Latest Events in Wellesley(July Updated)

Wellesley Fathers Forum Presents: Spring Thing Again Dads and their kids are invited to a fun-filled day at Warren Park for the Spring Thing Again event! There will be field games led by celebrity trainer, Coach Wayne, an egg hunt, and plenty of snacks and pizza to keep everyone entertained. 3:30 pm: Spring Thing Again begins 3:45 pm: Egg hunt (bring a collecting bag / basket) followed by field games 5 pm: Pizza served (included in your family ticket). An ice cream truck will have treats available for purchase 5:30 pm: Event ends Sign ups open on Sunday, April 6 at 10 am. Sign ups close on Thursday, May 8 at 10 pm. Information Source: Wellesley Fathers Forum | eventbrite

2025 Cybersecurity Summit Join us for the 2025 Cybersecurity Summit, a must-attend event for all tech enthusiasts and cybersecurity professionals! This in-person summit will be held at the MassBay Community College Wellesley Hills Campus in Wellesley, MA, USA . Get ready to dive into the latest trends, exchange knowledge, and network with industry experts. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your understanding of information security and stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital world. Mark your calendars and secure your spot now! Information Source: Towerwall and MassBay Community College | eventbrite

We hope you will join us! Dear WCCC Community, We are excited to provide you with an invitation and information regarding the WCCC Family Gathering 2025! Date: Monday, June 9 Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm ( Remember both programs will close at 5:30pm on 6.09.25 ) Place: Lamere Plaza/Len Green Rec. Center at Babson College(Bryant Way off of Wellesley Avenue, Wellesley MA.) What to Bring: Please bring a filled water bottle and a blanket to sit on.( Please apply insect repellent prior to arrival if desired. ) What we will Eat : Pizza and cookies will be provided Cost: $20 Adult Ticket. What will Happen: Dance Party with DJ from 5:45-7:00 pm Face Painting Children’s Games Social time for Parents and Teachers! Silent Auction Cost : $20 Adult Ticket. We ask that all adults contribute $20 to help us defray the costs of the food, DJ and rental. Children are free. We also are offering the option to sponsor a teacher ticket. RSVP: Please purchase your ticket prior to Friday, June 6th, when we will finalize the pizza order. Questions: Please email Darlene (ECP) dhowland@wcccwellesley.org or Dan (ASP)dfinucane@wcccwellesley.org with any questions. We look forward to seeing you there! The Early Childhood and After School Program Committee Information Source: WCCC | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK A troubled young man, a seven million dollar fortune, and a murder at sea... From New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman comes a gripping contemporary true crime narrative for everyone fascinated by the Murdaugh murders, about Nathan Carman, who was found floating on a raft in the North Atlantic and was later accused of murdering his mother to gain access to his family's fortune. The sun’s reflection danced atop the choppy waters 115 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard as the gigantic freighter Orient Lucky, weighed down by tons of iron and metal scrap materials, sailed over the 9,000 foot deep Alvin Canyon, better known to mariners as the graveyard of the North Atlantic, when the captain spotted a small life raft floating in the water. On the raft was amateur fisher Nathan Carman, who claimed to have gone out for a fishing trip with his mother when his boat sank seven days earlier. But Carman was in remarkably good shape for being lost at sea for a week, and holes soon began to appear in his story. The mysterious death of Carman’s multi-millionaire grandfather months before had made his mother a wealthy woman. And now that she was missing and presumed dead, Carman stood to inherit a massive amount of money. In May 2023, federal prosecutors charged him with the murders of his grandfather and his mother, and he died of apparent suicide in prison in June 2023. " Blood in the Water is utterly immersive. Casey Sherman is a master true crime storyteller. Like always, he brings characters to life which makes it hard to tear yourself away from the page!" — Zibby Owens, host of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, best-selling author of Blank ABOUT THE AUTHOR Casey Sherman is a New York Times Bestselling Author of 13 books including The Finest Hours (now a major motion picture starring Casey Affleck & Chris Pine), Boston Strong (the basis for the film Patriots Day starring Mark Wahlberg), and Hunting Whitey . Sherman is also the author of 12, Search for the Strangler, Animal, Bad Blood, Black Irish, Black Dragon, Above & Beyond, and The Ice Bucket Challenge . Sherman is a contributing writer for TIME, Esquire, Washington Post, Boston Herald, and Boston Magazine, and has appeared as a guest an analyst on more than 100 television news programs. Sherman is a graduate of Barnstable High School (Cape Cod), Fryeburg Academy (Fryeburg, ME) and Boston University. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

