Tagged Literature
Immersive Multimedia Experience Breathes New Life into the Frankenstein Mythos
Even if you’ve never read Mary Shelley ’s groundbreaking novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus , you’ve certainly heard of the stiched-together monster the teenage mother invented during a drizzly 1816 summer…
Break Out Your Garlic Necklaces and Wooden Stakes for Bram Stoker's Bday!
by Michelle Sheffer Today marks Irish writer Bram Stoker ’s 171st birthday. Author of Dracula —the inspiration for many a nightmare and pop-culture meme over the past two centuries—Stoker compiled and wrote his iconic…
Shakespeare In the World Lecture Series
The Fool in King Lear advised "Speak less than thou knowest" – but it's good the speakers at this year’s Shakespeare in the World lecture series aren’t following his advice. If you’re …
Join The Rosenbach for a Marathon Reading of Moby-Dick!
If you’ve ever joined our friends at The Rosenbach for Bloomsday , you know how fun (and slightly surreal) it can be to hear a book read aloud over an extended period of time. Well, the next Bloomsday may be several months off…
An American Author in Paris
"For two centuries," writes The New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik in the preface of his 2004 collection Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology , "Paris has been attached for Americans to an idea of happiness, of good…
Book To Movie Night-BlackKklansman
Our first film series for 2019 asks the question: what was better, the book or the movie? BlackKklansman will be the fourth movie of this four-part series. The movie will begin promptly at 6:00 pm. Please register at…
Chestnut Hill Library Contemporary Book Group
This group meets the 4th Wednesday of every month. For more information and to reserve a copy of the month's selection, please contact the library at 215-685-9290. Spring book selections are: March 27th - In Extemis: The Life…
Bloomsday 2019
Join us on beautiful Delancey Place for the Rosenbach’s annual Bloomsday celebration on June 16, the day the world celebrates Leopold Bloom’s fictional journey through the streets of Dublin, as imagined in James…
Adult Book Club
Do love reading and talking about what you are reading? Join us on the 2nd Friday of the month for our book club - we'll be meeting from 10:30 a.m. until noon. This month's selection is Go Tell it on the Mountain , by…
Chestnut Hill Classics Book Group
Join us the first Thursday of each month at 10:30 a.m. Selections for the spring are: March 7th - The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty April 4th - The Eight Mountains by Paola Cognetti May 2nd - All the Light We Cannot See…
First Monday Writers Group
Are you a writer who needs some motivation and encouragement? We can provide this, as well as technical skills and information that can direct you towards completing tasks for publication and discovery. A great…
Story to Stage Playwriting Class
Calling All Students in Grades 4-7!!! Are you interested in theater? Do you like to write? Would you like to learn how to write a play and perform it for an audience? Join us for a free playwriting class on Mondays from March 25 through…
Whitman Illustrated
A selection of Walt Whitman illustrated editions and other works by artists inspired by the American poet, from the callections of the Art & Literature Departments on the occasion of his 200 year anniversary. In collaboration…
Story to Stage Playwriting Class
Calling All Students in Grades 4-7!!! Are you interested in theater? Do you like to write? Would you like to learn how to write a play and perform it for an audience? Join us for a free playwriting class on Mondays from March 25 through…
Chestnut Hill Library Contemporary Book Group
This group meets the 4th Wednesday of every month. For more information and to reserve a copy of the month's selection, please contact the library at 215-685-9290. Spring book selections are: March 27th - In Extemis: The Life…
Story to Stage Playwriting Class
Calling All Students in Grades 4-7!!! Are you interested in theater? Do you like to write? Would you like to learn how to write a play and perform it for an audience? Join us for a free playwriting class on Mondays from March 25 through…
Tommy Orange | There There: A Novel
“Masterful. White-hot. A devastating debut novel” ( The Washington Post ), Tommy Orange’s There There has been lauded as a new American treasure by some of the country’s greatest writers and esteemed…
Book To Movie Night-It
Our first film series for 2019 asks the question: what was better, the book or the movie? It will be the third movie of this four-part series. The movie will begin promptly at 6:00 pm. Please register at…
Story to Stage Playwriting Class
Calling All Students in Grades 4-7!!! Are you interested in theater? Do you like to write? Would you like to learn how to write a play and perform it for an audience? Join us for a free playwriting class on Mondays from March 25 through…
Hands-on History at The Free Library, Parkway Central
