9/23 Charlotte Arts & Lectures Presents: Ariel Lawhon

We are thrilled to welcome Ariel Lawhon to Charlotte to celebrate the release of her new book The Pirate Queen. For this ticketed, author event, Ariel will be in conversation and will feature an audience Q&A after their discussion. We hope you will join us for an evening to remember with one of our favorite authors! 

With the purchase of a ticket, guests will receive a signed copy of Ariel Lawhon's new book The Pirate Queen. Additional pre-signed copies of Ariel's backlist titles will be available for sale at the event. Please note that we will not be able to accommodate the signing of personal copies brought from home; please refrain from bringing additional books to this event.

Tickets for the event are $35. Purchase tickets here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ariel Lawhon is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and have been Good Morning America and One Book One County selections. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and four sons. Ariel splits her time between the grocery store and the baseball field.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A sweeping historical adventure inspired by the life of Grace O’Malley, the legendary Irish folk heroine who risked everything to defend her people. Venture onto the high seas with the thrilling latest from the New York Times bestselling author of The Frozen River and I Was Anastasia.

Grace O’Malley was born to be a sea captain. But despite her natural skill on the water, Grace learns early that her dreams of a life at the helm are not compatible with the expectations of her noble family. As the only daughter of a powerful chieftain, her role is to secure a strong alliance and bear children. But when she’s sent to foster with a nearby clan, Grace falls for a clever and open-minded second son—a man she cannot have.

Married off against her will to a brutal warrior, Grace performs her duty, all the while gathering followers loyal to her, and consolidating her husband’s power, only to be ousted from his lands. But this betrayal offers Grace the opportunity to return to sea, finally leading clan O’Malley’s mighty fleet. Just as she finds true independence, Queen Elizabeth’s incursions into Ireland grow bolder and Grace must fight to defend her land, her ships, and the people she loves most against the cruel and power-hungry English deputies, who will stop at nothing to check her influence.

Keenly observed and fiercely written, Ariel Lawhon's new action-packed novel channels the untamed beauty and harsh realities of sixteenth-century Ireland, as seen through the eyes of an unforgettable heroine who rightly became “the Pirate Queen of Ireland.”

 

10/21 Charlotte Arts & Lectures Presents: Women Behaving Badly Tour

Join Charlotte Arts & Lectures, Cleary's Bookstore & Sourcebooks for this Fall's Women Behaving Badly Tour, featuring three seriously spooky authors and "bad" ass women. Authors Ann Davila Cardinal, Janasha Prabhu & Emma C. Wells will be in-conversation with a panel led by Cleary's Bookstore owner, Alison, and then will mingle and sign books following the discussion. This event will also feature themed mocktails mixed by Lizzy and bites by Chef Steph.

With the purchase of a ticket, guests will receive their choice of book by one of the authors featured on the panel. Refreshments are also included with the ticket. Additional copies of each others backlist titles will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Please note that we will not be able to accommodate the signing of personal copies brought from home; please refrain from bringing additional books to this event.

Tickets for the event are $25. Purchase Tickets Here.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS & BOOKS

ANN DÁVILA CARDINAL is a two-time International Latino Book Award winning novelist and aging tattooed punk. Her adult debut, the novel The Storyteller’s Death, was released by Sourcebooks in 2022, and her second magical realist adult novel, We Need No Wings, followed in 2024.

The past never dies—it just changes its tune in this edgy, speculative thriller following an aging woman who begins to hear the murders of girls she used to know in her punk rock youth and now must uncover their killer and reckon with a past she's desperate to leave forgotten.

For more than forty years, Elena Altieri has been hiding from the tragedies of her New York City punk rock youth. Tragedies that left her best friend, Sin, dead, and other women in their orbit missing. Now, the past is catching up with her in more ways than one. Not only is she hearing strange noises under the hum of her tinnitus, but the photographs she took of a recently deceased musician are going viral, thrusting her back into a world she hoped would remain locked away forever.

When Elena begins to hear the screams of a woman ringing in her ears, she becomes convinced that she's somehow hearing Sin’s murder. Desperate for answers, she has no choice but to revisit her past, and what she’ll uncover will not only force her to reckon with her own fractured memories, but might prove that Sin, and other innocent women from their youth, were the victims of an unspeakable crime that only she can solve. 

Old punks never die, and Elena’s going to prove that.