This event is open to all women, including faculty, staff, and students. Women do not need to have children to attend; this event is for women who aspire to be mothers, as well as empty nesters, angel mothers, foster mothers, godmothers, and moms-to-be. Join us for a special brunch designed exclusively for moms and women aspiring to be mothers. This event offers a wonderful opportunity for moms to take a break from their daily routines, connect with other moms, and enjoy meaningful conversations both personally and professionally. Through shared stories, activities, and, of course, delicious food, women will experience a chance to relax, network, and learn. We are excited to announce that professional headshots will be offered to all attendees during the first hour (11am-12pm) of the brunch! This is a great opportunity to have an updated professional headshot for LinkedIn and other business purposes. This perk is included in the ticket price. We encourage all attendees to dress in business attire and you are welcome to choose between formal or casual dress. We are honored to welcome distinguished guests who will share their professional journeys as well as their experiences integrating motherhood into their daily lives. Distinguished moms include: A woman who became a mother while pursuing her PhD. A mother who became an entrepreneur/franchisee. A woman who became a mother while pursuing her MBA. A mother who is an entrepreneur and transitioned from one state to another with her child. A woman who experienced premature labor/miscarriage/stillbirth while working. A mother working full-time, pursuing her MBA, and supporting her high schooler’s transition into college. An international student who became a mother overseas while pursuing her MBA. A mother who is pursuing her MBA while living with multiple chronic illnesses and mothering a toddler. A single mother, entpreneur, and full-time MBA student A single mother running for a school district committee position This event provides a platform for mothers to network, connect, and exchange tips on navigating the challenges of motherhood while integrating work or higher education into their daily lives. Our goal is to create an inclusive environment for moms from diverse backgrounds to learn from each other and enjoy a much-needed break from their daily responsibilities. This event promises a supportive and empowering atmosphere. Please invite your network of women friends and associates. We look forward to seeing you there! Information Source: Moms@Babson Graduate Initiative | eventbrite

This is a free event but we ask that you RSVP. If you would prefer to RSVP by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. Books will be available for purchase at the event, or you can add a purchase onto your RSVP. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. ABOUT THE BOOK The first book in the beloved Lemonade War series—a clever blend of humor, math wizardry, and business know-how—has sold more than 1.5 million copies and is now available as a full-color graphic novel. Legions of kids have grown up reading the Lemonade War series. Now, for the first time, fans of all ages can experience the beloved story as never before, in a gorgeous, full-color graphic novel. Evan Treski is people smart. He’s good at talking to people, even grown-ups. His younger sister, Jessie, on the other hand, is math smart—but not especially good at understanding people. She knows that feelings are her weakest subject. With just five days left of summer vacation, Evan and Jessie launch an all-out war to see who can sell the most lemonade before school starts. As the battleground heats up, there really is no telling who will win—and, even more important, if their fight will ever end. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jacqueline Davies is the bestselling author of the Lemonade War series, which has inspired millions of young readers across the world to raise money for charitable causes. She is also the award-winning author of the Sydney and Taylor series, illustrated by Deborah Hocking, and Bubbles . . . UP! , illustrated by Sonia Sánchez, which was selected as an ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice and a Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year. Visit her online at jacquelinedavies.net. ABOUT THE MODERATOR Ellen T. Crenshaw is the creator of the New York Times bestselling Baby-sitters Club graphic novel adaptations of Stacey's Mistake and Kristy and the Walking Disaster by Ann M. Martin. She is the co-creator, with Colleen AF Venable, of Kiss Number 8 , which was nominated for an Eisner Award and longlisted for a National Book Award. She is also the creator of What Was the Turning Point of the Civil War? , a Who HQ graphic novel. When she's not making comics, Ellen loves playing video games, hiking with her dog, and deconstructing movie plots with her husband. Visit her online at ellencrenshaw.com Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

Welcome to the U.S. High School Application Experience Sharing & Concert! Date: May 3, 2025 at 7pm Location: Sanctuary Hall, UU Wellesley Hills Event Highlights: • Real experiences and insights on U.S. high school applications • Interview tips, essay writing strategies, and extracurricular planning • Personal stories from students + family discussion session • Outstanding student music performances – feel the power of dreams through the arts! Who Should Attend: • Students and families preparing for U.S. high school applications • Families seeking detailed academic planning guidance • Students passionate about music, eager to perform and grow Information Source: New World Opera LLC. | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK A remarkable, decimating work of reporting by award-winning journalist and priest Cristina Rathbone about asylum seekers trapped at a port of entry to the US: the trauma they carry, the community they create, and the faith they maintain. The Asylum Seekers offers a rare narrative account of the horror of the US-Mexico border. Borders run through author Cristina Rathbone too, whose mother was a Cuban refugee. So in 2019 she travels to Juarez, unsure what to do but determined to learn. Weaving intimate portraits of individuals with broader stories about the community, reporting from the border as a whole, and reflections on the meaning of faith in a place of suffering, Rathbone tells the story of Mexican asylum seekers living in a makeshift tent camp at the foot of a bridge. Life in the camp is both hectic and harrowing. Families arrive. Families leave. Families get through to the US. Families are returned from the US. Women