book Bash with Ríoghnach Robinson

Lovestruck Books · Lovestruck Books & Cafe · Cambridge · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Author Horror Event with Jonathan Edward Durham and Christopher Golden

Side Quest Books & Games · Side Quest Books & Games · Somerville · Somerville

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

Author Event - Robert Fitzgibbon

Everett Public Libraries · Meeting Room · Parlin Memorial Library · Everett

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 celebrates MRBALLEN PRESENTS: THE TERROR WITHIN

Barnes & Noble Hingham · Barnes & Noble · Derby Street Shops · 96 Derby Street · Hingham · MA · Hingham

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 Trilce by César Vallejo with an introduction by Giancarlo Huapaya

Grolier Poetry Book Shop · Grolier Poetry Book Shop · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

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: The Houses of Guinness

Boston Athenaeum · Beacon Hill · Boston

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: MAGIC

WBUR CitySpace · WBUR CitySpace · 890 Commonwealth Ave · Boston · Kenmore · Boston

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

Wed Oct 14 · 11:00am

Rosanne Demas — Lily the Dragon and the Spooky Lake (All-Ages Storytime)

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Charlestown · Charlestown

Rosanne Demas reads from her new picture book Lily the Dragon and the Spooky Lake, illustrated by Valerie Leonova and the first in a children's series “focused on social-emotional growth.” Demas, a former marketing and events professional and mother of two, writes stories meant to help young children navigate big feelings, build confidence and develop simple tools they can carry with them.

Wed Oct 14 · 7pm

Emily Ross: Swallowtail

Galiot Press · Rozzie Bound · Boston

Emily Ross discusses her novel Swallowtail, in which a Quincy detective “must unravel the mystery of her own abduction 20 years ago in order to find the killer of a local girl,” a literary thriller drawing on Surrealist art and Greek mythology. Ross’s Half in Love with Death was an International Thriller Writers Award finalist. Galiot Press co-founder Anjali Mutter Duva joins her at Distraction Brewery.

Wed Oct 14 · 5pm

Reporting from Contemporary Italy: Q&A with Jason Horowitz, New York Times Europe Correspondent

MIT · Building 2 105 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Jason Horowitz discusses The Italian Job: A Memoir of an American Reporter in Rome, which gives “an insider’s view of politics and culture in Italy today, including the rise of Giorgia Meloni and the election of the first North American Pope.” Horowitz, the New York Times’s Europe correspondent, was its Rome bureau chief for eight years. Serenella Sferza, co-director of the MIT-Italy Program, moderates.

Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm

Sharon Weinberger at the Cambridge Public Library

by Sharon Weinberger

Harvard Book Store · Cambridge Public Library · Mid-Cambridge · Cambridge

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Ellen Warner

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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, The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and Grolier Poetry Book Shop present Yaryna Chornohuz and Amira El-Zein with an introducti

Grolier Poetry Book Shop · Grolier Poetry Book Shop · 6 Plympton Street · Cambridge · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Beacon Hill Beyond Bulfinch: An Evening with Anthony Sammarco

by Anthony M. Sammarco

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Central Library · Copley Square · Back Bay

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

Adam Wilson in conversation with Tom Perrotta

by Adam Wilson

Newtonville Books · Newtonville · Newton

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

Tania Lombrozo: Why We Ask Why

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books · 25 White St · Cambridge · MA · Porter Square · Cambridge

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

Women Fighting Headwinds and Finding Their Way

Belmont Books · Belmont Books · 79 Leonard Street · Belmont · MA 02478 · Belmont

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: Memorial Days, in conversation with Rabbi Karen Thomashow

Cary Memorial Library · Arlington Town Hall · 730 Massachusetts Ave · Arlington · Arlington

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Carla Kaplan, Author of Troublemaker

Concord Free Public Library · Goodwin Forum · Main Library · 129 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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

Author Series: HappySad with Brendan Donovan

The Next Chapter Books and More · The Next Chapter Books and More · Quincy · MA · Quincy

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: All Things Mystical

JustBook-ish · JustBook-ish · 1463 Dorchester Ave · Dorchester · MA

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

A Conversation with Rose Levy Beranbaum

Les Dames d'Escoffier Boston · Temple Beth Elohim · 10 Bethel Road · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley

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 in Conversation with Judith Donath: The Ended World

Galiot Press · Cambridge Common House hotel · Cambridge

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

Third Thursdays Poetry: leena aboutaleb, George Abraham, Jess Rizkallah, & Jess Yuan

Brookline Booksmith · Brookline Booksmith · 279 Harvard Street · Brookline · MA · Brookline

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.

Thu Oct 15 · 7pm

David C. Frost: If Bones Could Speak

Hingham Public Library · Whiton Room - 66 Leavitt Street · Hingham MA 02043 · Hingham

David C. Frost reads from and discusses his first thriller, If Bones Could Speak, book one of his Jawbreaker series. Set between 1930s Prohibition-era Boston and the present, it follows dentist Curtis Robinson, who is drawn into rival Boston mob violence after a lakeside explosion rocks his quiet New Hampshire town. Frost is a retired New Hampshire dentist; a book signing follows.

Thu Oct 15 · 6:30pm

Poetry Reading and Open Mic Night!

Ten Trees Books · Ten Trees Books · 29 Main Street · Natick · MA · Natick

Poet Betsy Johnson reads before an open mic for anyone with poems of their own. Johnson, a storyteller, educator and autism specialist, writes about belonging, drawing on disability, healthcare, social justice and the natural world; her poem “Mathematics of Mercy,” on the human cost of Medicaid policy, was read on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Jake Auchincloss. Beverages are available.

Fri Oct 16 · 7:00pm

Liza Black at Harvard Book Store

by Liza Black

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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, author of Call It Evil, in conversation with James Wood

by Susan Neiman

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Porter Square · Cambridge

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

Friday Story Time with Caldecott Honoree Shawn Harris

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Storytime: Louisa Penfold

by Louisa Penfold

Rozzie Bound Co-op Bookstore · Substation · Roslindale · Boston

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: The Forest Year

Belmont Books · Belmont Books · 79 Leonard Street · Belmont · MA 02478 · Belmont

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

BBF Presents: An Evening with Michael Lewis

by Michael Lewis

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

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

All She Wrote Books Presents: Samantha Paige Rosen

All She Wrote Books · All She Wrote Books · Somerville · MA · Somerville

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.

Fri Oct 16 · 11:10am

Betty Morningstar: I Didn’t Know That I Didn’t Know You

Brandeis University · Mandel Center for the Humanities · Mandel Atrium · Waltham · Waltham

Betty Morningstar reads from her memoir in essays, subtitled A Late Coming-of-Age Story, which follows a girl who at five announced she would be a ballerina and never marry, through the discovery of “an unimaginable family secret” to the recovery of her voice. Rooted in the 1950s and 1960s, the essays take in the women’s and LGBTQ+ movements, theories of mental illness, religion and #MeToo.