In coordination with Tempesta di Mare GREAT BOOKS Classic Tales for Orchestra , Hands-on History explores literary masterpieces in Western literature that have inspired outstanding musical compositions. A selection…
Adult Book Club
Do love reading and talking about what you are reading? Join us on the 2nd Friday of the month for our book club - we'll be meeting from 10:30 a.m. until noon. This month's selection is Trevor Noah: Born a Crime…
Michael Ondaatje | Warlight: A Novel
"Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic” ( San Francisco Chronicle ), Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize and was then adapted by Anthony Minghella into an Academy Award-winning film. His…
Telling Cervantes’s Story through Music: Telemann’s Burlesque de Quixotte
A collaboration with Tempesta di Mare’s Great Books concert In association with Tempesta di Mare, this program will focus on Miguel de Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote , one of the four great works of literature in their…
First Monday Writers Group
Are you a writer who needs some motivation and encouragement? We can provide this, as well as technical skills and information that can direct you towards completing tasks for publication and discovery. A great…
Story to Stage Playwriting Class
Calling All Students in Grades 4-7!!! Are you interested in theater? Do you like to write? Would you like to learn how to write a play and perform it for an audience? Join us for a free playwriting class on Mondays from March 25 through…
Poetry in Translation
Take pleasure in reading poets from other languages and cultures.
Poetry - Novels in Verse
Poetry with special appeal for tweens and teens.
Poetry - Great Contemporary Poetry
Selections from the Literature Department.
Research in Context *
Discover reliable and trusted information on a variety of topics to support middle school student research for government, U.S and world history, geography, literature, sciences, and social issues. Research In Context offers…
LitFinder *
Discover literature content from more than 150,000 full-text poems, 840,000 poem citations and excerpts, 7,100 full-text short stories and novels, 3,800 full-text essays published in the 16th-20th centuries, 2,400 full-text speeches, and…
Literature Criticism Online
This extensive compilation of literary commentary represents a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras, and genres. Covers Children’s, Classical, Contemporary, Drama, Poetry, Shakespearean,…
Kids InfoBits *
Elementary students in kindergarten through grade five will find age-appropriate content covering a broad range of educational topics such as animals, arts, geography, health, literature, people, social studies, technology, etc. Kids…
InfoTrac Student Edition *
High school students will have access to age-appropriate content from magazines, journals, newspapers, reference books, and engaging multi-media covering a wide range of subjects, from science, history, and literature to political…
Gale Literary Sources (formerly Artemis)
Cross-search all of Gale’s literature databases from a single digital space to find biographies, primary sources, contextual reference, and criticism. Includes Dictionary of Literary Biography, Something About the Author, LitFinder,…
Books & Authors *
Discover fiction and non-fiction books that match your interests! Books and Authors (powered by Gale's popular What Do I Read Next? series) is for readers from every level of reading proficiency and enables users to explore the endless…
Academic OneFile *
More than 18,000 peer-reviewed journals and more than 9,200 in full text Full text of The Economist ranging from 1988 to the present, with no embargo Full text of The New York Times from 1985 to present, updated daily Full text of The…
Darius James | Negrophobia: An Urban Parable
In conversation with Gene Seymour, contributor to The Nation and former film critic and jazz columnist for Newsday . He has written for Bookforum , CNN.com, and The Washington Post . Author and spoken-word artist Darius James’s 1992…
Don Winslow | The Border
The author of numerous international bestselling crime novels, Don Winslow is the recipient of dozens of awards and spots on myriad best-books-of-the-year lists. These books include The Winter of Frankie Machine , The Force , and…
Sigrid Nunez | The Friend: A Novel with Keith Gessen | A Terrible Country: A Novel
Sigrid Nunez won the 2018 National Book Award for The Friend , “a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory” (NPR) in which a woman is forced to adopt her deceased best friend’s Great Dane. The recipient of a Berlin Prize,…
Victor LaValle with Justina Ireland, Sam J. Miller, and Alice Sola Kim | A People's Future of the United States: Twenty-five Visionary Stories
Amidst a climate of division, tumult, and fear, what will the United States look like tomorrow? In A People’s Future of the United States , 25 diverse writers synthesize hopeful, cynical, prescient visions of a country shaped by…
