Explore family friendly events, theatres, galleries, concerts, nightlife, things to do, and more in the Greenville, SC and Upstate areas.

Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.

Thursday, August 17, 2023
Short Story Café Online
Aug 17 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
online

Short Story Café

 Zoom Meeting

Read and discuss “Witness” by Jamel Brinkley via Zoom. A digital copy will be emailed to you when you register.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Page Pairings
Aug 22 all-day
M. Judson Booksellers

Join us for a book-inspired wine tasting!

We pair the qualities of each wine with a book that shares the same spirit. Your ticket to the tasting, apart from the tastes, includes your choice of one of the featured books. Bottles of the featured wines will be for sale at great prices, too.

This event is a crowd favorite, serving as a great date, a perfect girls night out, or treat to yourself. Buy your ticket now and join us on Tuesday, August 22nd!

*Refunds or transfers can only be accommodated 48 hours prior to the event.

Thursday, August 31, 2023
The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs: An Evening with George Singleton
Aug 31 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Hub City Bookshop

Celebrated Southern author George Singleton delivers a new collection of short fiction, brilliant and absurd, for fans of George Saunders and Tom Franklin.

A restaurant owner runs into trouble when his wife starts a well-intentioned, poorly named rooster rescue. A boy navigates his parents’ split between a stretched phone cord and a flooded septic tank. A drunk sequestered in the middle of nowhere wakes up to find a tractor parked in his driveway. And in a big Cadillac, a grandfather and a grandson and a wayward dog hit the road, searching for a life not downloadable, nor measured in bandwidth.

Loosely linked by characters and themes, The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs follows shysters and schemers, film buffs and future ornithologists, unlikely do-gooders, and the men who make up Veterans Against Guns in North America, all doing the best they can with what they possess in smarts and cunning. With Singleton’s signature comic flair, these stories peer through the peepholes of small-town South Carolina into the lives of everyday martyrs—prodigal sons, wayward fathers, and all those who are a little of each.

About the Author

George Singleton has published nine collections of stories, two novels, and a book of writing advice. Over 200 of his stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Story, One Story, Playboy, the Georgia Review, Zoetrope, Southern Review, Agni, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He’s received a Pushcart and a Guggenheim. The Curious Lives of Non- Profit Martyrs, published with Dzanc Books, is his latest collection of short stories. His first collection of essays, Asides, will be published by EastOver Press in November of 2023. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he lives in South Carolina.

Thursday, September 7, 2023
Susan Beckham Zurenda Book Launch: The Girl From the Red Rose Motel
Sep 7 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Hub City Writers Project

Susan Beckham Zurenda, author of Bells for Eli, will be at the bookshop on Thursday, September 7th at 5:30 PM celebrating the launch of her newest book, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel! Explore the complex bonds between adults and teenagers and the power of the families we both inherit and create. Inspired by the author’s experiences teaching in a South Carolina high school, this novel is an unflinching, authentic look at the challenges faced by America’s public school teachers and the struggles of the thousands of homeless children in motels who live, precariously and almost invisibly, amid the nation’s most affluent communities.

About the Book

Impoverished high school junior Hazel Smalls and affluent senior Sterling Lovell would never ordinarily meet. But when both are punished with in-school suspension, Sterling finds himself drawn to the gorgeous, studious girl seated nearby, and an unlikely relationship begins. Set in 2012 South Carolina, the novel interlaces the stories of Hazel, living with her homeless family in the rundown Red Rose Motel; Sterling, yearning to break free from the expectations of his wealthy parents; and recently widowed Angela Wilmore, their stern but compassionate English teacher.

Hazel hides her homelessness from Sterling until he discovers her cleaning the motel’s office one morning when he goes with his slumlord father to unfreeze the motel’s pipes. With her secret revealed, their relationship deepens. Angela, who has her own struggles in a budding romance with the divorced principal, offers Hazel the support her family can’t provide.

Navigating between privilege and poverty, vulnerability and strength, all three must confront what they need from themselves and each other as Hazel gains the courage to oppose boundaries and make a bold, life-changing decision at novel’s end.

