EAST LAKE COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Strengthening our community through inspiration, enrichment, and education.
Fun and Exciting Programs at Your Local Library
These are some programs and classes we offer throughout the year. Please check the calendar for dates, times, and registration details. Want to receive our events e-newsletter in your inbox every month? Click HERE to sign up!
ELCL Book Club
The ELCL Book Club likes to read a wide array of literature from contemporary authors. The Book Club meets every first Wednesday of the month for an exciting and lively discussion.
2023 ELCL Book Club Selections:
January 4 - ANXIOUS PEOPLE BY FREDRIK BACKMAN
February 1 - THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN BY MARIE BENEDICT
March 1 - THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST BY ALLISON PATAKI
April 5 - THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND BY JOJO MOYES
May 3 - THE WOMAN THEY COULD NOT SILENCE BY KATE MOORE
June 7 - THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE BY DARE ABI
July 5 - AMERICAN DIRT BY JEANINE CUMMINS
August 2 - FIFTY WORDS FOR RAIN BY ASHA LEMMIE
September 6 - MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL BY JOHN BERENDT
October 4 - HORSE BY GERALDINE BROOKS
November 1 - SMALL GREAT THINGS BY JODI PICOULT
December 6 - THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO BY CHRISTY LEFTERI
2022 ELCL Book Club Selections:
January 5 - NEXT YEAR IN HAVANA by Chanel Cleeton
February 2 - THE YEARLING by Marjorie Rawlings
March 2 - THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM by Marie Benedict
April 6 - THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett
May 4 - THE GIVER OF STARS by JoJo Moyes
June 1 - THE NIGHTINGALE by Kristin Hannah
July 6 - THE HOLDOUT by Graham Moore
August 3 - THERE, THERE by Tommy Orange
September 7 - WARLIGHT by Michael Ondaatje
October 5 - THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd
November 2 - THE FOUR WINDS by Kristin Hannah
December 7 - THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY by Matt Haig
Author Showcase
The Authors Showcase series of in-person author talks is usually scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from January through October. In the past, speakers have been local up-and-coming authors as well as luminaries such as Lisa Unger, Tim Dorsey, Governor Bob Graham, Kris Radish, and Tom Corcoran. If you know of a local author you’d like to hear talk, contact us with the author’s name, book information, and how to contact the author.
Here are the 2022 authors:
January 18: John Andes is a prolific author of a dozen fast-paced crime/murder mystery books who has moved from self-published to commercially published (World Castle Publishing and Mirador) to internationally published. John writes in English, but several of his books have been translated into Danish after a publishing company read and liked them and asked if they could translate his writings. It has been said that his books are not for the faint of heart. John's style of writing has been described as aggressive, hard-hitting, gritty and graphic. Unlike most crime novelists, John's books appeal to women readers as well as the typical male audience. Each story contains a strong female component and are full of suspense, leaving the reader on the edge of their seats! For more info, please go to http://www.crimenovelsonline.com. This meeting is virtual only. To receive a Zoom link, please register at https://eastlakelibrary.evanced.info/signup/calendar or call the library at 727-773-2665.
February 15: Jan Moran - Author Jan Moran is a USA Today bestselling author of heartfelt women's fiction series, family sagas, and 20th-century historical novels. Jan dreams up her popular, contemporary beach books on the sunny shores of Southern California, not far from where she lives. As a native of Texas who lived on the east coast and worked in Paris, Hong Kong, and Canada, Jan brings a wealth of experience to every book she writes. For more info, please go to https://www.janmoran.com. This meeting is virtual only. To receive a Zoom link, please register at https://eastlakelibrary.evanced.info/signup/calendar or call the library at 727-773-2665.
