Sinclairville Free Library

Sinclairville Samplers
2025-09-05 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-09-12 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-09-19 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-09-26 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-10-03 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-10-10 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-10-17 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-10-24 10:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York) and 6 more dates | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Quilting, knitting, crochet, embroidering, and fun with friends.

Books Unlimited Book Club
2025-09-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
You never know what’s happening on the other side of the wall.
Your neighbour told you that she didn’t want your six-month-old daughter at the dinner party. Nothing personal, she just couldn’t stand her crying.
Your husband said it would be fine. After all, you only live next door. You’ll have the baby monitor and you’ll take it in turns to go back every half hour.
Your daughter was sleeping when you checked on her last. But now, as you race up the stairs in your deathly quiet house, your worst fears are realized. She’s gone.
You’ve never had to call the police before. But now they’re in your home, and who knows what they’ll find there.
What would you be capable of, when pushed past your limit?

Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required.

Virtual Adult Book Club
2025-09-25 19:30 - 20:30 | VIRTUAL EVENT
For One More Day by Mitch Albom
“Every family is a ghost story…”
Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss.
For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?
As a child, Charley “Chick” Benetto was told by his father, “You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both.” So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.
Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life.
He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother, who died eight years earlier, is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened..
What follows is the one “ordinary” day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.
Through Albom’s inspiring characters and masterful storytelling, readers will newly appreciate those whom they love and may have thought they’d lost in their own lives. For One More Day is a book for anyone in a family, and will be cherished by Albom’s millions of fans worldwide.

Register using the Event & Program Registration.
You can request a copy be reserved during registration. Virtual link will be provided after registration.

Add to calendar

Poetry Class & Workshop with John Brantingham
2025-10-09 17:00 - 19:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Poetry Class & Workshop
Join John Brantingham, professor emeritus of creative writing for a free poetry class and workshop.
Brantingham will help you write poetry and publish it in magazines if you like. Students have published in The New Yorker, McSweeneys, and The Paris Review among other places. The class is completely free to you and you can join in as little or as much as you like.

Poetry reading following the class: Poetry Reading with Poet, Sarah Freligh

To register, email johnmbrantingham@gmail.com. In the subject line write, “Poetry Class”.

Poetry Reading with Poet, Sarah Freligh
2025-10-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Share your poetry with other poets and writers. Open to the community.
Poet, Sarah Freligh, will share about her work and writing journey.
Presented by author/educator, John Brantingham.

Book Club @ The Homestead
2025-10-17 15:00 - 16:00 | Bergquist Library at the Homestead in Gerry @ 4600 Route 60 Gerry NY 14740
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
Artist’s daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children – and learned to accept them as they are. Yet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old-age. And when she discovers that her most treasured possession, her father’s painting, The Shell Seekers, is now worth a small fortune, it is Penelope who must make the decisions that will determine whether her family can continue to survive as a family, or be split apart.
Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required. Open to the public.

Anecdotes & Ancestors with Tom Jordan
2025-10-18 10:30 - 12:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Anecdotes & Ancestors with Tom Jordan
A discussion of a few colorful leaves from the Jordan family tree.
Former Sinclairville resident Dr. Tom Jordan will present a few anecdotes about some of the characters in his family tree as told to him by his dearly departed relatives. Penhollows, Harpers, Torreys, Edsons, and McClarans may be interested in attending.
Afterwards at Evergreen Cemetery view a few of the graves of those discussed and assist with collecting ground penetrating radar data across areas of interest.
Tom Jordan, PhD, PG Researcher & Part-Time Faculty GIS Map Tech Specialist Youngstown State University

Books Unlimited Book Club
2025-10-20 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See
An immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China.
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.
From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus , they tell from adversity beauty can bloom.
But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.
How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.

Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required.

Poetry Class & Workshop with John Brantingham
2025-10-24 14:00 - 16:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Poetry Class & Workshop
Join John Brantingham, professor emeritus of creative writing for a free poetry class and workshop.
Brantingham will help you write poetry and publish it in magazines if you like. Students have published in The New Yorker, McSweeneys, and The Paris Review among other places. The class is completely free to you and you can join in as little or as much as you like.

To register, email johnmbrantingham@gmail.com. In the subject line write, “Poetry Class”.

Virtual Book Club
2025-10-30 19:30 - 20:30 | VIRTUAL EVENT
Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”
Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.

Register using the Event & Program Registration.
You can request a copy be reserved during registration. Virtual link will be provided after registration.

CLSC Book Club
2025-11-01 09:00 - 10:00 | 3 Lakes Cafe, 11 S Main Street, Cassadaga, United States
CLSC BOOK CLUB
The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle is the oldest book club in the US.
This book club will meet in person at 3 Lakes Cafe (located on Main Street in Cassadaga) to discuss books from the CLSC book list.