weep, children squabble, and grown men sob over photographs of their murdered sons' mutilated bodies. Here too, however, are beauty, and empathy, and hope. Over time, a leadership team emerges. The community begins to convene daily meetings, establish systems of distribution for donations, and start classes for the kids. Serving as an unofficial chaplain, Rathbone is there through it all: listening, receiving, assisting, and most of all learning about what authentic faith looks like under conditions such as these. Written in the tradition of My Fourth Time, We Drowned and Rivermouth , The Asylum Seekers renders in startling, intimate detail the day-to-day lives of people who are determined to enter the US legally and who often suffer for it. The result is a fierce, poignant inquiry into the dignity of those who seek asylum--and into what we owe each other. "The Asylum Seekers shines with a kind of moral clarity that illuminates not only the horrific effects of the United States immigration system on individuals, families, and children, but the personal toll of working alongside those affected. A must-read." –Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cristina Rathbone is an award-winning journalist, Episcopal priest, and spiritual director. She is the author of On the Outside Looking In: A Year in an Inner-City High School and A World Apart: Women, Prisons, and Life Behind Bars . In partnership with Episcopal Migration Ministries, she founded Neighbor to Neighbor, a national network that supports congregations as they accompany newly arrived asylum seekers. Rathbone is the mother of two sons and lives in Massachusetts. (Photo credit: John Earle) Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK "Written with the vividness of a poet and the reflexivity of an auto-ethnographer . . . a classic story about displacement, resilience, and triumph, Property of the Revolution offers fresh perspectives and a deeper understanding of the intersectional meanings of home, country, and family." —Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. In this sweeping, historical, yet intimate memoir, the author details her family’s transformation from pro-Castro revolutionaries in a scrappy Havana barrio to refugees in a New Hampshire mill town—a timeless and timely tale of loss and reinvention. Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutionaries themselves but disillusioned by the Castro government’s repressive tactics, they fled to the US. The permanent losses they suffered—of home, country, and loved ones, all within forty-eight hours—haunted her multigenerational family as they reclaimed their lives and freedom in 1967 New Hampshire. There, they fed each other stories of their scrappy barrio—some of which Hebra Flaster has shared on All Things Considered— to resurrect their lost world and fortify themselves for a daunting task: building a new life in a foreign land. Weaving pivotal events in Cuba–US history with her viejos’ —elders’—stories of surviving political upheaval, impossible choices, and “refugeedom,” Property of the Revolution celebrates the indomitable spirit and wisdom of the women warriors who led the family out of Cuba, shaped its rebirth as Cuban Americans, and helped Ana grow up hopeful, future-facing—American. But what happens when deeply buried childhood memories resurface, demanding an adult’s reckoning? Here’s how the fiercest love, the most stubborn will, and the power of family put nine new Americans back on their feet. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ana Hebra Flaster is a Cuban American writer and activist for human rights in Cuba. She was nearly six when her family fled Cuba and settled in Nashua, New Hampshire. After graduating from Smith College and enjoying a career in software consulting, she began her writing career. Her writing about Cuba and Cuban Americans has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and elsewhere. Her commentaries and storytelling have aired on NPR’s All Things Considered and PBS’s Stories from the Stage. Property of the Revolution , her first book, was shortlisted for the 2023 Restless Book’s New Immigrant Writing Prize and the 2022 Cintas Creative Writing Fellowship. After forty years in the Boston area, she recently moved to southern New Hampshire with her family. When she’s not writing, Ana loves birdwatching, walking in the woods, and digging in her garden. ABOUT THE MODERATOR Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. She teaches writing at Brown University and is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK Longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Giller Prize One of Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of New York magazine's "23 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024" • One of The Guardian 's "Books to Look Out for in 2024" • One of The Globe & Mail 's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of BookPage 's Most Anticipated fiction of 2024 • One of Literary Hub 's “Most Anticipated Books of 2024” • One of Book Riot 's "Most Anticipated Books of 2024" “A masterpiece.… I couldn’t help finishing each chapter in a flush of awe.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists. Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History , told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace. Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force…one of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li). ABOUT THE AUTHOR Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ABOUT THE MODERATOR Whitney holds a BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her short fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, The Telegraph, The Tatler, and Bellevue Literary Review. Her first novel, The Age of Light , based on the life of pioneering photographer Lee Miller, was published by Little, Brown (US) and Picador (UK) in February, 2019, and was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller and named one of the best books of 2019 by Parade, Glamour Magazine, Real Simple, Refinery 29, Booklist and Yahoo. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a coups de couer selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published in over a dozen other countries. Whitney is the recipient of a 2020 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Fellowship in Fiction, and has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Arts and Ragdale. She teaches fiction in the Boston area and is a co-founder of the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly reading series. She lives with her husband and daughter in Arlington, MA, where she is at work on her second novel. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum, and the art she collected. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture. An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated. Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old. But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer. "Marshalling vivid facts, fluent insights, and narrative radiance, Dykstra fully captures Gardner's dynamism, intrepidity, creativity, and singular achievements." –Booklist (starred review) ABOUT THE AUTHOR Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life , which won a NEH Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. For her recent book Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner , she received a NEH Public Scholars grant and the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. Chasing Beauty is a finalist for the Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing. She has been a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 2011 and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives near Boston. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love. After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home. Mari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island…from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies. Little Great Island illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love. "If you love the novels of Elizabeth Strout and Anne Rivers Siddons...you will love Little Great Island . This is one of those novels you will carry inside you forever." —Jenna Blum ABOUT BE THE BUTTERFLY The Be the Butterfly initiative invites audiences to participate by claiming some small action to make a difference in a world of dramatic climate change. Be the Butterfly refers to the idea that—like a butterfly flapping its wings—one small action can affect the greater whole. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kate Woodworth is the author of the novel Racing Into the Dark (EP Dutton, 1989), hailed as “A compelling exploration of mental illness” by Booklist and as an “auspicious debut” by Publishers Weekly. Her short stories have appeared in Cimarron Review, Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah and other literary journals. A retired medical writer in addition to fiction writer, she has received numerous awards and recognition for her writing, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, multiple Utah Arts Council and Dalton Pen Communication Awards, and an International Association of Business Communicators finalist recognition. She received her MFA from Boston University. ABOUT THE MODERATOR Karen Day is the award-winning author of three middle grade novels, all published by Wendy Lamb at Random House - Tall Tales, No Cream Puffs and A Million Miles from Boston . Her first novel for adults, I'll Stay (Kensington 2018), was a Publishers Weekly Starred review and Pick of the Week. It was also named to Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books 2018. In 2021, her short story, "The Cellar," won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and was published in the journal's 2022 fall issue. Karen has taught writing at Grub Street in Boston, and at various writing conferences across New England. She lives in Newton, MA, with her family. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

The tour will have distinct stops, all within the crabapple orchard. A brief history of crabapples as well as how Glen and Alex started growing their orchard. Enter the orchard and learn about what a rootstock is, how the different rootstocks being tested and how a rootstock affects the growth and maturation of a fruit tree. Learn about the symbiotic relationship between other local growers and crabapples. Special focus is placed on how the orchard is maintained without the use of pesticides or herbicides. Next up is learning about pruning fruit trees. What works, what we are testing and why anybody does it. In this section, we will also be including demonstrations of different pests, bacterial or viral infections that can damage fruit trees. Finally take a look at the espalier style of growing, the only one in the world dedicated to crabapple trees. This concludes the tour, guests will be provided with an assortment of local snacks, as well as a complimentary crabapple product to take home. Information Source: Glen Smyth, CEO of Appleflats | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT DUET FOR ONE Haunted by his youthful romance with Dara, gifted and sensitive violinist Adam must confront his past to find a way forward. At the Philadelphia graveside of his mother, Adele Pearl, wife and partner in a celebrated two-piano team, his father, Victor, mourns the loss of both his wife and musical career. As Adam reflects on their relationship, he realizes his mother was absent in ways that truly mattered. Struggling with the emptiness left by a series of failed relationships with talented women, Adam grapples with his connection to Dara, an English professor burdened by her own divorce and blind to what she lost in him. Martha Anne Toll’ s Duet for One weaves a poignant narrative of loss, connection, and the enduring hope that love can be found where life resides, following her acclaimed debut, Three Muses . ABOUT THE AUTHOR Martha Anne Toll is a novelist and critic. Her debut novel, Three Muses , won praise from national outlets including the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and NPR, and was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize. Toll is the recipient of Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and Dairy Hollow. