Events Calendar
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
| Did you know the Collective is haunted? |
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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 |
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.
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!
Join South Carolina author S.Q. Peake for an in-store signing at Fiction Addiction on Saturday, November 4th from 2-4pm to celebrate his new book, Legends of the Soul: State of Emergency.
This event is free and open to the public, or you can purchase an $12.71 ticket that includes a copy of Legends of the Soul: State of Emergency. Additional 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, November 3rd 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 home country of Amar is up against its greatest threat. Enemy Iri soldiers have invaded and among them are the enhanced descendants of Amar’s runaway civil war criminals from decades ago. How will Amar’s already flimsy government handle the incursion?
Will a young Taurean be able to protect his family?
And what fate lies before young Dewayne. He’s broken a serious law. Some of the people believe he should be dealt the max punishment, which is imprisonment with the other uncontrollable E.I.s. Whether young or old, there’s only one prison in the entire country of Amar to hold them all. The penitentiary in Cainesville is the permanent home for enhanced lawbreakers until their will to be a legend is subdued and broken.
About the Author:
S.Q. Peake is a new author out of South Carolina. He believes a good story and a good read induces healing and creates bridges between people. This author is a fan of every genre, a movie lover and a huge football fan. He’s a proud father of four and a strong believer in his faith.
Join Hub City Writers Project for an evening with John T. Edge, author, TV host, and historian. Hosted by Dorothy Chapman Josey.
Join Hub City Writers Project for an evening with John T. Edge, author, historian, host of TRUE SOUTH, and Founding Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Light refreshments will be provided. All proceeds will benefit the Hub City Writers Project. Hosted by Dorothy Chapman Josey.
John T. Edge has written or edited more than a dozen books, served as culinary curator for the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been featured on dozens of television shows from CBS Sunday Morning to Iron Chef. He is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and has served as a columnist for the New York Times and the Oxford American. His magazine and newspaper work has been featured in eleven editions of the Best Food Writing compilation. He has won four James Beard Foundation awards including Beard’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award in 2012 and 2020.
Edge holds an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. And an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.
His 2017 book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Publisher‘s Weekly, and a host of others. Since 2018, he has hosted the television show TrueSouth, which airs on the SEC Network, ESPN, and is available on Hulu.
At the University of Mississippi, he directs the Mississippi Lab, serves as Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, and serves the Southern Foodways Alliance as Founding Director. Edge is a distinguished visiting professor in the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program at the Grady College of the University of Georgia. Edge lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, Blair Hobbs, a teacher, writer, and painter.
Grady Hendrix is in Spartanburg! The author will be at Hub City Bookshop on Sunday, November 12th from 3pm-4pm for a Q&A and book signing. Books are limited so grab your copy here or head to hubcity.org
Can’t make it? Consider attending Grady’s talk at Wofford on November 13th — 6PM, McMillan Theater — where he’ll discuss his new book. The South Carolina native and New York Times-bestselling author will discuss his book These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World. Hendrix will show how kung fu films introduced some of America’s first and most important non-white action heroes, helped to shape hip hop culture, and transformed American action movies.
Join us at Hub City Bookshop for a book signing, or catch Grady Hendrix’s talk at Wofford. You won’t want to miss these events!
About the author
Grady Hendrix is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter living in New York City. He is the author of Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism (which was adapted into a feature film by Amazon Studios), We Sold Our Souls, and the New York Times bestseller The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (currently being adapted into a TV series). Grady also authored the Bram Stoker Award–winning nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the seventies and eighties, and his latest non-fiction book is These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World.
Join Hub City Bookshop in welcoming John Lane for his latest book Gullies of My People: An Excavation of Family and Landscape! Buy your book on Eventbrite for 10% off and to be sure you snag a copy!
