Dec. 3rd Booked w/ Cristin Aptowicz, Annie Hartnett, & Kathleen Reidy
About this Event
Join us on Thursday, December 3rd at the final Booked Author Series of 2026 in Providence as we welcome
- Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker
- Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts
- Kathleen Reidy, Engineering a Love Story
Enjoy hearing from three authors of new (and relatively new!) fiction and nonfiction releases at Fleur Restaurant on the second floor of the Omni Providence Hotel.
Fleur has a full menu of food and drinks, and valet parking is available at the Omni (and can be validated for a discount at Fleur). There is also street parking as available and a number of parking garages within a 5 block walk of the restaurant.
Tickets are $15 online, and $20 at the door.
Seating starts at 6pm, and the series starts at 7pm.
Hope to see you there as we close out year two of the Booked Author Series!
About the authors:
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction writer and poet. She is the author of eight books of poetry as well as the nonfiction books, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, which made 7 National “Best Books of 2014″ lists (including Amazon, The Onion’s AV Club, NPR’s Science Fridays and the UK newspaper The Guardian, among others) and , which Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.”
Cristin’s awards include the ArtsEdge Writer-In-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2011), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (2011) and the Amy Clampitt Residency (2013). Her eighth book of poetry, Against Vanishing, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2025. She has won the Writers’ League of Texas Book of the Year Award for Poetry (2013-2014). Her second book of nonfiction, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, was released by Gotham Books (Penguin) in Fall 2014, debuted at #7 on the New York Times Bestseller List for Books about Health and would stay on it for three months.
Her newest non-fiction book The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, M**der, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America was released in Fall 2026. A seventh generation Pennsylvanian, Cristin lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Ernest Cline, and their family.
Annie Hartnett is the award-winning author of three novels: Rabbit Cake, Unlikely Animals, and the national bestseller The Road to Tender Hearts, which won the 2025 New England Book Award for fiction and was a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. The Road to Tender Hearts was named a best book of 2025 from NPR, LitHub, and Southern Living, and has been translated into twenty languages. Along with the writer Tessa Fontaine, Annie co-runs Accountability Workshops for writers, helping writers commit to routines and embrace the long, slow, joyful, terrible process of doing the work. She lives in Massachusetts with her pretty good husband, perfect daughter, and two flawless rescue dogs, Willie Nelson and Minnie Mouse.
Kathleen Reidy is a writer and public librarian based in the Boston area. She holds a master’s degree in library science and spent more than a decade in the tech industry. Her short fiction has been published by Puddingstone Press and WayWords. She lives with her husband, daughters, and fluffy best friend. Engineering a Love Story is her first novel.
About the books:
The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker
A True Tale of Love, M**der, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America.
An extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels. The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker is a stylish, propulsive, inimately human tale of farmers, socialites, and self-emancipated folk with little in common who came together to stand against injusice… and won.
The Road to Tender Hearts
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.
But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who’s adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.
This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.
Engineering a Love Story
It's the year 2000—dot-coms, Bush v. Gore, and sky-high San Francisco rents. But while the country swoons with irrational exuberance, Chelsea Lefevre's life is collapsing faster than a tech bubble.
She'd had everything she thought she was supposed to want: a house on Boston's North Shore, exquisite wedding china, a Waspy mother-in-law. A steady, safe marriage. But after a mortifying slip-up, Chelsea finds herself heading into the 21st century alone. Her lifeboat? A new job advising tech execs, taken to escape the misogyny she endured as a software engineer—only to discover she has a surprising knack for spotting the next hot thing.
In this heady new world, Chelsea meets Seth Murphy, a magnetic sales executive at one of the country’s hottest startups. Professional boundaries make Seth off-limits, but Chelsea is tired of steady and safe. What starts as a casual fling soon spirals into a secret and intense affair, jeopardizing Chelsea’s career, newfound independence—and heart.
But as the bubble bursts, Chelsea will have to decode the difference between good enough and too good to be true, and reckon with how much a smart woman can risk when she’s the only female in the room.
Warm and witty, Engineering a Love Story is about growing up after a decade of adulthood and refusing to settle for a life that's less than the one you're capable of living.
*books will be available for purchase at the event from our friends at Books on the Square
**please email Katie at [email protected] to reserve space for a specific number of people if wanted
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 17.85