Fri Oct 16 · 5pm

Our Own Language / Lang a nou — Book Launch & Public Conversation

MIT · MIT Museum · Cambridge · Cambridge

MIT linguist Michel DeGraff launches Our Own Language: Harnessing the Power of Kreyòl and Other Mother Tongues for Education and Liberation, an MIT Press book written in English and Kreyòl. Drawing on Haiti’s revolutionary history, it challenges “the belief that some languages — and, by implication, some people — are more worthy of access to knowledge and power than others.” DeGraff talks with Haynes Miller; M. S. Vijay Kumar moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Story Time with Maddie Frost: The Stuffie Stand

Ten Trees Books · Ten Trees Books · 22 Main St · Natick · MA · Natick

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

Talk: Mangle Boards of Northern Europe

Scandinavian Cultural Center · Scandinavian Cultural Center · West Newton · MA · West Newton · Newton

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

Author, Liv Mae Morris, reading from "The Last Dragon House"

Turtle Books · Turtle Books · 224 Washington St · Brookline · MA · Brookline

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 Angela Rodel

Brookline Booksmith · Brookline Booksmith · 279 Harvard Street · Coolidge Corner · Brookline · MA · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Debut Authors Panel

Concord Free Public Library · Meeting Room · Fowler Library · 1322 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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

Author Signing with Andrew and Mark Chauppetta - TROY'S NUMBER 23 THE LEGACY ROLLS ON

Barnes & Noble Hingham · Barnes & Noble · Derby Street Shops · 96 Derby Street · Hingham · MA · Hingham

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

Book Signing with Nicole Graev Lipson, author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

The Book Shop of Needham · The Book Shop of Needham · Needham · MA · Needham

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

All She Wrote Books Presents: Author Elsa Sjunneson

All She Wrote Books · Connexion · Somerville · MA · Somerville

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

IAWA Author Series: Mia Millefoglie and Mike Fiorito

I AM Books · North End · Boston

Mia Millefoglie and Mike Fiorito are the featured authors at this month's Boston session of the Italian American Writers Association's series, which opens with an open mic. Millefoglie writes about immigration and the histories of New England's fishing communities; her book is Daughters of Stone and Tide: Loss and Resilience in a Fisherman's Family. Fiorito's story collections include Call Me Guido and Falling from Trees.

Sat Oct 17 · 1pm

Anne Pauly: Before I Forget

MIT · French Library · Boston · Boston

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.” It won the Prix du Livre Inter. Bruno Perreau, Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at MIT, moderates this Boston Book Festival session.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:30pm

Susan Neiman: Call It Evil

Goethe-Institut Boston · Goethe-Institut Boston · 170 Beacon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

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.

Sat Oct 17 · 3pm

Mel Allen: Here in New England

Hingham Public Library · Whiton Room - 66 Leavitt Street · Hingham MA 02043 · Hingham

Mel Allen presents Here in New England, a collection of his stories about New England people and places that he likens to “miniature pictures of New England that reveal a larger life around them.” Allen, who spent nearly half a century at Yankee, became its fifth editor in 2006 and retired in 2025. His previous book is A Coach’s Letter to His Son.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:00am

Gaëlle Bélem on The Rarest Fruit

Boston Book Festival · The French Library — Salon · 53 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Gaëlle Bélem, a novelist from Réunion Island, discusses The Rarest Fruit, based on the true story of Edmond Albius, born into slavery there, whose discovery of how to pollinate vanilla orchids transformed the crop. It was a 2025 New York Times Notable Book. Her debut, There’s a Monster Behind the Door, was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. Barbara Bouquegneau, President of the French Library, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:00am

Building a Memoir’s Global World for an American Audience

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Orientation Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Memoirists whose stories span three centuries and countries from Colombia to China take up how to engage American readers with people often othered in U.S. culture: Xujun Eberlein (The River Drowns the Able Swimmer), Lorena Hernández Leonard (Salsipuedes: Leave If You Can) and Margaret Woo (The City of Jade Trees). They discuss rendering places readers may never see and making the past legible. Alexis Chen Johnson moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

Hauntings: How Do We Care For Each Other?

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Exhibition Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists discuss grief. In Christopher Castellani’s Last Seen, boys who vanish and turn up in icy rivers find each other in the afterlife. Tom Perrotta’s Ghost Town revisits a 1970s New Jersey summer through a middle-aged writer. April Reynolds’s The Shape of Dreams follows three women in East Harlem as their neighborhood seeks justice for a murdered 12-year-old Black boy. Boston Globe books editor Kate Tuttle moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

The Stories We Hide: Desire, Deception, and Dangerous Truths

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Guastavino · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Four novelists discuss secrets, envy and ambition. In Best Boy by actress-turned-author Deborah Goodrich Royce, a letter threatens a woman’s carefully constructed life; former NFL player Andre Hardy’s Tear the City Down is a crime novel blending jazz and football. Stephen P. Kiernan’s Pollock’s Last Lover sets female ambition against Jackson Pollock’s legacy, and Katherine A. Sherbrooke’s This Much is True turns on a mother’s secret. Sara DiVello moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

Kids Keynote: Meg Medina and Claribel A. Ortega

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Rabb Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Newbery Medalist Meg Medina and New York Times bestselling author Claribel A. Ortega discuss new books for young readers. Medina’s Graciela in the Abyss follows the friendship between a sea-spirit and Jorge, a mortal boy terrified of water, who must team up to keep evil spirits at bay. Ortega’s Witchlings: The Sea Witch Prophecy concludes the series, sending Seven, Valley and Thorn across land and sea to fulfill a prophecy.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King

Boston Book Festival · Trinity Church — Undercroft · 206 Clarendon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Caroline Bicks, the University of Maine’s inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, was the first scholar granted extended access to King’s private archives and in-depth interviews with him about his creative process. Paul Tremblay calls her book a “compulsively readable mix of memoir, biography, and heady analysis.” Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s Curiosity Desk and co-host of The Culture Show, leads the conversation.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

The Wondrous World of Birds

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Mary Norton Hall · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

In Return to the Sky, Tina Morris recounts how, as an ornithology student in 1975, she spent two years caring for seven eaglets at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge to help reintroduce bald eagles to New York after DDT. Engineer and lifelong birder Lorna Gibson’s Birds Up Close examines feathers, bones, bills, eggs and flight. Mark Faherty, host of The Weekly Bird Report, moderates, with color photographs projected throughout.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:30am

Storytime! Eleanor Davis

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Library · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Cartoonist Eleanor Davis, author of the graphic novel The Hard Tomorrow, reads her picture book A Very Good Parade!, in which Gabby sets out with her grandma to invite friends and neighbors to a silly, noisy, righteous day together. The storytime follows straight on from the festival’s Costume Parade and is aimed at ages 4 to 8; the Boston Globe Foundation and Globe Santa sponsor it.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:45am

Fool Me Once: Second Chance Romance

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Guild Room · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists discuss second-chance romances. In Brittanée Nicole’s Bonfire & Bliss Bookstore, the shop’s owner reconnects with her childhood best friend, a struggling author home for inspiration. Lea Vale’s Blue Sky Black reunites exes on the darkest day in modern American history, and Heather Eng’s Double Happiness follows an engaged tech founder drawn to her changed brother-in-law. Callie Crossley, host of The Culture Show, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 10:45am

Monsters, Ghouls, and Never Giving Up

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Rey Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Haley Neil and Raúl the Third share new books. In Neil’s Greta Grimsdark and the Normal New Neighbor, a human girl in a family of zombie, vampire and ghost brothers tries to befriend the ordinary kid next door. Raúl the Third, a three-time Pura Belpré Award winner, discusses his graphic novel Tough Times: El Toro & Friends, in which rookie Kid Toro hits a losing streak.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Spark! High Seas Adventure

