Poetry Class & Workshop with John Brantingham
2025-10-24 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | 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.

Sinclairville Samplers
2025-10-31 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-11-07 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-11-14 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-11-21 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-12-05 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-12-12 10:30 - 12:00, 2025-12-19 10:30 - 12:00, 2026-01-09 11:00 - 12:30 and 3 more dates | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Quilting, knitting, crochet, embroidering, and fun with friends.

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.

Sinclairville Samplers
2026-01-02 11:00 - 12:30, 2026-02-06 11:00 - 12:00, 2026-02-13 11:00 - 12:00, 2026-02-27 11:00 - 12:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Quilting, knitting, crochet, embroidering and fun with friends.

Book Club @ The Homestead
2026-01-16 15:00 - 16:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
The Christmas Promise by Richard Paul Evans
This holiday season, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Noel Collection returns with another heartwarming story of secrets, heartbreak, forgiveness, and the true meaning of Christmas.
On the night of her high school graduation, Richelle Bach’s father gives her and her identical twin sister, Michelle, matching opal necklaces. “These opals look identical,” he tells them, “but the fire inside each is completely unique—just like the two of you.”
Indeed, the two sisters couldn’t be more different, and their paths diverge as they embark on adulthood. Years pass, until—at their father’s behest—they both come home for Christmas. What happens then forever damages their relationship, and Richelle vows never to see or speak to her sister again. In their father’s last days, he asks Richelle to forgive Michelle, a deathbed promise she never fulfills as her twin is killed in an accident.
Now, painfully alone and broken, caring for the sickest of children in a hospital PICU, Richelle has one last dream: to be an author. The plot of her book, The Prodigal Daughter , is a story based on her sister’s life. It’s not until she meets Justin Ek, a man who harbors his own loss, that a secret promise is revealed, and Richelle learns that the story she’s writing is not about her sister, but about herself.
Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required. Open to the public.

Virtual Book Club
2026-01-22 18:00 - 19:00 | VIRTUAL EVENT
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Memoir & Autobiography (2019)

The author of Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets—a real-time In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history—the life she had lived—crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about secrets—secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman’s urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in—a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.

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

Books Unlimited Book Club
2026-02-02 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
Small, Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Fiction (2016)

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.
With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn’t offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.

Copies are available through the library system.
Registration is requested. A copy of the book club selection can be reserved during registration.

Unlimited Book Club
2026-02-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Sinclairville Free Library @ 15 Main Street, Sinclairville NY 14782
The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation by Elizabeth Letts

Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers’ Favorite History & Biography (2011)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses—a drab white former plow horse named Snowman—and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots—and their win was the stuff of legend.
Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit—so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road.
But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up back at Harry’s barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping.
Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo, based on the insight and recollections of “the Flying Dutchman” himself. Their story captured the heart of Cold War–era America—a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. Elizabeth Letts’s message is Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.

Copies are available through the library system.
Registration is requested. A copy of the book club selection can be reserved during registration.

Book Club @ The Homestead
2026-02-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Bergquist Library at the Homestead in Gerry @ 4600 Route 60 Gerry NY 14740
Devil’s Food Cake Murder (#14 Hannah Swensen series) by Joanne Fluke
These days, everyone in Lake Eden, Minnesota, is buzzing with activity, and Hannah Swensen is no exception. But no matter how busy she may be, Hannah can always find time to help a friend in need–especially when he’s been murdered. . .
Hannah Swensen has to admit that her life is pretty sweet. Things are going well in the romance department, and her bakery’s delectable confections are selling almost as fast as she can bake them. Even her good friend Claire is on Cloud Nine, head over heels with her new husband, Reverend Bob Knudson. If only they could find time to take their honeymoon!
When Bob’s childhood friend, Matthew Walters, comes to town, it seems like divine intervention. Matthew, like Bob, is a Lutheran minister with a stubborn sweet tooth. Since he’s on sabbatical, Matthew is happy to fill in for Bob while he and Claire take that long-awaited honeymoon. It sounds like the perfect plan–until Hannah finds Matthew in the rectory, face-down in a plate full of Devil’s Food Cake, a single bullet in his head.
Determined to find out who killed Matthew, Hannah starts asking questions–and discovers that the good Reverend wasn’t quite the saintly fellow he appeared to be. But could the gold Sacagawea coins in Sunday’s collection plate hold the key to solving the crime? Or is the murder connected to that big jewel heist out in Minneapolis? Is it possible that Matthew’s love of chocolate somehow led to his downfall? It will take some more digging to find out, but Hannah is sure of one thing: even the most half-baked murder plot can be oh so deadly. . .
Copies are available through the library system.
No registration is required. Open to the public.

Virtual Book Club
2026-02-26 18:00 - 19:00 | VIRTUAL EVENT
Join the discussion from the comfort of your living room!!!
Title Selection: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Book #1 in series of 5 titles
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.
Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late? (from Goodreads)

Register at Event & Program Registration.
You can request a copy be reserved during registration. Virtual link (Zoom) will be provided after registration.
