The Huntsville-Madison County Library Foundation (HMCLF) offers several author events each year to bring awareness to the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library. These events are great opportunities for our community to be entertained by, learn from, and engage in meaningful conversation with best-selling authors of every genre. Author events typically consist of a reading or talk by the author, a question & answer period, and end with a book signing.
Some favorite authors from the recent past include Sean Dietrich, Lisa Wingate, Homer Hickam, and Greg Iles. The Library Foundation loves connecting authors to the great reading community here in Madison County, all while supporting the HMCPL with proceeds from these events.
Join us at the Downtown Huntsville Public Library for a discussion and book signing, celebrating Meg Shaffer's new novel, The Book Witch.
About The Book Witch: She can hop into any novel, but she just can’t stay there.
Come along with the Book Witch in this magical and inspiring love letter to reading from the USA Today bestselling author of The Wishing Game.
Rainy March is a proud, third-generation Book Witch, sworn to defend works of fiction from all foes real and imaginary. With her magical umbrella and feline familiar, she jumps in and out of novels to fix malicious alterations and rogue heroes like a modern-day magical Nancy Drew.
Book Witches live by a strict code: Real people belong in the real world; fictional characters belong in works of fiction. Do not eat, drink, or sleep inside a fictional world, lest you become part of the story. Falling in love with a fictional character? Don’t even think about it.
Which is why Rainy has been forbidden from seeing the Duke of Chicago, the dashing British detective who stars in her favorite mystery series. If she’s ever caught with him again, she’ll be expelled from her book coven—and forced to give up the magical gifts that are as much a part of her as her own name.
But when her beloved grandfather disappears and a priceless book is stolen, there’s only one person she trusts to help her solve the case: the Duke. Their quest takes them through the worlds of Alice in Wonderland, King Arthur, and other classics that will reveal hidden enemies and long-buried family secrets.
About the Author:
Meg Shaffer is the USA Today bestselling author of The Lost Story and The Wishing Game, which was a Book of the Month finalist for Book of the Year, a Reader’s Digest and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and has been translated into 21 languages. Meg holds an MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and two cats. The cats are not writers.
Purchase tickets here.
Join us at the South Huntsville Public Library for a discussion with Rea Frey, author of Dear Mother. Rea will be in conversation with fellow bestselling author, Sarah Crouch.
About Dear Mother: In a tense thriller set deep amid the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a determined mother works to uncover the secrets of her family’s dark past, fearful of what their history may reveal.
After a childhood riddled with trauma and unanswered questions, Isabelle Archer vows to chase down the truth. So when her estranged mother dies, the investigative journalist returns to the one story that still haunts her.
Isabelle was thirteen when her three foster siblings died tragically in a fire. The blaze was ruled an accident, and despite the neglect, Isabelle never wanted to believe her mother was a killer. But twenty-five years later, the accusations linger.
Back in Cedarloch to settle the estate, Isabelle revisits her childhood home. A familiar dread permeates the surrounding woods. And when autopsy reports cast new suspicions, Isabelle unearths much more than just terrifying memories.
With help from her ex, Isabelle frantically digs for answers. What really happened the night of the fire? How did her mother die? And are the two somehow connected? What they find could poison long-held memories―and incinerate everything she thought to be true.
About the Authors:
Rea Frey is an award-winning author of several nonfiction books and the novels Not Her Daughter, Because You’re Mine, Until I Find You, and Secrets of Our House. She is also the founder and CEO of Writeway, which teaches writers about the business of publishing, not just the craft. She lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter.
Sarah Crouch is the USA TODAY Bestselling author of Middletide and The Briars. literary thrillers set in the Pacific Northwest, where she was raised. She is also known in the world of athletics as a professional marathon runner.
Purchase tickets here.
We are thrilled to welcome Ruta Sepetys to the South Huntsville Public Library to celebrate her new novel, A Fortune of Sand.
About A Fortune of Sand: Detroit, 1927. A city of smoke and ambition, where glittering wealth conceals a graveyard of secrets.
Marjorie Lennox is the youngest daughter of a powerful automotive dynasty, a family known for money, not manners. Artistic, impulsive, and always slightly out of step, Marjorie has long been dismissed by her controlling father and self-absorbed siblings. But when she secretly applies to an exclusive arts program funded by an elusive benefactor, she sees a chance to redefine herself on her own terms.
The building is grand. The participants are gifted. But something…is off.
Doors lock at odd hours. Strange sounds echo through the halls amid whispers that women are disappearing. And the handsome benefactor’s presence—mostly absent, yet somehow everywhere—begins to unnerve her. As Marjorie’s sense of self begins to slip, so does her grip on the truth. What happens to women who don’t fit neatly into a gilded frame?
Set against the crumbling grandeur of 1920s Detroit and inspired by actual, long-buried historical events, A Fortune of Sand is a haunting mosaic of glamour and grift. In a city built on ambition, just how far will a dynasty go to keep their secrets?
About the Author:
Ruta Sepetys (Rūta Šepetys) is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction published in over sixty countries and forty languages. Considered a “crossover” novelist, her books are read by both students and adults worldwide. Winner of the Carnegie Medal and honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ruta is renowned for giving voice to underrepresented history and those who experienced it. Her books have won or been shortlisted for more than fifty book prizes, appear on over forty state reading lists, and are currently in development for film and television.
Purchase tickets here.
We’re thrilled to welcome Tayari Jones to the North Huntsville Public Library this October to celebrate her new novel, Kin. Because Kin has been released, we’re opening event tickets now so you can secure your seat and start reading right away.
About Kin:
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that takes her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
About the Author:
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta.
Purchase tickets here.