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Newsfeed Café · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists write about New England’s maritime past. In Julie Gerstenblatt’s The Stargazer of Nantucket a daughter stows away on her parents’ 1851 merchant voyage; Ethan Rutherford’s North Sun, a National Book Award finalist, follows an 1878 New Bedford whaler to the Chukchi Sea; and in Ashton Lattimore’s Runner a young Black woman takes over her shipwrecked father’s rum-running business. Katherine Howe, author of A True Account, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Classics Keynote: Translation Across Time

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Main Sanctuary · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Emily Wilson, the classicist known for her translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, discusses Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature, a book on translating the ancient past. She is in conversation with translator and editor Daniel Hahn, author of If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Their topics include Aristophanes’ obscenities, puns, Helen of Troy’s politics and Hamlet’s soliloquies.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Chess and Money

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Sanctuary · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires, discusses Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess, which Publishers Weekly called an “epic, swirling melodrama of hubris, money, and tech.” He is joined by Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist, former chief economist of the IMF and international chess grandmaster, whose Our Dollar, Your Problem gives an insider’s view of seven decades of global finance. Linda Henry moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Korean Voices in Poetic Form

Boston Book Festival · Goethe-Institut Boston — 1st Floor · 170 Beacon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

South Korean poet Lee Seong-bok, whose readers include BTS leader RM, presents That Summer’s End, 106 poems translated by Anton Hur, who was twice longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Shin Hae-uk joins them with Biologicity, her first collection in English, translated by Spencer Lee-Lenfield. Sandra Lim, whose collection The Givens is forthcoming, moderates a conversation about philosophy, form and translating emotion.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:00am

Writing the Body: Narratives of Illness, Disability, and Witness

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Auditorium · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Memoirist Melanie Brooks, author of A Hard Silence, leads a conversation grounded in narrative medicine about writing illness, disability and caregiving. She is joined by Alysia Abbott (Fairyland), Alex Green (A Perfect Turmoil) and Grace Talusan (The Body Papers), who take up how embodied experience becomes narrative, what responsibilities come with revealing one’s own or others’ vulnerability, and how writers can challenge stereotypes.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:15am

Storytime! Gary R. Gray, Jr.

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Library · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Gary R. Gray, Jr. reads Spendin’ Time, a picture book for ages 4 to 8 in which a grandpa and his grandson have errands to run but no need to rush, with time for picking blackberries and waving at neighbors. Gray’s debut, I’m From, inspired by his childhood in Preston, Nova Scotia, Canada’s oldest Black community, received a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:30am

Mathias Énard on The Deserters

Boston Book Festival · The French Library — Salon · 53 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Mathias Énard discusses The Deserters, a novel that sets the story of a soldier fleeing a nameless war against that of an East German mathematician who survives Buchenwald and devotes his life to communism. Charlotte Mandell’s translation won the 2026 French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Fiction. Énard, whose Compass won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, talks with Benoit Landon, a literary journalist and librarian at the French Library.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:30am

Go Global: Writing International Issues and Reaching Readers Overseas

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Orientation Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Elizabeth Searle, author of Lock Her Up, moderates readings and conversation on writing fiction about immigration, pandemics and divisive politics, and on reaching readers beyond the U.S. market. With her are Kai Maristed, whose collection The Age of Migration draws on her life abroad; poet Amy M. Alverez, a 2025 American Book Award winner for Makeshift Altar; and Anjali Mitter Duva, author of Faint Promise of Rain and co-founder of Galiot Press.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:45am

Sickness and Public Health

Boston Book Festival · Trinity Church — Undercroft · 206 Clarendon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Michelle A. Williams tells how radicals and renegades improved conditions for millions in The Cure for Everything; Muhammad H. Zaman, who studies infectious disease, shows how governments have weaponized disease against the vulnerable in Infected; and Manoush Zomorodi, host of TED Radio Hour, examines the physiological costs of online life in Body Electric. Ian Coss, creator of the Peabody-winning podcast The Big Dig, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 11:45am

Soilpunk: Growing Radical Futures

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Commonwealth Salon · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Annie Chen and Zoe Lee, co-founders of BEAM, a creative studio working on the public life of emerging science, discuss the speculative Tidelands 2100 and their cookbook and field guide Eating the Whole Fish. With them are Yemi Amu, founder of the Brooklyn aquaponics farm and education center Oko Farms, and Claire Gustavson of Tractor Beam, the speculative fiction publication that popularized soilpunk. Lana Z Porter, its other co-founder, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:00pm

Book Club Reads: The Complications of Love

Boston Book Festival · Church of the Covenant — Sanctuary · 67 Newbury St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Four novelists whose books were picked by the Reese’s, Read with Jenna and GMA book clubs discuss desire and belonging: Naima Coster’s Take What You Can, Emma Brodie’s Into the Blue, Michelle Min Sterling’s Camp Zero, set in a warming near-future northern Canada, and Emily Everett’s All That Life Can Afford, which takes a young woman raised on food stamps to Saint-Tropez. Documentary filmmaker Leslie Zemeckis moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:00pm

Who Gets to Tell the Story?

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Exhibition Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists drawing on real histories discuss art, agency and ownership. Brinda Charry’s Hocus Pocus makes an Indian stage magician the first live exhibit of an 1816 Boston museum; Bo Wang’s The Chinese Lady imagines the first Chinese woman brought to the U.S.; and Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts follows an attorney reconstructing an archaeology dig. Dawn Tripp hosts, after an introduction by 826 Boston poet Timothy Robinson.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:00pm

From Desire to Dessert: What Feeds Us

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Mary Norton Hall · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three food writers share their stories. Joanne Chang, the James Beard Award–winning baker who founded Flour, presents The Joy of Cookies, starting with the Toll House cookie she first made with her mother; Beard winner Tarajia Morrell writes about hunger for beauty and belonging in Desire Feeds the Feast; and pastry chef Tanya Bush recounts a year of baking in Will This Make You Happy. Deborah Becker moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:00pm

Living and Thriving, Together

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Rabb Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three authors on building community: Samantha Paige Rosen, editor of the essay anthology Living, Together, on how people are redefining home; environmental historian Kate Brown, whose Tiny Gardens Everywhere is a “riveting social history of the world, as seen through gardens” (Kirkus); and WellWithAll co-founder Demond Martin, whose Friends of the Good is about how friendships shape who we become. Larry Gennari of co-presenter Authors & Innovators moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:00pm

Storytime! Brian Lies

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Library · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Brian Lies reads Diffy, his new picture book about a fish who finds a mysterious object on his favorite rock and starts inventing stories about it as other fish gather round, until the discovery disappears. Lies illustrated The Rough Patch, which received a Caldecott Honor, and the New York Times bestselling Bat Book series. For ages 4 to 8.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:15pm

A Family Saga: Crocodilopolis

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Guild Room · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

John Manuel Arias discusses his novel Crocodilopolis, in which the exiled politician Seth Oreamundo first blames, then plots to kill, his brother Orsario for revealing the secret that ruined both their lives and left Costa Rica changed forever. Ocean Vuong called it “a ferocious meditation on masculinity, legacy, and national myth.” Arias, author of Where We Come From, talks with Fanta Diallo, a senior publicist at W.W. Norton.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:15pm