October’s Book Selection: The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

Hosted by Erin Gray in partnership with the Sinclairville Free Library. Copies are available for checkout through the library’s hold process.
For more information on CLSC.

Poetry Class & Workshop with John Brantingham
2025-11-13 16:00 - 18:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Poetry Class & Workshop
Join John Brantingham, professor emeritus of creative writing for a free poetry class and workshop.
Brantingham will help you write poetry and publish it in magazines if you like. Students have published in The New Yorker, McSweeneys, and The Paris Review among other places. The class is completely free to you and you can join in as little or as much as you like.

Poetry reading following the class: Poetry Reading with Poets, T Anders Carson and Kendall Johnson

To register, email johnmbrantingham@gmail.com. In the subject line write, “Poetry Class”.

Books Unlimited Book Club
2025-11-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.
Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.
Inspired by the life of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into history.

Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required.

Book Club @ The Homestead
2025-11-21 15:00 - 16:00 | Bergquist Library at the Homestead in Gerry @ 4600 Route 60 Gerry NY 14740
For One More Day by Mitch Albom
“Every family is a ghost story…”
Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss.
For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?
As a child, Charley “Chick” Benetto was told by his father, “You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both.” So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.
Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life.
He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother, who died eight years earlier, is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened..
What follows is the one “ordinary” day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.
Through Albom’s inspiring characters and masterful storytelling, readers will newly appreciate those whom they love and may have thought they’d lost in their own lives. For One More Day is a book for anyone in a family, and will be cherished by Albom’s millions of fans worldwide.
Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required. Open to the public.

CLSC Book Club
2025-12-13 09:00 - 10:00 | 3 Lakes Cafe, 11 S Main Street, Cassadaga, United States
CLSC BOOK CLUB
The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle is the oldest book club in the US.
This book club will meet in person at 3 Lakes Cafe (located on Main Street in Cassadaga) to discuss books from the CLSC book list.

October’s Book Selection: World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Hosted by Erin Gray in partnership with the Sinclairville Free Library. Copies are available for checkout through the library’s hold process.
For more information on CLSC.

Books Unlimited Book Club
2025-12-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
The Noel Stranger by Richard Paul Evans
From Richard Paul Evans, the next exciting holiday-themed novel in his New York Times bestselling The Noel Collection.
Maggie Walther feels like her world is imploding. Publicly humiliated after her husband, a local councilman, is arrested for bigamy, and her subsequent divorce, she has isolated herself from the world. When her only friend insists that Maggie climb out of her hole, and embrace the season to get her out of her funk, Maggie decides to put up a Christmas tree and heads off to buy one — albeit reluctantly. She is immediately taken by Andrew, the kind, handsome man who owns the Christmas tree lot and delivers her tree. She soon learns that Andrew is single and new to her city and, like her, is also starting his life anew.
As their friendship develops, Maggie slowly begins to trust again — something she never thought possible. Then, just when she thinks she has finally found happiness, she discovers a dark secret from Andrew’s past. Is there more to this stranger’s truth than meets the eye?
This powerful new holiday novel from Richard Paul Evans explores the true power of the season, redemption, and the freedom that comes from forgiveness.

Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required.

Virtual Book Club
2025-12-18 18:00 - 19:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan Henry
Megs Devonshire sets out to fulfill her younger brother George’s last wish by uncovering the truth behind his favorite story. The answer provides hope and healing and a magical journey for anyone whose life has ever been changed by a book.
1950: Margaret Devonshire (Megs) is a seventeen-year-old student of mathematics and physics at Oxford University. When her beloved eight-year-old brother asks Megs if Narnia is real, logical Megs tells him it’s just a book for children, and certainly not true. Homebound due to his illness, and remaining fixated on his favorite books, George presses her to ask the author of the recently released novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a question: “Where did Narnia come from?”
Despite her fear about approaching the famous author, who is a professor at her school, Megs soon finds herself taking tea with C. S. Lewis and his own brother Warnie, begging them for answers.
Rather than directly telling her where Narnia came from, Lewis encourages Megs to form her own conclusion as he slowly tells her the little-known stories from his own life that led to his inspiration. As she takes these stories home to George, the little boy travels farther in his imagination than he ever could in real life.
Lewis’s answers will reveal to Megs and her family many truths that science and math cannot, and the gift she thought she was giving to her brother—the story behind Narnia—turns out to be his gift to her, instead: hope.

Register using the Event & Program Registration.
You can request a copy be reserved during registration. Virtual link will be provided after registration.
