The group will discuss All Happy Families: A Memoir by Jeanne McCulloch over a potluck meal!  Please feel free to bring a dish for all to enjoy.

Register below or email reference@montclair.bccls.org to join the club!

Join us for a discussion of a great book!  All adults invited.  To join, please email reference@montclair.bccls.org or call 973-744-0500 ext. 2235.

October’s book: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.

Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author B. A. Shapiro will debut her latest and eighth novel The Collector’s Apprentice at Open Book/ Open Mind on November 1st at Montclair Art Museum at 7PM. The Open Book Club will meet before that appearance to discuss her novel, The Muralist, in anticipation of the release of The Collector’s Apprentice.

From Goodreads: “From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Art Forgercomes a thrilling new novel of art, history, love, and politics that traces the life and mysterious disappearance of a brilliant young artist on the eve of World War II.

Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940 amid personal and political turmoil. No one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at Christie’s auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind recently found works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt?

Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralistplunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner workings of today’s New York art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism.

B.A. Shapiro is a master at telling a gripping story while exploring provocative themes. In Alizée and Danielle she has created two unforgettable women, artists both, who compel us to ask, What happens when luminous talent collides with inexorable historical forces? Does great art have the power to change the world? And to what lengths should a person go to thwart evil?”

The United Methodist Communities at PineRidge of Montclair, in collaboration with MPL and AngelaCARES, hosts a resource center for seniors in the library’s Senior Space. PineRidge of Montclair and AngelaCARES equip the space with resources and programs aimed at enriching the lives of local seniors. Senior Space programming takes place every Wednesday from 10am to 2pm.

Click here for the current monthly schedule.

Questions? Call the library reference desk at 973-744-0500 ext. 2235.

On Wednesdays at 2 pm, Montclair Public Library hosts The Every Wednesday Matinee, a classic film series presented in its auditorium. In October 2018,  classic horror films will be shown.

The movies are as follows:

October 3: Mystery of the wax museum – Starring:  Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell. The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor. (1933, 77 minutes, black & white).

October 10: Murders in the Rue Morgue – Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon Ames. A mad scientist seeks to mingle human blood with that of an ape, and resorts to kidnapping women for his experiments. (1932, 61 minutes, black & white).

October 17: The wolf man — Starring:  Claude Rains, Warren William, Lon Chaney Jr. A practical man returns to his homeland, is attacked by a creature of folklore, and infected with a horrific disease his disciplined mind tells him can not possibly exist. (1941, 70 minutes, black & white).

October 24: Frankenstein – Starring: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff.  An obsessed scientist assembles a living being from parts of exhumed corpses. (1931, 70 minutes, black & white).

October 31: Dracula — Starring: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners. The ancient vampire Count Dracula arrives in England and begins to prey upon the virtuous young Mina. (1931, 75 minutes, black & white).

Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author B. A. Shapiro will debut her latest and eighth novel The Collector’s Apprentice (see below). Her previous novels include The Muralist, The Art Forger, The Safe Room, Blind Spot, See No Evil, Blameless and Shattered Echoes, the non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze and four screenplays (Blind Spot, The Lost Coven, Borderline and Shattered Echoes). She will be in conversation about art, fiction and creativity with Caroline Leavitt, best-selling author of eleven fiction novels including Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow, and Cruel Beautiful World. There will be a Q&A session with the audience after their conversation.

Thanks to a partnership between MPL and Montclair Art Museum, this free event will take place at 7 PM at MAM’s Leir Hall during the “Free First Thursday” programming. There is no registration required for the evening at MAM, but please R.S.V.P. below or call 973-744-0500 x2275 if you would like updates on the authors’ event.

Watchung Booksellers will have both authors’ books available for purchase and signing at the end of the event.

Thanks to our series sponsors The Montclair Foundation and Investors Foundation for their support.

About The Collector’s Apprentice: It’s the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris—broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father’s art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George.

When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates—including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives . . . and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley’s murder.

B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector’s Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.