Ghost Light: The Last Resort

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Rey Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Sara Farizan presents Ghost Light, the new installment of her series The Last Resort, which Kirkus called “a well-wrought genre-bender that’s both spine-tingling and heartwarming.” Rosteen is dead, yet kids who badly need his help bring him back to The Last Resort, where one wrong move could turn his new friends into ghosts. Young readers can talk with ghosts that come to life and help solve a mystery.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:15pm

The Radical Duke and the American Revolution

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Guastavino · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Danielle Allen discusses Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat—and the American Revolution—Transformed Britain, about Charles Lennox, the Third Duke of Richmond, whose covert alliance with Thomas Paine helped stoke rebellion across Britain and the Atlantic. The book grew out of a parchment of the Declaration of Independence found in Sussex. Allen, a political philosopher, is a professor at Harvard; Boston Public Library president David Leonard leads the conversation.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:15pm

Epic Tales Across the Globe: Retellings from India to New England

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Teen Central · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

E. Lockhart, author of the We Were Liars series, and Newbery Honor winner Rajani LaRocca discuss the art of retelling. Lockhart’s The Pools moves The Wild Swans to modern New England, in a love story about two teenagers whose lives are shattered by a shocking transformation; LaRocca’s YA debut, Such Great Heights, retells the Hindu epic the Ramayana with a renewed focus on women. Katie B. Kohn moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

Bodies of Work: A Conversation with Yiyun Li and Ed Park

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Sanctuary · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner, discusses her new novel Music Against the Night, about two Romantic-era musicians deciding what each will sacrifice for their art. Ed Park, a Pulitzer finalist for Same Bed Different Dreams, presents Three Tenses: A Transmission from the Nineties, a book he wrote in 1998 and saved on a floppy disk. Brigid Hughes, founding editor of A Public Space, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

How Love Survives

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Auditorium · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Four novelists on love. In Terah Shelton Harris’s Where the Wildflowers Grow, a grieving woman finds a found family on an Alabama flower farm; Rylan Hynes’s Grafting is about queer love and rural identity on a Maine apple orchard; Kerri Maher’s Summer of Love follows two sisters in 1967 San Francisco; and Jessica Brilliant Keener’s Evening Begins the Day concerns two families in crisis. BBF board member Christine Mastrangelo hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

Spark! Gothic Horror

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Newsfeed Café · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists discuss gothic horror. In Abigail Rose-Marie’s White Rabbit, a girl whose father has left lives with a distant mother in a house haunted by Sylvia Plath’s ghost; in Ashley Woo’s Wildwood, an inheritance uncovers centuries of avarice; and in Gabrielle Sher’s Odessa, set during the Russian pogroms, a family turns to ancient magic to revive a murdered daughter. Trisha Blanchet, author of Murder Like Magic, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

The Future of Liberal Democracy

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Main Sanctuary · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Daron Acemoglu, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, discusses What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity; Michelle Berenfeld, Lessons from a Lost Republic, on the Roman Republic’s collapse after five centuries of representative government; and Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, on how Elon Musk is reshaping global politics and economic systems. GBH president Susan Goldberg moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

A Reading with Richard Hoffman and Lloyd Schwartz

Boston Book Festival · Goethe-Institut Boston — 1st Floor · 170 Beacon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Richard Hoffman reads from two companion volumes, Each Child a Disappearance: New & Selected Poems (1972–2025) and Mundus et Infans: New & Selected Suites, Sequences, & Series. Lloyd Schwartz, Somerville’s poet laureate and winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, joins him with poems from two new books, including He Tells His Mother What He’s Working On. Danielle Jones, director of the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival, hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:45pm

Storytime! Sibu T.P.

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Library · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Illustrator Sibu T. P. shares the picture book The Ones Who Came Before, about Aabanya, who feels at home helping her grandfather on Early Mountain but out of place in town, where people ask who she is and where she is from. With his help, and an encounter with a bear, she remembers those who came before her. For ages 4 to 8.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:15pm

Encounters with Art

Boston Book Festival · Trinity Church — Undercroft · 206 Clarendon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Critic and essayist Megan O’Grady discusses How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Ourselves, a personal meditation in which she examines her own encounters with art and artists to understand how art can change us and allow us “to apprehend the world anew.” She is joined in conversation by Sebastian Smee, the art critic who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism at the Boston Globe.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:15pm

Memoir: Home and Away

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Commonwealth Salon · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Two novelists discuss new essay collections. In Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope, Lambda Literary Award winner Zaina Arafat writes about living in the Palestinian diaspora, in essays that move from Nablus to the Appalachians. Michael Lowenthal’s Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation follows his travels as a queer, agnostic Jewish man, including to his grandmother’s German hometown. Tina Cassidy, GBH’s chief marketing officer, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:30pm

Obsessive Love and Mythic Subversion

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Exhibition Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Two novelists discuss fiction that remixes myth, folklore and the Gothic. In Bar Fridman-Tell’s Honeysuckle, a sister makes her little brother a playmate, a girl woven from flowers and words who rots and must be repaired every season. In Kyle McCarthy’s Immersions, a dancer quits and enters an enclosed convent, and her younger sister confronts the ex-husband she blames. Novelist Stephen P. Kiernan, author of Pollock’s Last Lover, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:30pm

Spirited Connections

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Mary Norton Hall · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Janet Rich Edwards’s Canticle follows a 16-year-old in 13th-century Bruges who flees an arranged marriage for a community of religious women; in Julie Carrick Dalton’s The Forest Becomes Her, women in Concord fight to save a forest’s last oak; and in Libbie Grant’s The Ended World, a sentient AI connects an ex-nun, an atheist programmer and a medieval saint. Rachel Barenbaum, novelist and host of NHPR’s Check This Out, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:30pm

Mystery & Thriller Keynote: Tess Gerritsen and Walter Mosley

Boston Book Festival · Church of the Covenant — Sanctuary · 67 Newbury St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Tess Gerritsen discusses The Shadow Friends, a Martini Club novel in which retired spies are caught by the long reach of the Cold War, and Walter Mosley discusses Hanging & Burning, in which Joe King Oliver answers a dying gangster's plea to find a missing woman. Gerritsen created the Rizzoli & Isles series; Mosley is an MWA Grand Master. Sara DiVello, host of Mystery and Thriller Mavens, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:30pm

YA Keynote: Renée Watson with Jasmine Guillory

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Rabb Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Renée Watson, winner of the 2025 Newbery Medal, shares her new YA novel Everything New Again, about two teens with deep understandings of loss who open up after a chance meeting. She talks with bestselling novelist Jasmine Guillory, whose YA debut It's Only Dancing is a Dirty Dancing-inspired romcom about a girl forced to quit ballet who meets a hip-hop dance instructor. Nicholl Montgomery moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:45pm

Friendships and Finding Your Way

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Rey Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three middle-grade authors on family dynamics and changing friendships. Norm Feuti's graphic novel A Kid Like Me follows sixth-grader Ethan as he tries to blend in; Janae Marks's Starting Now has Addy Thompson uncovering a family secret after her mother's accident; and Film Nerds, New Yorker columnist Sofia Warren's graphic novel debut, follows two friends who make DIY films. Lori Lobenstine, author of The Barking Puppy series, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:45pm