JANASHA PRABHU is a graduate of the University of Illinois with degrees in chemistry and computer science and is a fellow of the 2024 LitUp cycle through Reese’s Book Club. She has adored horror ever since picking up her first Goosebumps book as a kid and enjoys incorporating her experiences as a queer woman of color, her love for animals, and her interests in cooking into dark and twisted stories. Janasha currently lives in Chicago with her two cats, Grimm and James, and loves catching the latest horror movie with her partner when she’s not writing.

Dark, twisty, and atmospheric debut thriller for readers of The Quiet Tenant and The Butcher. Her uncle was a serial killer. The town whispers, could she be a killer too?

On the night Jiah Rai was found cradling her girlfriend Georgia’s dead body at the bottom of Wailing Cliff, everyone suspected her. There wasn’t enough evidence to charge her, but the town refuses to forget. They whisper: murder must run in the family. Jiah’s uncle was a convicted serial killer, and while he died behind bars, his legacy lives on in Jiah and her sister. It doesn’t matter that they’ve lived in Dumont their whole lives—her family has never fit into the insular white community. And legacy isn’t done with her yet.

One year later, memories of Georgia's death and torment from her twin brother threaten to crumble the shaky safe haven Jiah rebuilt. Maybe the neighborhood dinner party Estrella invited her to will ease her mind. But when her best friend never shows, a series of texts lead Jiah to the beach below, where she finds a mutilated body positioned exactly how her uncle displayed his victims over a decade ago. The killer mocks Jiah, hinting they know about her secrets, too. But is Jiah the monster Dumont thinks she is? As Jiah hunts the killer, how far will she go to keep her lies buried with the dead?

EMMA C. WELLS is the USA Today bestselling author of The Girl's a Killer (2024 Sourcebooks). She loves anti-heroes, dark humor, witty banter, and ride-or-die friendships. Twisty relationships are her kryptonite (or catnip—depending on how you look at it). She lives in Louisiana.

Sharp Objects with a dash of Practical Magic in this southern gothic thriller with cool girl edge from USA Today bestselling author Emma C. Wells following two estranged sisters who will do anything to protect each other – even murder. Again.

Milly can’t divine the future anymore, and maybe that’s a good thing. Lately, her life has been bleak enough, she doesn’t need the now-silent tea leaves to tell her. She’s alone and waitressing in a sleepy town while her estranged younger sister thrives miles away in a shiny new life with a shiny new marriage. Milly doesn’t blame Francis for wanting nothing to do with her. Not after what happened in that Tennessee meadow a decade before.

But when Francis shows up on Milly’s doorstep with a black eye and a plea for help escaping her well-connected, wealthy husband – Milly can’t say no. Especially when the tea leaves are finally crystal clear: if the sisters don’t kill Francis’s husband, he’ll eventually kill her.

But if they’re going to plot a murder, the sisters have no choice but to return to the one place, and two aunts, they’d left behind. A place where another body – and a multitude of secrets – were buried. Because this isn’t the first time the sisters have needed to dispose of a bad man. In fact, they might be pretty good at it.

 

10/21 Charlotte Arts & Lectures Presents: An Evening of Bog Lore with Anna North

Join Charlotte Arts & Lectures and Cleary's Bookstore for an entertaining and educational evening of "Bog Lore" with Bog Queen author Anna North! Anna will host a lecture on all things Bogs: They're secrets, the history of bog bodies, druids, how they were the inspiration and research subject for her first book, Bog Queen, and more. We hope you will join us for an insightful evening with a fantastic author!

With the purchase of a ticket, guests will receive a signed paperback copy of Anna North's book Bog Queen. Additional titles on the subject of bogs will be available for purchase at the event, as well as signed copies of Anna's previous novels Outlawed and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. Please note that we will not be able to accommodate the signing of personal copies brought from home; please refrain from bringing additional books to this event.

Tickets for this event are $25. Purchase Tickets Here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna North is the author of America Pacifica, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, and the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Outlawed. She is a senior correspondent at Vox and lives in Brooklyn.

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Agnes arrives in the peat bogs of Northern England to study an anthropological marvel—an Iron Age body—she isn’t expecting the controversy. Peat-cutters are looking to profit from the bog, activists are demanding it be preserved, scientists are clamoring for the next discovery. And then there is the moss itself: a repository of artifacts, with its own dark stories to tell.

Flashing between post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe, Bog Queen brims with ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strengths in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.