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and serves on the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. A graduate of Yale, Toll holds a B.A. Degree in Music. Her classical music training informs her artistic practice. She holds a J.D. Degree from Boston University School of Law, and comes to writing professionally after a career dedicated to social justice. Toll lives in Washington, D.C. ~ ~ ~ ABOUT NO SHIP SETS OUT TO BE A SHIPWRECK From the author of the National Book Award finalist The Suicide Index – hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “an extraordinary magical mystery tour of a book” – comes a startlingly original exploration of the unpredictability of fate and the mystery of our own mortality. No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck is a poetic and philosophical meditation ignited by a beautiful, frightening, mysterious object: the seventeenth-century Swedish warship Vasa , which sank only minutes into its maiden voyage and lay forgotten underwater until it was found and raised more than three hundred years later. Beginning with Joan Wickersham’s first sight of the ship in its Stockholm museum, her pieces – intimate, irreverent, urgent – weave together Vasa ’s story and the associations it evokes. She addresses the shipbuilders, the divers and restorers, the men and women who drowned in the wreck and the objects they left behind: shoes and cooking pots, game boards and bones. She interrogates the wind that capsized the ship and the shipworms that failed to eat the wreck. Constantly rising up are the lingering echoes of her father’s suicide; memories of her mother’s final illness and death; and the paradoxical presence of the ship itself – an emblem of death and rebirth, a monumental failure whose flaws made it an enduring success, a vessel both destroyed and preserved by catastrophe. No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck is a contemplative, strange, passionate, funny, and haunting book that both is and isn’t about the ship – a personal yet universal reckoning with mortality, and the question of what vanishes and what endures. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joan Wickersham is the author of The News from Spain and The Suicide Index , a National Book Award Finalist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in magazines including Agni, One Story, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Story, and her work has been published in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. For the past fifteen years her op-ed column has run regularly in The Boston Globe. She has published essays and reviews in The Los Angeles Times and The International Herald Tribune and has read her work on National Public Radio’s “On Point” and “Morning Edition.” Wickersham has received the Ploughshares Cohen Award for Best Short Story and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She has taught at Harvard, Emerson, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), and the Bennington Writing Seminars. She graduated from Yale with a degree in art history and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

We hope you will join us! Dear WCCC Community, We are excited to provide you with an invitation and information regarding the WCCC Family Gathering 2025! Date: Monday, June 9 Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm ( Remember both programs will close at 5:30pm on 6.09.25 ) Place: Lamere Plaza/Len Green Rec. Center at Babson College(Bryant Way off of Wellesley Avenue, Wellesley MA.) What to Bring: Please bring a filled water bottle and a blanket to sit on.( Please apply insect repellent prior to arrival if desired. ) What we will Eat : Pizza and cookies will be provided Cost: $20 Adult Ticket. What will Happen: Dance Party with DJ from 5:45-7:00 pm Face Painting Children’s Games Social time for Parents and Teachers! Silent Auction Cost : $20 Adult Ticket. We ask that all adults contribute $20 to help us defray the costs of the food, DJ and rental. Children are free. We also are offering the option to sponsor a teacher ticket. RSVP: Please purchase your ticket prior to Friday, June 6th, when we will finalize the pizza order. Questions: Please email Darlene (ECP) dhowland@wcccwellesley.org or Dan (ASP)dfinucane@wcccwellesley.org with any questions. We look forward to seeing you there! The Early Childhood and After School Program Committee Information Source: WCCC | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK The Boston Chef’s Table brings recipes from the best chefs in the Boston area right to your kitchen. Far from being standard, contemporary recipes represent the very best Boston has to offer, from Roasted Pear and Goat Cheese Salad to Swordfish with Apple Caponata to the classic Hot New England Lobster Roll. Included are favorites from Lydia Shire, Joanne Chang, Jody Adams, and more. With more than 50 recipes, gorgeous color photos, and sidebars dedicated to the city’s culinary history and ethnic food enclaves, The Boston Chef’s Table is your go-to kitchen companion. ABOUT CLARA SILVERSTEIN Clara Silverstein is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection Above the Fall Line , and coauthor of the New England Soup Factory Cookbook . She has contributed articles to the Boston Globe, Runner’s World, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. A former food writer at the Boston Herald, she has taught writing at Grub