Brian McLaren says Gareth’s new book How Not to be Afraid is “a beautiful book,” Kathleen Norris says it’s “a necessary book,” and Micky ScottBey Jones says it’s “a much-needed resource for skill-building through our fear and trauma, so that we might create the belonging and communities we desire.” Nadia Bolz-Weber says “I totally trust Gareth Higgins when he writes about his own fear and how it’s actually possible to transform it into something powerful, something capable of healing us and the world.” Pádraig Ó Tuama says “Gareth Higgins is a friend. This book is too.” Find out more at www.hownottobeafraid.com

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RSVP to let us know you’re coming! Depending on the volume of responses, an RSVP may be required for entrance to the event. You will also be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates.

How Not to Be Afraid

The world seems terrifying. Whether your fear is about violence, shame, illness, money, meaning, or the collapse of certainty, you are not alone. Yet the power of the fear we feel depends on the story we tell about fear. Fight, flee, or freeze: are these are only options?

Growing up near the troubled city of Belfast, Gareth Higgins was schooled in suspicion, mistrust, and paranoia. Would someone be lurking behind the door? Was there a bomb under that car? Yet fear feeds on the stories we tell ourselves, Higgins claims, and in the pages of How Not to Be Afraid, he delves into the mechanisms of fear, as well as the quiet, immense strength of individuals and communities that refuse to let it reign.

Grounded in personal experience and expert reflection on violence, conflict transformation, and trauma recovery, Higgins traces vulnerability as strength to address seven common fears that plague each of us at some point in our lives. By examining such topics as the fear of being alone, the fear of not having enough, and the fear of violence and death, he invites readers into habits of hope rooted in Celtic spirituality and the mysteries of love.

In the rich spiritual, activist, and literary tradition of Walter Wink and Kathleen Norris, Higgins points us toward tenderness, empathy, and gentle encounter with each other and with our deepest and most relentless fears. He shows us how we can replace our narratives of fear and cynicism with better stories. Peace is the way to itself, he reveals, and when we choose this path, our lives will never be the same.

Gareth Higgins was born in Belfast in 1975, grew up during the northern Ireland Troubles, and now lives in the US. He writes and speaks about the power of storytelling to shape our lives and world, peace and making justice, and how to take life seriously without believing your own propaganda. He is passionate about helping people discover the meaning of our own lives, and to learn from each other about how stories help us live better.

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Celebrate the release of The Recovery Agent with author Janet Evanovich, in conversation with Elle Cosimano!

The Recovery Agent

#1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich returns with the launch of a blockbuster new series that blends wild adventure, hugely appealing characters, and pitch-perfect humor, proving once again why she’s “the most popular mystery writer alive” (The New York Times).

Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets of any kind. She’s reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela’s latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire, it’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast.

Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Lima. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it—Gabriela’s ex-husband, Rafer. It’s Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he’s not about to let Gabriela find it without him.

Rafer is as relaxed as Gabriela is driven, and he has a lifetime’s experience getting under his ex-wife’s skin. But when they aren’t bickering about old times the two make a formidable team, and it’s going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who has also been searching for the fabled ring. A drug lord who doesn’t mind leaving a large body count behind him to get it.

The Recovery Agent marks the start of an irresistible new series that will have you clamoring for more and cheering for the unstoppable Gabriela Rose on every page.

Over the last twenty-five years, #1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich has written a staggering twenty-eight novels in the Stephanie Plum series. In addition to the Plum novels, Janet has coauthored the New York Times bestselling Fox and O’Hare series, the Knight and Moon series, the Lizzy and Diesel series, the Alexandra Barnaby novels, and the graphic novel Troublemaker (with her daughter, Alex Evanovich).

Moderator Elle Cosimano is a USA Today bestselling author, an International Thriller Award winner, and an Edgar® Award nominee. Elle’s debut novel for adults, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, kicked off a witty, fast-paced contemporary mystery series, which was a PEOPLE Magazine Pick and was named one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2021. In addition to writing novels for teens and adults, her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post and TIME. Cosimano lives with her husband and two sons in Virginia.

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About the event

Give Unto Others

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters.

What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give Unto Others, Donna Leon’s splendid 31st installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.

Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini’s son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors–that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello, and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Exploring the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal, revealing previously untold elements of Brunetti’s past, Give Unto Others shows that the price of reciprocity can be steep.

Donna Leon, born in New Jersey in 1942, has worked as a travel guide in Rome and as a copywriter in London. She taught literature in universities in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. Commissario Brunetti made her books world-famous. Donna Leon lived in Italy for many years, and although she now lives in Switzerland, she often visits Venice.

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RSVP to let us know you’re coming! RSVPs don’t guarantee a seat, but you’ll be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates.

The Secrets We Share

In a mesmerizingly twisty standalone suspense novel perfect for fans of Shari Lapena and Riley Sager, acclaimed author Edwin Hill explores the deep bonds—and deadly secrets—between two very different sisters haunted by the crimes of their father, murdered nearly twenty years earlier…

At first glance, Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott hardly look like sisters. Even off-duty, Natalie dresses like a Boston cop, preferring practical clothes and unfussy, pinned-up hair. Her younger sister, Glenn, seems tailor-made for the spotlight, from her signature red mane to her camera-ready smile. Glenn has spent years cultivating her brand through her baking blog, and with the publication of her new book, that hard work seems about to pay off. But her fans have no idea about the nightmare in Glenn and Natalie’s past.