Gripping and richly drawn, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel explores the complex bonds between adults and teenagers and the power of the families we both inherit and create. Inspired by the author’s experiences teaching in a South Carolina high school, the novel is also an unflinching, authentic look at the challenges faced by America’s public school teachers and the struggles of the thousands of homeless children in motels who live, precariously and almost invisibly, amid the nation’s most affluent communities.

About the Author

Susan Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level to AP students. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli (Mercer University Press, March 2020; paperback edition March 2021), has been selected the Gold Medal (first place) winner for Best First Book—Fiction in the 2021 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards), a Foreword Indie Book Award finalist, a Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, a 2020 Notable Indie on Shelf Unbound, a 2020 finalist for American Book Fest Best Book Awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2021. She has won numerous regional awards for her short fiction. She lives in Spartanburg, SC.

Saturday, September 9, 2023
Madison C. Brightwell Book Signing
Sep 9 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Fiction Addiction

Join author Madison C. Brightwell for an in-store signing at Fiction Addiction on Saturday, September 9th from 2-4pm to celebrate her new book, The World Beyond the Redbud Tree.

This event is free and open to the public, or you can purchase an $21.15 ticket that includes a copy of The World Beyond the Redbud TreeAdditional books can be ordered on our website or purchased at the event while supplies last.

If you’re unable to attend, signed copies of the author’s book can be purchased on our website.

Book tickets can be purchased online through Friday, September 8th, at 2:30pm. Refunds can be requested up until the ticket cutoff. At-the-door tickets and books will be available as space allows.

The world as we know it is built upon choices. If different choices had been made in the past, we might be living in an entirely different world. What if the so-called Lost Colony of settlers in North Carolina were in fact not lost at all but instead merged happily with the Native American tribes to create a new people and unique society?

Sixteen-year-old Charli is living in a pandemic-ravaged 2020 America when she stumbles upon the parallel world of the Q’ehazi. Drawn to these peaceful people, whose constant joy and optimism provides a stark contrast to the suffering and violence in her own life, Charli wants nothing more than to stay with them forever—but first, she must learn to attain a state of grace.

Can she forgive her mother’s abusive boyfriend? Can she learn empathy for her mother? In The World Beyond the Redbud Tree, Charli’s inward and outward struggles will lead her to a discovery she wasn’t even looking for: the beauty of her own world.

About the Author:

Madison C. Brightwell is an author and a licensed MFT with a doctorate in psychology. She has been working as a therapist for fifteen years, before which she worked as a professional actress and in film and TV development. She has written four other novels and three self-help books in the field of psychology. Since moving to Asheville, North Carolina, from her native Britain, Madison has become inspired by the history of this land, originally inhabited by the Cherokee. She draws on many of her experiences helping clients with trauma, addiction, and chronic pain.

Refund Policy:

  • You may request a full refund prior to the ticket cutoff.
Monday, September 11, 2023
Meet the 2023-2024 Southern Studies Fellows
Sep 11 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Hub City Writers Project

Join the Hub City Writers Project and Chapman Cultural Center for a reception at Hub City Bookshop, welcoming the 2023-2024 Southern Studies Fellows in Arts and Letters to Spartanburg! Please feel free to drop-in and say hi, or chat and stay awhile.

About the Fellows

John W. Bateman writes and looks for stories from the Deep South. His work has appeared in places like The Chicago Tribune, The New Southern Fugitives, Electric Literature, Facing South, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and on the silver screen. He has a not-so-secret addiction to glitter and, contrary to his southern roots, does NOT like sweet tea. His first novel, “Who Killed Buster Sparkle?” was a 2020 Nominee in Fiction by the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters and recipient of the 2019 Screencraft Cinematic Book Award. In 2023, John received his MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a 2023 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow.