Acts of Recovery: Crossing Genres of Lineage and Loss

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Guild Room · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Two writers trace ancestral and artistic lineages. Tisa Bryant's memoir Residual considers what becomes an archive after her mother's death, drawing on Black women artists including Lorraine Hansberry and Octavia E. Butler; Lara Mimosa Montes called it “an inventory and an altar.” Eleni Sikelianos's Memory Rehearsal, the third book in a trilogy on her family's history, moves between queer history, ancient theater and modern poetry. Alden Jones moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:45pm

Amazing True Stories from American History

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Guastavino · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Caleb Gayle discusses Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State, longlisted for the National Book Award, about Edward McCabe, who chose Oklahoma for the Black state he fought to establish. Denise Kiernan joins him with Obstinate Daughters, portraits of the rebels, writers and renegade women who helped ignite the American Revolution. Debra Adams Simmons, GBH's editor-in-chief of special projects, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 1:45pm

Fantasy Worlds and Falling In Love

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Teen Central · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Maria Ingrande Mora's A Wild Radiance reimagines the War of the Current in an oligarchic state nearing a magical industrial revolution. Jennifer Lee's graphic novel As I Dream of You follows Franny and Sam, whose love may conquer death. Elizabeth Lim's A Forgery of Fate, inspired by Beauty and the Beast, binds a girl who paints the future to a cursed dragon lord. Siân Gaetano moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm

Spark! Inspired by Art and Artists

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Newsfeed Café · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three novelists imagine artists' lives. Emily Franklin's Love & Other Monsters follows Claire Clairmont through the summer of 1816 with Mary Godwin, Shelley and Byron, the season that produced Frankenstein. Priya Parmar's The Original portrays Katharine Hepburn in 1930s Hollywood. Lance Olsen's An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies, paired with Andi Olsen's photo collages, imagines Henry Darger in 1973 Chicago. Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm

Being Human

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Sanctuary · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Sherry Turkle, the MIT sociologist who wrote Alone Together, discusses Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, on how dependence on machine companionship erodes our ability to connect and care. Eric C. So joins her with The Collision: What AI Does to Us, on using AI as a tool rather than a substitute for human intelligence. Moira Weigel, whose research centers on the history of communication technology, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm

The Road to Authoritarianism: Are We There Yet?

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Main Sanctuary · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three authors on democratic erosion. Historian Timothy W. Ryback's 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy shows how Hitler used constitutional means to purge the civil service, shut down the press and take dictatorial powers. Omer Aziz's Shadows of the Republic examines the far right's pull on young people, and journalist Casey Michel's United States of Oligarchy traces how America's wealthiest ally with dictators. GBH News's Jennifer Moore moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:00pm

Celebrating the Mass Book Award

Boston Book Festival · Goethe-Institut Boston — 1st Floor · 170 Beacon St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three poets from the 2026 Mass Book Awards longlist read from their collections and new work: Laura Cresté (In the Good Years), Patrick Donnelly (Willow Hammer) and Carla Panciera (One Trail of Longing, Another of String). Their poems take up grief, desire, painful family legacies and the healing power of the natural world. Courtney Andree, executive director of Mass Center for the Book, hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:15pm

Neighbors: How Do We Live With Each Other?

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Auditorium · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Four novels about communities under strain: Heather Abel's The Emilys, set in a Western Massachusetts town where a contagious disease keeps women indoors by day; Vincent Yu's Seek Immediate Shelter, on the aftermath of a false missile alert; Brian Schaefer's Town & Country, a town split by newcomers and a swing-seat race; and Bindu Bansinath's Men Like Ours, about women solving a murder. BBF board member Christine Mastrangelo hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:15pm

Storytime! Edwidge Danticat

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Library · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Edwidge Danticat reads her picture book for ages 4 to 8, in which Grandma Issa warns Leila on an unusually cold Miami day to “watch out for falling iguanas,” and Leila and her friends learn why the creatures really do drop from trees. Danticat’s books for adults include Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, and Claire of the Sea Light.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:30pm

A Labor of Love: The Art of Literary Translation

Boston Book Festival · The French Library — Salon · 53 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Translators Emma Ramadan and Sam Taylor discuss the choices and difficulties of carrying a writer’s voice into another language, and how translation brings Francophone writers to new readers. Ramadan has translated more than 40 books, by Abdellah Taïa, Annie Ernaux and Virginie Despentes among others; Taylor more than 70, including David Diop, Maylis de Kerangal and Leïla Slimani. Stéphanie Ravillon, who teaches French and Francophone Studies at Brown, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:45pm

Aphorisms, Lost Greek Plays, A Russian Phrasebook: How Language Shapes Our World

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Commonwealth Salon · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Three books on language: James Geary’s The World in a Phrase, a history of the aphorism from ancient China to meme-makers; James Romm’s Since You’re Mortal…, the first English verse translation of surviving fragments of the lost Greek plays; and Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev’s How to Survive Authoritarianism, a lexicon for facing authoritarianism. Martin Puchner, author of Culture: The Story of Us, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm

Magical Women: Witches, Writers, and the Lives We Imagine

Boston Book Festival · Church of the Covenant — Sanctuary · 67 Newbury St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Alice Hoffman, author of Practical Magic, whose Witches of Cambridge was an instant New York Times bestseller and September’s Read with Jenna pick, and Laura Zigman, author of the satire The Author Weekend, talk about women, ambition, creativity and the stories we tell, on and off the page. Dawn Tripp, author of Georgia, a novel about Georgia O’Keeffe, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm

Architecture Keynote: Architecture and Memory

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Rabb Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Architect Michael P. Murphy discusses Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who We Are and How We Live, drawing on projects such as the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, built with Paul Farmer, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, with Bryan Stevenson, to show how the built environment shapes how we think and connect. The Atlantic called Murphy “tomorrow’s greatest designer.” Architect Maryann Thompson moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm

Seeds of Power: What Data Reveals About Our Lives

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Exhibition Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Annie Lowrey, a staff writer at The Atlantic, discusses The Time Tax, on the cost of American paperwork. Eric Gordon, who directs Boston University’s Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact, proposes using human-centered AI to make sense of civic data in How Institutions Listen, and digital humanist Roopika Risam argues in Data Empire that data has been as essential as ships and guns to history. Lisa Pierpont hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm

The Second Half of Life

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Mary Norton Hall · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

GBH’s Callie Crossley, host of Under the Radar, talks with three authors about midlife and after. Lifespan researcher Margie Lachman draws on a 30-year study in Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife; photojournalist Ellen Warner interviewed and photographed men around the world for The Other Half: Forty Men Reveal Life After Fifty; and Tom French, retired from business, recounts climbing and skiing, Everest included, in The Gap Years.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:15pm

Lies of Admission

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Guild Room · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Two satirical novels about American academia and entertainment. In Randy Boyagoda’s campus novel Lords of Serendipity, a Sri Lankan village girl and a middle-class American girl, and their fathers, chase places at an elite university. Afsheen Farhadi’s debut False Prophet follows Jal, a grieving actor who writes a memoir of his mother’s encounter with cult leader Jim Jones that is all lies. Jodi-Ann Burey, author of Authentic, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:15pm