Twenty years ago, their father’s body was discovered in the woods behind their house. A trauma like that doesn’t fit with Glenn’s public image. Yet, maybe someone reading her blog does know something. There have been anonymous online messages, vague yet ominous, hinting that she’s being watched. And with unsettling coincidences hitting ever closer to home, both Glenn and Natalie soon have more pressing matters to worry about, especially when a dead body is found in an abandoned building.

Natalie is starting to wonder how much Glenn really knows about the people closest to her. But are there also secrets Natalie has yet to uncover about those she herself trusts? For two decades, she’s believed their father was murdered by their neighbor, with whom he was having an affair. But if those events are connected to what’s happening now, maybe there’s much more that Natalie doesn’t know. About their father. About their neighbors. About her friends. Maybe even about herself.

But there are no secrets between sisters…are there?

Edwin Hill is a suspense writer and author of the critically acclaimed Hester Thursby mystery series, the first of which, Little Comfort, was an Agatha Award-finalist, a selection of the Mysterious Press First Mystery Club and a Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books selection. The second installment, The Missing Ones, was also an Agatha Award-finalist and a Sue Grafton Memorial Award nominee. Formerly the vice president and editorial director for Bedford/St. Martin’s (Macmillan), he now teaches at Emerson College and has written for the LA Review of Books, The Life Sentence, Publishers Weekly, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and their Labrador, Edith Ann. Visit him online at Edwin-Hill.com.

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Celebrate Irish culture this St. Patrick’s Day with poet Damian Gorman, Ronnie Millar, and Laura Tavares, accompanied by live music from Regina Delaney and Frank Gibbons.

This event is co-sponsored by the Rian Immigrant Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

The event begins at 12 Noon EST/ 5PM GMT.

Damian Gorman is a poet and playwright, born and reared in Newcastle, Co. Down. Throughout his adult life he has also been an encourager of writing in other people. His own work has garnered awards as diverse as a Better Ireland Award and an MBE; a Golden Harp and a BAFTA (British Oscar). His acclaimed verse documentary about the Troubles, Devices of Detachment, has had a number of screenings on the PBS network.

He was founding director of AN CRANN/ THE TREE, a not-for-profit organisation which worked to “help tell, and hear, the stories of the Northern Irish Troubles” through the arts.

His selected poems and memoir As If I Cared was launched in the Seamus Heaney Homeplace last year, and has been enthusiastically welcomed by readers and critics alike. He was invited to record 8 poems from the book for the national poetry archive in Dublin – among them “Available Light,” commissioned by the RIAN International Immigrant Center in Boston.

In 2019 and 2020 he was International Resident Artist at the Theatre Peacebuilding Academy, and is currently a Fellow of the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights.

Ronnie Millar is the executive director of the Rian Immigrant Center. Rian, formerly known as the Irish International Immigrant Center, was founded in 1989 and has become Boston’s Welcome Center for immigrants and refugees from around the globe, providing immigration legal, resource & support services, education, advocacy, and welcoming services. Ronnie is an immigrant from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He worked in technology for 20 years and then moved into human services. He served as center director of Corrymeela, Ireland’s largest peace and reconciliation center. Ronnie is a graduate of UMass Boston’s College of Public and Community Services. He is also the vice president of the Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers, and in 2020 helped co-found the Massachusetts Immigrant Collaborative; a diverse group of 15 immigrant serving organizations across the Commonwealth.

Laura Tavares is a longtime educator with a deep interest in the relationship between the study of the humanities, schooling, and democracy. She began her career teaching middle and high school in New York City and Boston, before joining the staff of Facing History and Ourselves, a global education non-profit which uses the lessons of history to challenge teachers and students to stand up to bigotry and hate. She is currently at work on a new non-profit startup, the WPS Institute, which creates transformative learning experiences for educators from the highest need schools and communities in the country. She is also a recurring faculty member at Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom Institute and a fellow of the Transatlantic Exchange of Civic Educators. Laura writes about history, current events and education for publications including the New York Times, Educational Leadership, Greater Good Magazine, and Social Education.

Regina Delaney is a harper, singer, and dancer. She has been performing traditional Irish music since 1997. As an artist on the NH State Council on the Arts roster and the MaineArts Commission, Regina performs and teaches in schools throughout the state. She introduces students to Irish poetry, music, song, dance, history, and literature. Regina is also an artist on the NH Arts in Healthcare Roster, bringing her music into hospitals, hospices, and other institutions. Regina also founded and directs The New England Irish Harp Orchestra.

Frank Gibbons is a lifelong musician, having first learned to play the penny whistle at age seven. He is an immigrant, having grown up in Ireland, but has lived in the US since the 1990’s. A founding member of the Boston Uilleann Pipers Club, he’s studied with many of the great performers and teachers of uilleann pipes, and has performed previously for RIAN and other audiences. A scientist by training and occupation, he believes music enriches life beyond measure, and delights in sharing it with all who feel similarly, regardless of background.

The Rian Immigrant Center is Boston’s welcome center for immigrants and refugees. Their vision is of a shared society where all are welcomed and valued, and enjoy equal opportunities and protections. By embracing their Irish traditions of hospitality and social justice, they empower more than 3,500 immigrant and refugee families from over 120 different countries every year with a comprehensive range of support services.

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