Feminista Jones | Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets with DaMaris B. Hill | A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing
Social worker, public speaker, community activist, and blogger Feminista Jones is the author of the novel Push the Button and the poetry collection The Secret of Sugar Water . She was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in…
Jane Brox | Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives
Penning “nonfiction literature of a high and lasting order” ( Chicago Tribune ), Jane Brox is the author of, among other books, Five Thousand Days Like This One , a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Brilliant: The…
Bridgett M. Davis | The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers
Bridgett M. Davis is the author of Into the Go-Slow , the acclaimed story of a young woman traveling from Detroit to Nigeria as she mourns the death of her sister, and Shifting Through Neutral , a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy…
Dani Shapiro | Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
In conversation with Beth Kephart , the award-winning author of twenty-four books, including Going Over , Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir , and Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River . Delivering “an…
Ha Jin | The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)
In conversation with Carlin Romano , Critic-at-Large, The Chronicle of Higher Education , former literary critic The Philadelphia Inquirer and author of America the Philosophical . Celebrated internationally for a prolific, “achingly…
One Book, One Philadelphia Kickoff Event | Featuring Jesmyn Ward
One Book, One Philadelphia 2019 kicks off with a reading and conversation between Jesmyn Ward, author of the One Book featured selection Sing, Unburied, Sing, and WURD President/CEO Sara Lomax-Reese. Their talk will be followed by…
Kristen Roupenian | You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories
Kristen Roupenian holds a PhD in English from Harvard and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally published in The New Yorker in 2017, her story “Cat Person” garnered national attention for its frank depiction of dating in…
Margaret George | The Splendor Before the Dark: A Novel of the Emperor Nero with Madeline Miller | Circe
Margaret George ’s fictional biographies of towering world figures—brimming “with lust, violence, cruelty and lively conversation” ( Detroit Free Press ) while adhering as closely as possible to the factual historical record—include…
Jabari Asim | We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival
Editor-in-chief of The Crisis magazine, the NAACP’s flagship periodical, and a former editor and syndicated columnist at the The Washington Post , Jabari Asim is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His many books…
Daniel Torday | Boomer1 with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah | Friday Black: Stories
Exploring the nature of family and loss through the derring-do of a Czechoslovakian war hero, Daniel Torday ’s novel The Last Flight of Poxl West won the National Jewish Book Award, as did his debut novella The Sensualist . The…
Barbara Kingsolver | Unsheltered
With a “special gift for the vivid evocation of landscape and of her characters' state of mind” ( New York Times Book Review ), Barbara Kingsolver is the author of The Poisonwood Bible , a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the Orange…
Deborah Harkness | Time's Convert
Working “her own form of literary alchemy by deftly blending fantasy, romance, history, and horror” (Chicago Tribune), Deborah Harkness is the no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the witches-meet-vampires All Souls book trilogy.…
Imani Perry | Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
A professor of African American studies, public affairs, and gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University, Dr. Imani Perry is the author of More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in…
Jill Lepore | These Truths: A History of the United States
An historian whose “discipline is worthy of a first-class detective” ( New York Review of Books ), Jill Lepore is the author of the National Book Award finalist Book of Ages , the story of Benjamin Franklin’s beloved but…
Gary Shteyngart | Lake Success
“Ridiculously witty and painfully prescient” ( Time ), Gary Shteyngart is the author of the culturally reflective novels T he Russian Debutante’s Handbook , Absurdistan , and Super Sad True Love Story , which was named one of the best…
Jon Meacham | The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
A “tough-minded” but “nuanced and persuasive” ( The New York Times Book Review ) expert on history, politics, and religion in America, Jon Meacham won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his biography American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White…
Bestsellers
Find out about the latest bestsellers from many well known resources.