The Library of Memories

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Children's Rey Room · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Childhood friends from the Dominican Republic, Barbara Perez Marquez and Lissy Marlin discuss The Library of Memories, their middle-grade fantasy graphic novel about Copenhagen, a girl who arrives at a library with little memory of who she is, tends it alongside mechanical creatures, and forgets more the longer she stays. Shelf Awareness, in a starred review, said it “gracefully explores grief.” Matthew Noe moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:15pm

Capsized, Adaptations, and the Head of the Charles

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Teen Central · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Charlotte Lillie Balogh discusses Capsized, her coming-of-age story about an elite all-girls rowing team, which Booklist called “a thrilling sports mystery about feminism and friendship.” Balogh, an author and screenwriter, is joined in conversation about women’s sports and stories by Kate Tuttle, editor of the Boston Globe’s books section and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle. Wellesley Books is the session’s bookseller.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:30pm

How To Be a Citizen

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Main Sanctuary · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Howard Bryant, Roger Berkowitz and Eric Liu discuss public action with Saraya Wintersmith, GBH News politics reporter and host of the What is Owed? podcast. Bryant’s Kings and Pawns sets Jackie Robinson’s 1949 testimony before HUAC beside Paul Robeson’s 1956 defiance; Berkowitz’s A World We Share traces how Hannah Arendt’s friendships shaped her politics; and Liu’s Live Like a Citizen offers eight everyday practices of democratic life.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:30pm

Mattering and Belonging

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Sanctuary · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Philosophers Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Ian Marcus Corbin discuss belonging and the desire to matter. Goldstein’s The Mattering Instinct argues that the need to matter drives great achievements and can also lead to great evil; Corbin, director of Harvard’s Public Culture Project, calls in To Arrive Where We Started for a return to gratitude, humility and friendship. MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya, author of Life Is Hard, hosts.

Sat Oct 17 · 4:00pm

Adventures Across Multiple Dimensions

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Auditorium · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Aleese Lin and John Chu discuss speculative novels. In Lin’s Samantha Spük: Paranormal Wedding Planner, a woman who fled her family’s supernatural chaos is pulled back to Salem by her grandmother’s will; in The Subtle Art of Folding Space by Chu, a Hugo and Nebula winner, a woman confronts a cabal hijacking the machinery running every universe. Kathleen Carr Foster, author of the forthcoming The Jewel of Corlivo, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 4:30pm

Split Selves, Dystopian Futures

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Mary Norton Hall · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Isabel J. Kim, translator Anton Hur and Tomás Q. Morín discuss speculative fiction. In Kim’s Sublimation, immigration splits a person into two “instances,” one of whom plots to steal the other’s life; Hur’s Toward Eternity imagines a robotic cancer cure that makes people immortal; Morín’s Cat Love sees a dystopian future through a cat taken to train “Emotional Support Humans.” Michelle Min Sterling, author of Camp Zero, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 4:30pm

The Landscape of American History

Boston Book Festival · Boston Public Library · Central Library — Rabb Hall · 700 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Beverly Gage and Megan Kate Nelson discuss American history and its myths. Gage, who won the Pulitzer Prize for G-Man, visits 13 sites in This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History; Nelson, a Pulitzer finalist, portrays the Indigenous, Black, Mexican American and immigrant lives of the West, and the national myth that replaced them, in The Westerners. GBH’s Jeremy Siegel, host of In Common, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 4:45pm

Personal and Public: The Complex Legacies of Race in America

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Guild Room · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Justin Ellis and Dorothy Roberts discuss race and family history. Pryor’s Something We Said examines a charged word and her father Richard Pryor’s use of it; Ellis’s The Cruelty of Nice Folks reports on discrimination in progressive Minneapolis; and Roberts, a MacArthur Fellow, recounts her parents’ interracial marriage in The Mixed Marriage Project. Noelle N. Trent, president of the Museum of African American History, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 5:00pm

Transformative Connections Across Generations

Boston Book Festival · First Church in Boston — Sanctuary · 66 Marlborough St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Tom Lin, Allison King and Elizabeth Lim discuss novels of immigrant families across generations. Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota follows a Chinese family on an American homestead; King’s The Phoenix Pencil Company sends a recluse to reunite her grandmother with a long-lost cousin, both once spies in World War II; and Lim’s Fishbone Cinderella follows a woman who escapes Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, and her daughter. Bestselling author Kerri Maher moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 5:00pm

Fiction Keynote: Intersections of the Unexpected

Boston Book Festival · Old South Church — Main Sanctuary · 645 Boylston St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Edwidge Danticat and Imbolo Mbue discuss novels about loss and forgiveness with Tim Ehrenberg of “Tim Talks Books.” Danticat’s Déy, longlisted for the National Book Award, follows a Haitian American real estate agent who keeps quiet after fleeing gunfire at a Miami mall; in Every Story is a Love Story by Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers, a widower receives a letter from the driver who killed his wife.

Sat Oct 17 · 5:00pm

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

Boston Book Festival · Church of the Covenant — Sanctuary · 67 Newbury St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Ray D. Madoff's The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy shows how some of the ultra-rich pay no taxes at all, “completely legally.” Taeku Lee and Pepper Culpepper's Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy asks whether public anger at corporate excess can force political change. Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of the nonprofit Social Finance, moderates.

Sat Oct 17 · 6:30pm

Poems & Pints

Boston Book Festival · Room & Board — Showroom · 375 Newbury St · Boston · Back Bay · Boston

Poems & Pints is a Boston Book Festival tradition, sponsored by Mass Poetry, in which poets read from their new collections while the audience is offered free pints, pretzels and comfortable furniture, in the Room & Board showroom on Newbury Street. Amanda Shea, a three-time Boston Music Award winner, hosts the hour, and Trident Booksellers & Cafe sells the books.

Sun Oct 18 · 2:00pm

Middle Grade Event with Caldecott Medal Winner Philip C. Stead

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Author Signing Jenn Bouchard - PALMS ON THE CAPE

Barnes & Noble Hingham · Barnes & Noble · Derby Street Shops · 96 Derby Street · Hingham · MA · Hingham

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

Storytime with Kari Allen & Carrie Kruck!

The Book Shop of Needham · The Book Shop of Needham · Needham · MA · Needham

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

ASWB Presents: Yuvashri Harish

All She Wrote Books · All She Wrote Books · Somerville · MA · Somerville

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

Rock 'n' Read: 99 Problems Finding the 1: A Love Story (Sort of) — G'Ra Asim ft Uppity

JustBook-ish · JustBook-ish · 1463 Dorchester Ave · Dorchester · MA

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

Be the Change Event: A Conversation on Animal Rescue with Cate Conte, Elise Scott, and Broken Tail Rescue

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

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: Science in the Nursery (Sunday Storytime)

Hummingbird Books · Chestnut Hill

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: Mama Duck's Lost Duckling

Turtle Books · Turtle Books · Brookline · Brookline

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.

Sun Oct 18 · 6pm

Daisy Rockwell: Alice Sees Ghosts

Galiot Press · Cambridge Common House hotel · Cambridge

Daisy Rockwell discusses her novel Alice Sees Ghosts, in which Alice Bloodshaw, haunted by her grandfather's specter, travels with her psychiatrist fiancé from New England to India "to unearth the long-buried truths" of her family. Rockwell, a Hindi-Urdu translator, shared the 2022 International Booker Prize for translating Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand. Jared Green, a writer, artist and Stonehill College literature professor, joins her in conversation.

Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm

Kerry Kennedy at The Brattle Theatre

by Kerry Kennedy

Harvard Book Store · The Brattle Theatre · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Julie Orringer

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Jennifer Aaronson: Everyday Scandinavian

by Nichole Accettola

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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 Sophie, Standing There, in conversation with Laura Zigman

by Meg Mason

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Porter Square · Cambridge

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 · 6:00pm

Writers Speak: Álvaro Enrigue

Mahindra Humanities Center (Harvard) · Fong Auditorium · Boylston Hall · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

An Evening with authors Kathleen Reidy and Karen Winn

Book Ends Winchester · Book Ends Winchester · 559 Main Street · Winchester · MA · Winchester Center · Winchester

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

Blacksmith House Poetry Series: Natalie Shapero & Kathy Fagan

Cambridge Center for Adult Education · Blacksmith House · 56 Brattle Street · Cambridge MA · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Author Talk: Carlton Champian — Notes to My Father

by Carlton Champian

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Lower Mills · Lower Mills

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

Let the Murderer Say Amen

Reading Public Library · Reading Public Library · Reading · MA · Reading

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Steve Edwards, author of Rare Good

Concord Free Public Library · Goodwin Forum · Main Library · 129 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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

Encore Performance with Leila Sales

Lovestruck Books

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: Permission Granted, in conversation with Julianne Zimmerman and Lata Setty

Parkside Bookshop · South End · Boston

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: Undoing Gender in French Literature

MIT · Building 14 304 · Cambridge · Cambridge

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

Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History

Tufts University · Fung House 48 Professors Row · Somerville · Medford

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

Beyond Disability: A History of American Citizenship

Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital · Paul S. Russell · MD Museum · 2 North Grove Street · Boston (hybrid · Zoom link offered) · West End · Boston

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 at the Harvard Science Center

by Dino Martins

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Science Center · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian at Harvard Book Store

by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Robby Robinson: Damned if She Does

by Sarah Stankorb

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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, author of Good Guys, in conversation with Mairead Small Staid

by Mindy Misener

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Porter Square · Cambridge

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

Middle Grade Event with Author Kara LaReau

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Author & Illustrator Series: Kelly Yang

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Adams Street Branch · 690 Adams St · Dorchester · Boston · MA · Dorchester · Boston

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

An Evening with Gretchen Powell Fox

Book Ends Winchester · Parish of the Epiphany (Hadley Hall) · 70 Church St. · Winchester · MA · Winchester Center · Winchester

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

Squirrel Tales Author Visit: Kari Percival

Beacon Hill Books & Café · Beacon Hill Books & Cafe · 71 Charles Street · Boston · MA 02114 · Beacon Hill · Boston

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

The Gilded Rose Book Bash with Joanna Shupe

Lovestruck Books

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

Author Event: "Portrait of a Witch Undone" with K. S. Shay

Side Quest Books & Games · Side Quest Books & Games · Somerville · MA · Somerville

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: If

Boxford Town Library · Meeting Room 1 · Boxford Town Library · Boxford

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

Meet the Author: Kelly Yang

Cary Memorial Library · Clarke Middle School · Lexington · Lexington

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 · 7:30pm

Poet Sherri Stepakoff in Conversation with Kathy Halamka

Needham Free Public Library · Library Community Room · Needham Free Public Library · Needham

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

Book Launch: Pepper by Karl Stevens, in conversation with Joel Christian Gill

Papercuts JP · Papercuts Bookshop · Jamaica Plain · Boston

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

Eleni Sikelianos and Julie Carr: William Corbett Poetry Series

MIT · Building 2 105 · Cambridge · Cambridge

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

Philip Levine Poetry Project presents: Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne, Reading & Conversation

Tufts University · Paige Hall · Crane Room · Medford · Medford

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

Peter Mancall: Contested Continent

Concord Museum · Concord Museum · 53 Cambridge Turnpike · Concord

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.

Tue Oct 20 · 7pm

Daniel A. Gagnon: A Salem Witch

Hingham Public Library · Whiton Room - 66 Leavitt Street · Hingham MA 02043 · Hingham

Historian Daniel A. Gagnon discusses A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse (2021), his biography of one of the women hanged in 1692, covering 17th-century Salem and Nurse’s role in the events and challenging earlier interpretations of the Salem Village witch-hunt. Gagnon is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and serves on the board of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Museum in Danvers.

Tue Oct 20 · 2:30pm

Art Against Brutality: Community and Collaborative Art Projects with Survivors of Political Violence

Brandeis University · Shiffman · 002 · Waltham · Waltham

Claudia Bernardi introduces her first book, Art Against Brutality, which documents decades of collaborative art-making with communities that have lived through state violence, sexual violence or displacement, beginning with the “Walls of Hope” project she founded in El Salvador in 2005. Bernardi, an Argentinian installation artist, painter and printmaker, is Emerita Professor at the California College of the Arts. She received the Justice Brandeis Practitioner-in-Residence Award in 2024.

Tue Oct 20 · 6:00pm

CPL Presents: On Mindful Democracy

Cambridge Public Library · Cambridge Public Library · Lecture Hall · Mid-Cambridge · Cambridge

Jeremy David Engels discusses On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World, which brings mindfulness to bear on inflammatory, partisan political discourse; Smithsonian called it "a practical guide to staying open and curious while engaging with all sorts of people and ideas." Engels is Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Rhetoric at Penn State, a meditation teacher and the author of six books.

Registration required

Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm

Fuchsia Dunlop at the Cambridge Public Library

by Fuchsia Dunlop

Harvard Book Store · Cambridge Public Library · Mid-Cambridge · Cambridge

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 at the Harvard Science Center

by Natasha Singer

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Science Center · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Marcia Chatelain

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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, author of The Tyranny of Thinness, in conversation with Charles More

by Céline Leboeuf

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition · Porter Square · Cambridge

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 introduced and in conversation with Nina MacLaughlin

Grolier Poetry Book Shop · Grolier Poetry Book Shop · 6 Plympton Street · Cambridge · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

An Evening of Conversation with Elin Hilderbrand (JCC Newton)

Hummingbird Books · JCC Greater Boston · 333 Nahanton Street · Newton · MA · Newton

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: Kingdom of Devils

Wellesley Books · Wellesley Books · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley Square · Wellesley

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

Belmont Books · Belmont Books · Belmont · MA · Belmont Center · Belmont

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

Pépin Lecture Series: Safar with Madhushree Ghosh

Boston University · Boston University · 808 Commonwealth Ave · Room 124 · Boston · MA · Kenmore

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Book-A-Mystery with Special Guest Author Dr. Jennifer N. Brown

Concord Free Public Library · Meeting Room · Fowler Library · 1322 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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

Undone Release Bash with Peyton Corinne

Lovestruck Books · First Parish in Cambridge · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

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

An Evening with Peter King Live at The Bull Run!

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Bull Run Restaurant · Shirley · MA

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

Poetry at Papercuts: Erika Meitner & Jenny Browne

Papercuts JP · Papercuts Bookhsop · Jamaica Plain · Boston

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.

