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 Chris Whitaker, Joshilyn Jackson, Tayari Jones, Terah Shelton Harris, and Andy Weir. 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.
We’re thrilled to welcome Kevin Wilson to the South Huntsville Public Library to celebrate the paperback release of Run for the Hills.
Two ticket options are available:
• $10 - Event Ticket Only
• $25 - Event Ticket + a Paperback Copy of Run for the Hills
Tuesday, June 23, 2026, at 6:00 p.m.
Location: South Huntsville Public Library (7901-L Bailey Cove Rd SE, Huntsville, AL 35802)
A book signing will follow the conversation.
About Run for the Hills:
Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Mostly.
Then one day, Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half-sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of half-siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.
As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was seeking in each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?
Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.
About the Author:
Kevin Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Nothing to See Here, and The Family Fang, as well as two story collections. His work has received the Shirley Jackson Award and been selected as a Read with Jenna book club pick. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.
Purchase tickets here.
Join us at the Downtown Huntsville Public Library for a discussion and book signing, celebrating Chanel Cleeton's new novel, An Infinite Love Story.
Wednesday, July 8, at 6 p.m.
Location: Downtown Huntsville Public Library (915 Monroe Street, Huntsville, AL 35804)
There will be a book signing following the conversation.
Brief Synopsis of An Infinite Love Story:
When an astronaut is lost in space, his wife relives their epic love as she attempts to unravel what truly happened to him, in this sweeping love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s Space Race, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes.
About the Author:
Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Cuban Heiress, Our Last Days in Barcelona, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, The Last Train to Key West, When We Left Cuba, and Reese’s Book Club pick Next Year in Havana. She received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics & Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.
About Tessa Lucas:
Tessa Lucas is a retired NASA Space Station Flight Controller from Teledyne Brown Engineering, where she spent 27 years helping keep shuttle and space station missions running smoothly. That's no small feat! A lifelong lover of books, libraries, and learning, she serves as a dedicated and passionate board member of the Library Foundation. She's thrilled to moderate a conversation with Chanel Cleeton about An Infinite Love Story.
Purchase tickets here.
We’re thrilled to welcome Kelly Rimmer to the South Huntsville Public Library to celebrate the release of her new novel, The Story Keeper.
Kelly will be in conversation with Lorie Hubscher, who is a librarian at the South Huntsville Public Library.
Sunday, July 26, 2026, at 2 p.m.
Location: South Huntsville Public Library (7901-L Bailey Cove Rd SE, Huntsville, AL 35802)
A book signing will follow the conversation.
About The Story Keeper:
The literary twist of Patti Callahan Henry's The Secret Book of Flora Lea meets the family secrets of Kate Morton’s Homecoming when a woman discovers a curious novel in the library of her crumbling gothic estate, whose uncomfortably familiar story ultimately brings a generations-old mystery to light.
In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.
When a curious book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle’s library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss, and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?
Told in a dual narrative and set against the Gothic backdrop of Wurimbirra, Kelly Rimmer, bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say, weaves an intricate and compelling tale, inviting readers into the heart of a family’s deepest secrets with an absorbing book-within-a-book mystery.
About the Author:
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The German Wife, The Warsaw Orphan, and The Things We Cannot Say. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children, and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com
About Lorie Hubscher:
Lorie Hubscher is the assistant branch manager at the South Huntsville Public Library and has spent 14 years with HMCPL. Lorie is also a long-time member of the Huntsville arts community as a director, actor, and playwright. Lorie is passionate about books and reading and enjoys sharing her love of literature with the community.
Purchase tickets here.
We’re excited to welcome New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams to the South Huntsville Public Library this August for a conversation about her new novel, When You Loved Me. She’ll be joined by fellow bestselling author Karen White.
Thursday, August 13, 2026, at 6 p.m.
Location: South Huntsville Public Library (7901-L Bailey Cove Road, Huntsville, AL 35802).
A book signing will follow the conversation.
About When You Loved Me:
A young widow returns to her late father’s New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving love story steeped in New England legend.
About Beatriz Williams:
Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Husbands and Lovers, The Summer Wives, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, the Wicked City series, and several other works of historical fiction, including five novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before her first novel was published in 2012. Beatriz’s books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in bestseller lists around the world. Her essays have appeared in magazines such as Real Simple and Southern Living, among others, and she regularly reviews fiction for the New York Times Book Review.
About Karen White:
With almost two million books in print in fifteen different languages, Karen White is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 38 novels. Her latest releases include That Last Carolina Summer (July 2025) and The Lady on Esplanade (November 2025), the third book in her New Orleans-set mystery series. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband near Atlanta, Georgia.
Purchase tickets here.
The event is currently sold out, but you can join the waitlist in case seats become available.
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.
Join the waitlist here.