Mo Kessler is a queer multimedia object maker, installation artist, and community organizer from Kentucky. Mo’s work has been shown throughout central Appalachia and the South. They received their BFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007 and their MFA in Studio Art from Western Carolina University in 2021. Mo was a co-founder of the LIVLAB Artist Collective at Western Carolina University and the founder of Shelter In Place (SiP), an online artist residency program for artists engaged in community organizing and activism during the beginning of the Covid pandemic. As a community organizer, Mo has worked on campaigns against racial injustice, food insecurity, foreclosures, police brutality, and Mountain-Top Removal.

About the Southern Studies Fellowship in Arts and Letters

The Southern Studies Fellowship in Arts and Letters is a three-year initiative jointly hosted by Chapman Cultural Center and Hub City Writers Project and funded through a three-year $150,000 grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation.

The fellowship is an eight-month residency of research, creativity, teaching, and travel to collaborate on a project informed by the region. The fellows will live and have studio space in Spartanburg, SC, and are tasked with immersing themselves in the culture of the American South, along with participating in community service for educational purposes. A key component of this unique fellowship is the opportunity to interact with leading scholars, artists, and writers throughout the Southeast and to conduct research at prominent cultural and educational institutions. This research will inform their work and will be critical in the development of their collaborative project to expand their understanding of the modern South.

Thursday, September 14, 2023
A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save our Vanishing Birds
Sep 14 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
NC Arboretum


A Wing and a Prayer
 is the story of a band of scientists, birders, hunters and ranchers working to save birds set against the loss of a third of North America’s bird populations in the past 50 years. Avid birders by avocation and veteran journalists by vocation, Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled over 25,000 miles in a refashioned Airstream, finding inspiring and encouraging rescue missions all across the hemisphere, but they also discovered how much more can and must be done to halt the dramatic declines. In this impassioned talk, they walk us through the steps any one of us can take to contribute to saving our imperiled bird populations.

Copies of A Wing and a Prayer will be available for purchase that evening through Malaprop’s Bookstore for the authors to sign. Participants can stay after to enjoy ArborEvenings in the garden!

Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Keeping the Chattahoochee: Sally S. Bethea in Conversation w/ Rebecca Wade
Sep 19 @ 6:00 pm
Hub City Bookstore

Meet with us at the bookshop on Tuesday, September 19th at 6:00 pm for a conversation on river conservation and how these powerful waterways provide much more than just drinking water and recreation. Sally Sierer Bethea will be in conversation with Rebecca Wade of Upstate Forever to discuss Bethea’s book, Keeping the Chattahoochee: Reviving and Defending a Great Southern River.  Don’t miss out on this evening discussing over 20 years worth of river conservation stories both entertaining and even alarming.

About the Book: 

Sally Sierer Bethea was one of the first women in America to become a “riverkeeper”—a vocal defender of a specific waterway who holds polluters accountable. In Keeping the Chattahoochee, she tells stories that range from joyous and funny to frustrating—even alarming—to illustrate what it takes to save an endangered river. Her tales are triggered by the regular walks she takes through a forest to the Chattahoochee over the course of a year, finding solace and kinship in nature.

For two decades, Bethea worked to restore the neglected Chattahoochee, which provides drinking water and recreation to millions of people, habitat for wildlife, and water for industries and farms as it cuts through the heart of the Deep South. Pairing natural and political history with reflective writing, she draws readers into her watershed and her memories. Bethea’s passion for the natural world—and for defending it with a strong, informed voice animates this instructive memoir. Offering lessons on how to fight for our fundamental right to clean water, Bethea and her colleagues take on powerful corporate and government polluters. They strengthen environmental policies and educate children, reviving the great river from a century of misuse.

About the Author: 

Sally Sierer Bethea is the retired founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. She served as executive director and riverkeeper for two decades and continues to assist Chattahoochee Riverkeeper as a senior advisor. Bethea also publishes a monthly column, Above the Waterline, in Atlanta Intown. She lives and writes in midtown Atlanta.

