Please register to attend this virtual author talk.

You’re invited to join Nina Simon online as she chats about her lighthearted whodunnit about a grandmother-mother-daughter trio of amateur sleuths, Mother-Daughter Murder Night. 

Mother-Daughter Murder Night follows high-powered business woman Lana Rubicon. She has a lot to be proud of with her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does. 

In a turn of events, when Jack happens upon a dead body while kayaking she quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power. With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they’ve always resisted: depend on each other.

Harness your inner detective and sign up for the investigation.

About the Author: Nina Simon writes crime fiction about strong women. She is the New York Times-bestselling debut author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night. This big-hearted whodunnit is a Reese's Book Club pick and a "best of 2023" selection for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CrimeReads, and LibraryJournal.

Before turning to fiction, Nina wore many hats: NASA engineer, slam poet, game designer, museum director, and nonprofit CEO. Her work on community participation in museums, libraries, parks, and theaters has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, and the TEDx stage. Mother-Daughter Murder Night is Nina’s first novel. She wrote it as a love letter to her mother, as a way to entertain, comfort, and connect with her during a major health crisis. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nina now lives off-the-grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her family. More information can be found on her website, ninaksimon.com.

This program is presented by the Library Speakers Consortium.

In honor of Mass Kids Lit Fest, join us for a readaloud of Tree Hole Homes with author Melissa Stewart! We'll also make a cozy nest craft and books will be available to purchase from High Five Books.

Melissa Stewart has written more than 200 science books for children, including the Sibert Medal Honoree Summertime Sleepers: Animals that Estivate, illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen, and the AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books Winner Whale Fall: Exploring an Ocean-floor Ecosystem, illustrated by Rob Dunlavey. When Melissa isn’t writing or exploring the natural world, she spends time speaking at schools, libraries, and conferences for educators. She can’t imagine any job she’d rather have. www.melissa-stewart.com

Please register to attend this virtual author talk.

We welcome you to register for a thrilling conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang (R.F. Kuang) as she chats with us about her New York Times bestselling novel, Yellowface. Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media.

In Yellowface, authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

White lies, dark humor, and deadly consequences await within the pages of Yellowface. With its totally immersive first-person voice, Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. 

About the Author: Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Chinese literature, and Asian American literature.

This program is presented by the Library Speakers Consortium.

Join us for a reading and Q&A with Plainfield author and photographer AgathaO (alter ego of historian Pleun Bouricius).

AgathaO will be reading selections from her newly-published collection of essays and photos, Northern Byways and Other Essays from the Road, a “windshield survey of the lay of the land across the thinly populated expanses that most of us Americans and Canadians profess to love.” She and her travel companion, the Carpenter, bring you along on a journey of discovery of how we have shaped our landscapes, and raises questions about what we are doing with the vast riches we have inherited from our forebears. Bouricius has meticulously documented her online research, and the volume is also a commentary on the value of books, reading, and research in a world where facts are currency and seemingly malleable at the same time. There will be time for conversation and signing to follow the reading.

About the Author: AgathaO is the alter ego of photographer/writer/historian Pleun Bouricius. She is the author of four collections of photographs and short essays, Northern Highways and Other Essays from the Road (2024), Born Wet (2022), Beech: The Fall and Rise of a Forest (2019), and The Bog (2017). Pleun is also an independent public historian and the principal of Swift River Press Public History and Communications. Previously, she was Assistant Director of Mass Humanities and Lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University. She has a BA in history, women’s studies, and photography from Montclair State College, New Jersey, and a PhD, in the History of American Civilization (American Studies), from Harvard University. A full biography can be found at the Swift River Press website. Pleun’s work can be found on her website and AgathaOPhoto on Etsy.

Are you a local author eager to share your work with our community? Email spaces@forbeslibrary.org to sign up for a future author showcase. 

Join us for a reading and Q&A with authors Astrid Lindstrom and Chris O'Carroll.

Astrid Lindstrom is a retired public school English teacher, who advised middle and high school literary magazines, took students to a writers’ conference in Middlebury, Vermont, coordinated shared memoir writing between seventh graders and senior citizens, and loved writing with all her students. She has degrees in English from Mount Holyoke College and the University of Virginia. She and her wife Cece, a psychotherapist who specialized in supporting lesbians coming out from straight marriage, lived in Northampton, where Astrid still resides.

Chris O'Carroll is the author of three books of poems, The Joke's on Me, Abracadabratude, and Quantum Creed.  He has been a Light magazine featured poet, and his work also appears in New York City Haiku, Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.

Are you a local author eager to share your work with our community? Email spaces@forbeslibrary.org to sign up for a future author showcase.

Join us for a presentation and Q&A with local author Cathy Stanton.

Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer tells the story of my involvement in a small food co-op in Orange, Massachusetts, one of the poorest towns in one of the wealthiest American states. Part memoir and part history lesson, the book traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town and tells the story of a rural community imagining and creating a viable alternative to the mainstream in a time of increasingly urgent need to build a more socially and ecologically just food system.

Cathy Stanton is Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Tufts University. She has written widely about industrial and agricultural history and historic sites in the American northeast, none of which prepared her for the challenges of actually trying to stay afloat in the grocery business. She is excited to share her experiences and insights with audiences across Massachusetts. 

Are you a local author eager to share your work with our community? Email spaces@forbeslibrary.org to sign up for a future author showcase.