Wed Oct 21 · 1:30pm

Geoffrey Kelly: Thirteen Perfect Fugitives

Stonehill College · Martin Institute Auditorium · Easton

Geoffrey Kelly, a retired FBI agent, discusses Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist, his account of pursuing the thirteen works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in March 1990 by two thieves dressed as police officers. Among the works, still missing, are Vermeer's The Concert and Rembrandt's only seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm

OUT HERE 10: An Evening with the Black Seed Writers

Black Seed Writers Group · Cambridge Public Library · Central Square Branch · Central Square · Cambridge

The Black Seed Writers Group, which since 2011 has run a weekly writing space for homeless, transitional and recently housed writers, gives the latest of its Out Here public readings: poetry, reportage and testimony from the streets of downtown Boston. Atlantic staff writer James Parker, who co-founded the group, joins the writers, whose work appears in its magazine The Pilgrim and in broadsheets from its imprint, No Fixed Address Press.

Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm

Akbar Shahid Ahmed at Harvard Book Store

by Akbar Shahid Ahmed

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Rachel Leah Blumenthal: The Joy of Cookies

by Joanne Chang

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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

Pawn Shop of Coincidence by Andrea L. Fry (Grolier Poetry Press) book launch

Grolier Poetry Book Shop · Grolier Poetry Book Shop · 6 Plympton Street · Cambridge · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Judy Foreman discusses The Scallop Plot: A Cape Cod Thriller

by Judy Foreman

Newtonville Books · Newtonville · Newton

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: She's On To Something

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books · 25 White St · Cambridge · MA · Porter Square · Cambridge

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 with Dan Kennedy: News–Academic Partnerships

Belmont Books · Belmont Books · 79 Leonard Street · Belmont · MA 02478 · Belmont

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

An Evening of Conversation with Elin Hilderbrand (New Bedford) - 5pm

Hummingbird Books · New Bedford Whaling Museum · New Bedford · MA (~55mi from Boston · likely outside 40-mi radius) · Chestnut Hill

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

Concord Festival of Authors: The Robbins House Presents Willie Mae Brown

Concord Free Public Library · Goodwin Forum · Main Library · 129 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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 On Tour!

All She Wrote Books · Big Night Live · Boston · MA · Boston

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

Author Talk: Karin Martin — Get Plum Island!

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Central Library in Copley Square · Central Library in Copley Square

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

Authors and Innovators 2026

Wellesley Books · UMass Charles River Campus · 100 Carlson Ave · Newton · MA · Newton

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: To Arrive Where We Started

Harvard University · Countway Library · Floor 1 · Room 103 · 10 Shattuck St. · Boston

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.

Thu Oct 22 · 7pm

Chad Anctil: Providence Supernatural Crimes Unit

Weymouth Public Libraries · Meeting Room 133 · Tufts Library · Weymouth

Chad Anctil talks about his writing and Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law, the second book in his Providence Supernatural Crimes Unit series, out October 20, in which “a string of demonic possessions” pushes a secret Providence police unit into “an uneasy alliance with the church.” Anctil, who grew up in Rhode Island, served as a Navy electronics engineer on submarines in the 1990s.

Thu Oct 22 · 7pm

Poetry Reading: Dick Lourie & Mark Pawlak

Gloucester Writers Center · Gloucester

Two poets from Hanging Loose Press, which turns 60 this year, read: Dick Lourie, its co-founder and senior editor, and Mark Pawlak, its managing editor. Lourie’s Jam Session and Other Poems runs on jazz and blues; a saxophonist, he played for fifteen years with the blues singer Big Jack Johnson. Pawlak’s eleventh collection, Special Operation, addresses Russia’s war in Ukraine and the lives caught in it.

Fri Oct 23 · 6:30pm

WBUR CitySpace: Eric Ripert

by Eric Ripert

WBUR CitySpace · Kenmore · Boston

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 at First Parish Church

by Neal Stephenson

Harvard Book Store · First Parish Church · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 at Harvard Book Store

by Jim Emison

Harvard Book Store · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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 with Dave Wedge: Confessions of the Green River Killer

by Maria DiLorenzo

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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

Fall Author Dinner Party at True West Brewery

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · True West Brewery · 525 Massachusetts Ave · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Fowler Afternoon Tea Book Club with Tara Lynn Masih

Concord Free Public Library · Meeting Room · Fowler Library · 1322 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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 at First Parish Church

by Bonnie Garmus

Harvard Book Store · First Parish Church · Harvard Square · Cambridge

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

Story Time with Hayley Rocco & John Rocco

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Author Talk: Courtney Humphries — Climate Change and the Future of Boston

by Courtney Humphries

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Central Library · Copley Square · Back Bay

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 -- Super Secret Garden Event

Newtonville Books · Newtonville Books · 10 Langley Rd · Newton · MA · Newtonville · Newton

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Breakfast with the Authors at the Colonial Inn - TICKETED EVENT

Concord Free Public Library · Colonial Inn · 48 Monument Square · Concord · MA · Concord

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

Concord Festival of Authors: Poetry Panel with Nate Klug and Catherine Stearns

Concord Free Public Library · Goodwin Forum · Main Library · 129 Main Street · Concord · MA · Concord

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 celebrates THE THOROUGHBREDS

Barnes & Noble Hingham · Barnes & Noble · Derby Street Shops · 96 Derby Street · Hingham · MA · Hingham

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

In-Store Signing with Author-Illustrator Adam Wallenta

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · The Silver Unicorn Bookstore · Acton · MA · Acton

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

Author Talk: David Kruh — Little Mister Victory

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · North End · North End

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

Third Annual Bloody Book Bash at Boston Edition

Porter Square Books · Porter Square Books: Boston Edition · GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing · 50 Liberty Drive · Suite 500 · Boston · MA 02210 · Boston

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

Kid's Story Time: Mary E. Cronin, Trucks, Boots, and Bells: Firehouse Poems

Ten Trees Books · Ten Trees Books · 29 Main Street · Natick · MA · Natick

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

Story Hour! E.B. Goodale: Robin and the Moon

by E.B. Goodale

Brookline Booksmith · Coolidge Corner · Brookline

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

Sunday Storytime with Cynthia Centerbar

Hummingbird Books · Hummingbird Books · 55 Boylston Street · Chestnut Hill · MA · Chestnut Hill

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

Sweet Stuff: New England’s Confectionery History

Belmont Historical Society · Morrissey Hall - 119 · Belmont Public Library · 336 Concord Ave · Belmont

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

Poetry at Fruitlands: Kevin Gallagher, Claire Conroy, Eileen P. Kennedy

New England Poetry Club · Fruitlands Museum · Harvard · MA

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

Story Time with Author & Illustrator Scott Magoon

Whitelam Books · Whitelam Books · 610 Main St · Reading · MA · Reading

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

Book Launch: Mother Is a Place by Amra Brooks, in conversation with Danielle Vogel

Papercuts JP · Papercuts Bookshop · Jamaica Plain · Boston

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.

Sun Oct 25 · 11:00am

David A. Kelly & Bob Thibeault

Blue Bunny Books · Blue Bunny Books · 577 High Street · Dedham · MA · Dedham

Author David A. Kelly and illustrator Bob Thibeault present their Football Mysteries series for young readers, in which Mike and Kate take on cases around NFL teams including the Dallas Cowboys, the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. Kelly also writes the Ballpark Mysteries, the baseball series that introduced the pair, and Thibeault shares his own book, Luna Lily and the Lunar Park.