About the Conversation Partner: 

Rebecca Wade holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Furman University, and a Masters of Natural Science and Environmental Education from Hamline University. Her experience ranges from wildlife research to environmental education and she looks forward to utilizing her knowledge to expand Upstate Forever’s Clean Water initiatives. While Wade has enjoyed learning and teaching about the natural world across the country, she is deeply connected to conservation in the Upstate. In her free time, she enjoys many forms of outdoor recreation including, but not limited to, running, biking, hiking, and backpacking. Additionally, she loves spending time with her husband and dogs at Greenville’s many breweries and restaurants alike.

Upstate Forever is a conservation organization that protects critical lands, waters, and the unique character of the Upstate of South Carolina. Learn more at upstateforever.org.

Sunday, September 24, 2023
Boozy Book Fair
Sep 24 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Southernside Brewing

There was nothing like the elementary school book fair – the smell of new books in the air, the rush of racing your friends to find the next installment of your favorite series, and, if you were lucky, the crinkle of money from Mom in your pocket.

Life felt so much easier back then, didn’t it? Don’t you find yourself wishing from time to time that you could just go back?

This August, you can – but we’re doing it grown-up style.

Don’t miss our Boozy Book Fair at Southernside Brewing (25 Delano Dr Unit D, Greenville, SC 29601) on Sunday, September 24th from 1-3pm!

Book categories will include:

-Geeks & Gamers

-Read the Rainbow

-Gothic & Ghastly

-Adulting

-When Nature Calls

-Criminally Good Reads

-Myths & Fairy Tales

-Meet Cute Moments

-Bookclub Picks

-Young at Heart

-Truth ‘R Us

…and much much more!

This event is FREE and open to the public, so bring your friends! Be sure to RSVP so we have the booze + books ready – we can’t wait to see you there.

Monday, September 25, 2023
Reading and Signing with Mary Kay Andrews
Sep 25 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Spartanburg County Library Headquarters

Join Hub City Bookshop for an evening with NYT bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews! “Nobody does Christmas like Mary Kay Andrews.” —Debbie Macomber

About the Book

“Nobody owns Christmas like Santa’s favorite novelist, Mary Kay Andrews. With wit, wisdom and the occasional tangle of tinsel, North Carolina native Kerry Tolliver reinvents her life as she sells Christmas trees from a beloved camper in the glittering heart of New York City.  Grab the eggnog and the cookies and cozy up in Greenwich Village with Bright Lights, Big Christmas for big fun.”

—Adriana Trigiani

Newly single and unemployed Kerry Tolliver needs a second chance. When she moves back home to her family’s Christmas tree farm in North Carolina, she is guilt tripped into helping her brother, Murphy, sell trees in New York City. She begrudgingly agrees, but she isn’t happy about sharing a trailer with her brother in the East Village for two months. Plus, it’s been years, since before her parents divorce, that she’s been to the city to sell Christmas trees.

Then, Kerry meets Patrick, the annoying Mercedes owner who parked in her spot for the first two days. Patrick is recently divorced, a father to a six year old son, and lives in the neighborhood. Can Kerry’s first impressions about the recently divorced, single father, and– dare she say, handsome– neighbor be wrong?

Surrounded by warm childhood memories, sparkling possibility, and the magic of Christmas in the City, will Kerry finally get the second chance she needs to find herself… and maybe even find love?

About the Author

MARY KAY ANDREWS is the New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels (including The Homewreckers; The Santa Suit; The Newcomer; Hello, Summer; Sunset Beach; The High Tide Club; The Weekenders; Beach Town; Save the Date; Ladies’ Night; Christmas Bliss; Spring Fever; Summer Rental; The Fixer Upper; Deep Dish; Blue Christmas; Savannah Breeze; Hissy Fit; Little Bitty Lies; and Savannah Blues), and one cookbook, The Beach House Cookbook. A former journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Book Your Lunch with Ron Rash
Sep 26 @ 12:00 pm
City Range

Join New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash for a book your lunch event at City Range on Tuesday, September 26th at Noon. Ron will give a talk on his book, The Caretaker, and will be available afterwards to sign.

Your $60 ticket admits one to the event, and includes lunch, as well as a copy of The Caretaker.

If you’re unable to attend the event, signed books can be purchased on our website.

