Love Historical Fiction but not sure what to read next? Join bestselling author, Jane Healey, monthly for 30 minutes of pure book recommendations – the best of historical fiction out there! We’re sure you’ll find something to like from Jane’s many enthusiastic reviews.
Jane Healey is the author of The Beantown Girls, a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller, The Secret Stealers, which was an Amazon First Reads Editor’s Pick and a Historical Novel Society’s Editors’ Choice, and her debut, The Saturday Evening Girls Club. Goodnight from Paris is her newly released novel from Lake Union Publishing. Jane is also the host of Historical Happy Hour, a monthly webinar and podcast featuring interviews with premier historical fiction authors and their latest novels. She and her family lives outside Boston. We can’t wait to hear what Jane will be recommending – be ready for your TBR pile to fall over!
A list of all recommendations will be shared for those who register. There will also be recordings of each meeting uploaded to the Ashland Public Library YouTube Channel.
This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library and is in collaboration with a multitude of MA and NH libraries.
Create and celebrate the legacy of women in craft and history while sparking your own creativity! Explore the newest Creativebug classes!
Using your library card and PIN, create your own account for FREE and nurture your creative side with 1000+ video classes in painting, knitting, crafting, sewing & more!
In this joyful tribute to exceptional collage, explore into the work of fifteen female-identifying artists who have embraced this medium as part of their artistic practice. Each session begins with an introduction to the life and work of one of these remarkable women, spanning both historical and contemporary figures. Artist Erin McCluskey Wheeler is an experienced teacher of this unique blend of art history and hands-on creation and finds joy in watching students transform inspiration into their own distinct style. While the focus is on developing your own personal collage style, understanding how these artists approached shape, color, and composition will enrich your creative vocabulary. By exploring the practices of these 15 artists, you’ll build your own “artist family tree” and discover your artistic lineage. This 15-day practice will be released every other day this month.
In this adventurous class, artist Twinkie Chan shows you how to design and crochet your very own top-down sweater with a circular yoke and cute bobble sleeves. Forget following a pattern—Twinkie gives you all the tools to make your sweater uniquely yours. You’ll learn how to choose the yarn and hooks, determine out your gauge, and take the necessary measurements. Then, decide on fit, sleeve length, and top length, and translate all that info into the right number of stitches and rounds. The stitch pattern is super simple—half double crochet—so you can focus on the fun part: designing and building your garment. If you’re familiar with basic stitches and shaping, you’re all set! Get ready to sketch out your dream sweater and start crocheting it up.
Procreate is a versatile tool for digital painting that offers a range of benefits. Its diverse selection of brushes and tools allows for experimentation with endless colors, textures, and styles, while offering the freedom to instantly correct any mistakes. David Tenorio, a skilled illustrator and art instructor, shows you how this program can be used to enhance creativity and produce remarkable results. Designed to guide you through the stages of a painting, from initial sketch to the rendering and refining, he leads you through the traditional principles of art and design, such as “mother color” and “thick to thin” techniques. By synthesizing all of these elements, students learn how to create a digitally painted portrait that achieves accurate proportions and likeness.
The scavenger-hunt aspect of collage is irresistible to so many Creativebug artists. Whether using it as their primary artistic medium or as an exercise to loosen up stuck creativity, the eight artists in this collection bring their own unique take on the medium. If you’re feeling inspired, check out the full Daily Practice series of each artist below:
In this 3 hour workshop, you will explore Visible Mending with Arounna Khounnoraj of Bookhou. We all have that favorite pair of jeans or a well-loved sweater – no matter how baggy or worn they might become. In the movement against throw-away culture and fast fashion, learn how to pick up a needle and rediscover the forgotten techniques and the joy of mending. We will cover the technique of weave mending, seed stitch and scotch darning and learn different ways to patch woven fabrics from the front and back.
Travis IRELAND of the Friskey Whiskey Podcast will join us to discuss the history of Irish whiskeys and the best he’s encountered! So, pull up your comfy chair and highball glass and be ready to be educated and entertained. If you are 21+, we encourage you to BYOB for this special occasion.
About Travis: Travis Ireland, co-host of The Friskey Whiskey Podcast, is an IT professional by day and a whiskey aficionado by passion. He brings his knowledge and expertise to the podcast, discussing various distilleries, tasting notes, and industry trends. Through The Friskey Whiskey, Travis aims to educate, entertain, and share his profound appreciation for whiskey.
RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program
This program is brought to you in collaboration with the Chelmsford, Groton, Tewksbury Libraries and a partnering with a multitude of additional MA & NH Libraries.
This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library.
Bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld will discuss her beloved novel, Prep, in celebration of its 20th anniversary, as well as her new short stories collection, Show Don’t Tell, in conversation with bestselling author Gabrielle Zevin, in this installment of “Author Hour in Massachusetts.”
About Curtis: Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels including Romantic Comedy, Rodham, Eligible, Prep, American Wife, and Sisterland, as well as the collection You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her novels have been translated into thirty languages. In addition, her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, for which she has also been the guest editor. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair, and on public radio’s This American Life.
About Show Don’t Tell: In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned. In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school. Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.
About Gabrielle: Gabrielle Zevin is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, winner of the Goodreads Choice Fiction Award and named Amazon’s Best Book of 2022, as well as a Best Book of the Year by Indigo, TIME, The GlobeandMail, The New York Times, and more. Her other critically acclaimed novels include The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Young Jane Young, and Elsewhere. Her books have been translated into over forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
About Author Hour in Massachusetts: “Author Hour in Massachusetts” is a series of virtual author talks this winter featuring some of the publishing industry’s top trending writers. These webinars — held from 7pm (ET) to 8pm (ET), Monday through Friday — are free and open to all. This series, which runs through March 20, 2025, is being promoted by more than 50 public libraries in Massachusetts.
We are excited to partner with the Lynnfield Public Library in hosting award-winning, best-selling author Madeline Miller! Madeline will be discussing her novel Circe, a dazzling retelling of the myth of Circe told from her perspective.
About Circe: In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.
About Madeline: Madeline Miller grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She has taught and tutored Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students for over fifteen years. She has also studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms. She currently lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Song of Achilles, her first novel, was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a New York Times Bestseller. Miller was also shortlisted for the 2012 Stonewall Writer of the Year.
Her second novel, Circe, was an instant number 1 New York Times bestseller, and won the Indies Choice Best Adult Fiction of the Year Award and the Indies Choice Best Audiobook of the Year Award, as well as being shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Circe also won The Red Tentacle Award, an American Library Association Alex Award (adult books of special interest to teen readers), and the 2018 Elle Big Book Award. Miller’s novels have been translated into over twenty-five languages and her essays have appeared in a number of publications including the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Telegraph, Lapham’s Quarterly and NPR.org.
Presented in collaboration with the Lynnfield Public Library.