Street and presented history talks around New England. She lives near Boston with her husband. ABOUT DAVE BECKER Dave Becker’s approach to food is an extension of his personality. From his childhood shucking clams in Newburyport MA, to his nearly 25 years as patron chef at the renowned Sweet Basil he has always led with a desire to share a fun experience with his staff, guests and anyone that he comes in contact with. Dave Becker is also the chef and owner of Juniper in Wellesley, and Sweet Basil in Waltham, Massachusetts. Dave has published three cookbooks that are a compilation of favorite recipes from the restaurants and personal stories. He has a comic book series in the works that will focus on creative cocktails. Chef Becker opted to not attend culinary arts school, favoring a hands on approach to learning about food when he moved out to Napa Valley after high school, where he worked at Mustard’s Grill. He was invited to stage in Liguria at the Imperial Palace Hotel. Over the years Dave has developed strong relationships with local farmers, and serves his food on self-made plateware. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160. About ticketing: Admission to the event is $5. To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee. If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event. ABOUT THE BOOK One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace LOS ANGELES TIMES "TOP TEN BOOKS TO READ IN 2025" "Eye-opening, disturbing, moving and at times jaw-dropping . . . Once in a great while a book arrives that allows us to rediscover the strange inexhaustibility of the Civil War. Lincoln's Peace is such a book.” —Tony Kushner " Lincoln’s Peace does something remarkable: It makes us think about familiar questions in an entirely new and engaging way. A marvelous achievement." —Jon Meacham "Helps us understand what the war was all about and whether in some ways it is still being fought." —Eric Foner We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he’s decided he won’t return to Washington until he’s witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end. Was it April 9, at Appomattox, as conventional wisdom holds, where Lee surrendered to Grant in Wilmer McLean’s parlor? Or was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared “the insurrection is at an end”? That the answer was elusive was baffling even to a historian of the stature of Michael Vorenberg, whose work served as a key source of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln . Vorenberg was inspired to write this groundbreaking book, finding its title in the peace Lincoln hoped for but could not make before his assassination. A peace that required not one but many endings, as Vorenberg reveals in these pages, the most important of which came well more than a year after Lincoln’s untimely death. To say how a war ends is to suggest how it should be remembered, and Vorenberg’s search is not just for the Civil War’s endpoint but for its true nature and legacy, so essential to the American identity. It’s also a quest, in our age of “forever wars,” to understand whether the United States's interminable conflicts of the current era have a precedent in the Civil War—and whether, in a sense, wars ever end at all, or merely wax and wane. ABOUT THE AUTHOR MICHAEL VORENBERG is a professor of history at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment , which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a key source for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film, Lincoln . He is also the author of The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents , as well as a number of essays on slavery, emancipation, and the U.S. Constitution. His writings have appeared in the Chicago Tribune , The New York Times , Politico , and The Washington Post . (Photo credit: Peter Goldberg) ABOUT THE MODERATOR Dimitry Anselme has served as Chief Officer of Growth and Engagement since 2024. He joined Facing History in 1999 as a Program Associate. Dimitry leads all our earned revenue efforts, innovates program design for school and district implementation, and facilitates our organizational partnerships in the US and internationally. Prior to his current role, he spent 15 years as Facing History’s Executive Program Director for Professional Learning and Educator Support which included managing online learning, the Jewish education team, the staff development team, and the Partner Schools Network. Before joining Facing History, Dimitry taught American and world history courses in Massachusetts at Brookline High School and Doherty High School and later became principal at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School in Boston. Dimitry has a BA from Clark University and an EdM from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Information Source: Wellesley Books | eventbrite

The tour will have distinct stops, all within the crabapple orchard. A brief history of crabapples as well as how Glen and Alex started growing their orchard. Enter the orchard and learn about what a rootstock is, how the different rootstocks being tested and how a rootstock affects the growth and maturation of a fruit tree. Learn about the symbiotic relationship between other local growers and crabapples. Special focus is placed on how the orchard is maintained without the use of pesticides or herbicides. Next up is learning about pruning fruit trees. What works, what we are testing and why anybody does it. In this section, we will also be including demonstrations of different pests, bacterial or viral infections that can damage fruit trees. Finally take a look at the espalier style of growing, the only one in the world dedicated to crabapple trees. This concludes the tour, guests will be provided with an assortment of local snacks, as well as a complimentary crabapple product to take home. Information Source: Glen Smyth, CEO of Appleflats | eventbrite