Tickets can be purchased through Friday, September 22nd, at 2pm. Refunds can be requested up until Monday, September 18th, at 10am. (You can send someone else in your place after the cutoff, but be sure to give that person your ticket.)

Your menu options (to be selected on the order form) will be:

Shrimp & Grits.

Sautéed shrimp, peppers & onions, garlic cream velouté, stoneground grits.

Bourbon Pecan Chicken

Crispy pecan coated chicken breast, bourbon cream sauce, mashed potatoes, blistered brussels.

Cookies will be provided for dessert.

Beverage options include iced tea, water, and coffee.

Told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle, The Caretaker by award-winning author Ron Rash (“One of the great American authors at work today”—The New York Times) is a breathtaking love story and a searing examination of the acts we seek to justify in the name of duty, family, honor, and love.

It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi, as well.

Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town’s most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

A tender examination of male friendship and rivalry as well as a riveting, page-turning novel of familial devotion, The Caretaker brilliantly depicts the human capacity for delusion and destruction all too often justified as acts of love.

About the author:

Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.

Refund Policy:

  • You may request a full refund until Monday, September 18th, at 10am. After that, we cannot issue a refund, but you can send someone else in your place (make sure they have your ticket).
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Reading and Signing With Sheryl Fiegel: Champions of Flight
Sep 28 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Hub City Writers Project

Calling all WWII history fanatics! Meet Sheryl Fiegel, author of Champions of Flight at Hub City Bookshop!

About the Book

Champions of Flight celebrates the work of Clayton Joseph Knight (1891–1969) and William John Heaslip (1898–1970), the two preeminent American aviation artists of their time, as they chronicled the golden age of aviation—from Charles Lindbergh’s epochal transatlantic flight through the most devastating war in world history (1927–1945). Knight and Heaslip were experienced military men and formally trained artists who, combining an authenticity of experience and an artistic mastery of illustration, produced powerful artwork that influenced a generation of Americans, creating air-minded adults and youngsters, many of whom flocked to US military service after Pearl Harbor.

Aviation became deeply embedded into America’s culture during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Americans became fascinated by aviation celebrities, watched air spectacles, aviation movies and newsreels, and devoured books, aviation industry ads, magazine articles, and Sunday comics featuring pilot heroes. Artists Knight and Heaslip—both of whom were adept as draftsmen, painters and printmakers—fueled the imagination of these Americans through prolific illustrations and artwork that appeared in many diverse publications of the time. Over a period of almost twenty years, Clayton Knight and William Heaslip championed their love of flight through their art, and they did so with enthusiasm, integrity, and generosity. This book, featuring over 400 illustrations and photos, is a tribute to their legacy.

About the Author

Sheryl Fiegel is an art historian with a BA degree in Art History and an MA degree in Fine Arts (Art History) from Tufts University. She has had a varied career, including gallerist, fine art appraiser (ASA), independent curator and corporate art advisor. She served as head of the Air Force Art Collection during which time she organized a five-day multi-service tribute to honor the combat artists who served in uniform during WWII. This was done under the auspices of the 50th Anniversary of WWII Commemoration Committee. It was through her research on this project that Fiegel first came into contact with the work of Clayton Knight and William Heaslip. Her husband John is a retired Air Force officer, and her late father-in-law was the commanding officer of the 93rd Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force during WWII. Her collection of fine art prints from WWII was recently donated to Texas A&M University in College Station. It will be exhibited in its entirety in 2025 to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the end of WWII.

Friday, October 6, 2023
Ron Rash Book Talk + Signing
Oct 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Pickens County Library System- Hampton Memorial Library - Easley

Join New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash for a moderated discussion at the Kimberly Hampton Memorial Library (304 Biltmore Road, Easley, SC 29640) on Friday, October 6th, at 7pm. Ron will discuss his new book, The Caretaker and will be available afterwards for a book signing. This event is sponsored by the OPAL libraries (Oconee-Pickens-Anderson Libraries), and Fiction Addiction will be on-site for book sales.