About the Book
While scouting sites for geology field trips, poet and naturalist John Lane encountered deep gullies created between the Civil War and the 1930s contributed to by his mother’s tenant farming family and their rural neighbors in Piedmont South Carolina. This brush with the poor farming practices of the past leads Lane into an exploration of his own family’s complicated history and of the larger environmental forces that have shaped the region where he chooses to live. With his sister as guide, Lane descends into the gully of his own childhood to uncover memories of a loving but alcoholic mother and a suicidal father.
Back and forth, the narrative progresses from depictions of the land—particularly the overgrown and neglected places that hold stories and mysteries of the region—to Lane’s ever-deepening search.He wonders how he, a college professor and husband settled into middle-class life, has emerged from the chaos of his family’s past. Along the way, we meet heroic Depression-era geologists, fascinating colleagues, and troubled ancestors. Lane’s extraordinary ability to weave personal history together with explorations of the natural world will remind readers of the works of Loren Eiseley and Terry Tempest Williams.
About the Author
John Lane is Emeritus Professor of environmental studies at Wofford College and was founding director of the college’s Goodall Environmental Studies Center. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, COYOTE SETTLES THE SOUTH was one of four finalists for the John Burroughs Medal and was named by the Burroughs Society one of the year’s “Nature Books of Uncommon Merit.”
As an environmentalist in 2013 Lane was named Upstate Forever’s “Clean Water Champion,” and “Water Conservationist of the Year” by The South Carolina Wildlife Federation. In 2014 he was inducted into the SC Academy of Authors. He, with his wife Betsy Teter, is one of the co-founders of Spartanburg’s Hub City Writers Project.
Join author Ryan Gray for an in-store signing at Fiction Addiction on Saturday, December 9th from 1-3pm to celebrate his new book, Twilight in York.
This event is free and open to the public, or you can purchase a $16.91 ticket that includes a copy of Twilight in York. Additional 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.
Tickets can be purchased online through Friday, December 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.
Dive into the explosive, raw, and vulnerable story of a man’s search for sanity amid his increasing dependence on DXM (dextromethorphan), the active ingredient in Robitussin and other cough suppressant medications. In Volume One, you’ll enter the underbelly of York, PA as the narrator navigates the streets and his new normal.
Halfway through 2007, Ryan Gray started to come to grips with his reality: the point where an addict senses his own futility, his own demise, but remains powerless to his own craving for a drug. As things get worse and he sees his own doomed fate, it opens the door to full and complete morbidity–Hell on earth.
Before this point, Ryan begins his life on the street like many others. He was introduced to the lifestyle by a native of York and knows which drugs can be bought from whom. As he freely shares his wealth of knowledge with Ryan, the men become like brothers–always found side by side.
Still, Ryan was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun and knew it. Will he come to terms?
Twilight in York: Volume One encompasses a narrative about immense suffering of a variety known only to the addict, the junky, or the dope fiend. It is raw, real, and relatable.
About the Author:
Ryan Gray attended the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA) to study literature and graduated in 2016. He is currently pursuing a career in behavioral health as a peer support specialist.
He is self-supporting (financially and otherwise) despite severe schizophrenia, depression, ADHD, and anxiety. Ryan has been unusually close to his family ever since he got clean 15 years ago. He credits his recovery to the encouragement of many people along the way, including nurses, social workers, counselors, and doctors, sponsors, and fellow AA members.
Refund Policy:
- You may request a full refund prior to the ticket cutoff.
Homecoming by Kate Morton
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.
Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.
Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital, she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused. It’s even more alarming to hear from Nora’s housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident and had fallen on the steps to the attic—the one place Jess was forbidden from playing in when she was small.
At loose ends in Nora’s house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora’s bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime—a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find…
An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth. Above all, it is a beguiling and immensely satisfying novel from one of the finest writers working today.
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 Cantina 76.
Is it actually good though? That is the question. Join us as we discuss books that have gone viral on TikTok. This month we will be reading “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab. Copies will be available behind the desk at the Cyrill-Westside Library. All adults are welcome.