There are two ticket options to this event. A $30 ticket admits one & includes a copy of The Caretaker. A $47 ticket admits two & includes 1 hardcover copy of The Caretaker + 1 paperback copy of In the Valley. We will have additional books for sale at the event.

If you are unable to attend, personalized copies can be purchased on our website.

Event tickets can be purchased online through Thursday, October 5th at 1pm. Tickets may be purchased at the door if still available, but buy ahead to guarantee your spot. Refunds can be requested up until the ticket cutoff.

Told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle, The Caretaker by award-winning author Ron Rash (“One of the great American authors at work today”—The New York Times) is a breathtaking love story and a searing examination of the acts we seek to justify in the name of duty, family, honor, and love.

It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi, as well.

Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town’s most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

A tender examination of male friendship and rivalry as well as a riveting, page-turning novel of familial devotion, The Caretaker brilliantly depicts the human capacity for delusion and destruction all too often justified as acts of love.

 

About the Author:

Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.

Saturday, October 7, 2023
Friends Used Book Sale
Oct 7 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Hughes Main Library
• Meeting Rooms All

Public Used Book Sales are back! Book lovers, rejoice! The Friends of the Greenville County Library System are hosting this Used Book Sale featuring books, movies, music, including popular fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. Organized by subject, search this unique collectionfor your favorite series, authors, and specialty items including vintage, collector, and antique books.

Volunteers will be on-site to assist you throughout your shopping experience.

Sunday, October 8, 2023
Hughes Main Library Friends Half-Price Used Book Sale
Oct 8 @ 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm
Hughes Main Library
• Meeting Rooms All

Public Used Book Sales are back! Book lovers, rejoice! The Friends of the Greenville County Library System are hosting this Used Book Sale featuring books, movies, music, including popular fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. Organized by subject, search this unique collectionfor your favorite series, authors, and specialty items including vintage, collector, and antique books.

Volunteers will be on-site to assist you throughout your shopping experience.

Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Jocassee Valley
Oct 10 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Taylors Library

Claudia Whitmire Hembree, author of Jocassee Valley, shares the rich history of the area, including her eyewitness account of the 1970 flooding project and its impact on the area. Registration required. Call 864-268-5955 to register.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Book Discussion – The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland
Oct 17 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Greenville County Library System | Hughes Main Library

The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season. The General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment in a church.

On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes, sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn’t give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he’ll have to buy her freedom first.

When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.

Fee
A $2.50 fee is required to assist the organizer with costs related to A Novel Bunch.

Nourishment

We always go to a restaurant to dine after the discussion so plan to join us for this. We will eat at Takosushi.

Thursday, October 19, 2023
book signing party: The Wish Painters
Oct 19 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Artists Collective | Spartanburg
Did you know the Collective is haunted?

Author Cynthia Manuel, our Webmaster, has written and illustrated an intriguing chronicle of the ghost sightings at the Collective. History buffs will get a kick out of the considerable local history that she has woven into the tale.

 

The book, The Wish Painters will be available for sale at the Collective beginning October 3rd. Just in time for that spookiest of holidays.

 

There will be a book signing party at Art Walk on October 19th from 6 – 8pm

Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Duncan Park: Stories of a Classic American Ballpark Book Launch 
Oct 24 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Headquarters Library

 

Hub City Press will celebrate the launch of “Duncan Park: Stories of a Classic American Ballpark” by Edwin C. Epps at the Headquarters Library in the Barrett Room on Tuesday, October 24 at 6:00 p.m. Duncan Park recounts the history of Spartanburg’s oldest wooden grandstand stadium built in 1926.There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Monthly Book Club- October
Oct 24 @ 6:00 pm
Cowpens Coffee & Creamery

Join us Tuesday October 24th at 6pm for our Monthly Book Club meeting! Enjoy your favorite handcrafted beverage while we discuss the thriller, ‘You Did This’ by Jamie Millen
Visit
https://jamiemillen.com/you-did-this
for more info on this month’s book selection!

This month’s meeting will be on the fourth Tuesday of the month, not the last due to Halloween. Thank you!