March 15: Natalie Symons - Natalie Symons is a local award-winning playwright, actress and novelist. Her plays have been produced at theaters around the world, including, locally, Free Fall Theater and American Stage theater. She will speak about her debut novel Lies in Bone, WINNER of the 2021 BEST BOOK AWARDS in Fiction: Cross-Genre. Lies in Bone is told by a tart-tongued young woman with a love of Bruce Springsteen. It is at once a mystery and coming-of-age tale fueled by dark secrets involving love, murder, and the truths worth lying for. On Halloween 1963, eleven-year-old Chuck Coolidge and his brother Danny are lost in a toxic smog covering the steel town of Slippery Elm, Pennsylvania. When the smog lifts, half the town is sick and twenty people are dead. And Danny is missing. Now over 20 years later the mystery is resurrected. For more info, please go to https://www.nataliesymons.com.
April 19: Kimberly Lojewski - Local author Kimberly Lojewski will talk about her collection of short stories Worm Fiddling Nocturne in the Key of a Broken Heart a Florida Book Award Gold Medal winner. The eleven stories in this wildly imaginative debut collection, feature characters from marionettes to princesses to juveniles in a camp run by authoritarian grandmothers, who long for escape, community, acceptance and self-discovery. For more info, please go to https://www.kimberlylojewski.com.
May 17: TBD
June 21: Susan Adger - For more info, please go to http://www.susanadger.com. More details to come.
July 19: Lee Summerall - For more info, please go to https://latelastnightbooks.com/tag/lee-summerall. More details to come.
August 16: TBD
September 20: TBD
October 18: TBD
Here are the 2021 authors:
January 19: Michael Jordan, a resident of Longboat Key, has practiced law for more than forty years. His colleagues have regularly named him to Best Lawyers in America©. His first novel, The Company of Demons, was awarded the Gold Medal in the Florida Book Awards, a Silver by the Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Competition and won best crime thriller of the year in the National Independent Book Awards. Click HERE for Michael's website.
February 16: Novelist, nonfiction author, and filmmaker Gay Courter has been traveling the world since age six, when her family left the U.S. to spend several years in Japan and Taiwan. Her first cruise, as a child, was aboard the famed Ile de France. Since then, she and her husband, Philip have taken twenty-one cruises, on nine different lines, including ten Princess ships together. Gay Courter's latest book is the non-fiction Quarantine! How I Survived the Diamond Princess Coronavirus Crisis. Her previous experiences helped prepare her for the successful media campaign she and Phil launched, with the aid of their three adult children, asking for the help of the U.S. government to evacuate them and other Americans from the Diamond Princess as the number of cases of the Coronavirus grew day by day. In addition to the more than 150 interviews with media outlets from around the globe that Gay and Phil did while under quarantine in Japan and Texas, Gay wrote two op-eds for the Washington Post and an article for The Atlantic. Click HERE for more about Quarantine! and for updates on Phil’s companion documentary, Quarantine! How We Survived the Diamond Princess Coronavirus Crisis and gaycourter.com for more about Gay and her previous books.
March 16: John Vanek, author of The Father Jake Austin Mystery Series, is a physician by training, but a writer by passion. Medicine is his life but mysteries are his drug of choice. He practiced medicine at a Catholic hospital for a quarter century. Father Jake Austin is a fictional character, but aspects of his personality and struggles are modeled after two priests who became the author's closest of friends and confidants. Consequently, The Father Jake Austin Mystery Series is filled with murder, mayhem, medicine, and ministry. Click HERE for John's website.
April 20: Tonight's Showcase is a conversation with Madeleine Henry, author of the acclaimed The Love Proof (out Feb 9,2021 from Atria). This novel follows a brilliant physicist studying the nature of time who embarks on a journey to prove that those we love are always connected to us. Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of The Light We Lost, called it “a fascinating story about how love opens us up to the remarkable possibilities of the universe. Smart, sexy, and scientific.” Discussion followed by Q&A. For more info on Madeleine, click HERE.
May 18: Author Ben Montgomery is the author on The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression and is an award winning Tampa Bay Times staff writer. He was also a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 and is the James A. Clendinen visiting professor in journalism at the University of South Florida. Tonight's discussion will be about his most recently published book A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South, which takes place in Kentucky . It is the sensational true story of George Dinning, a freed slave, who in 1889 joined forces with a Confederate war hero in search of justice. For more info on Ben, click HERE.
June 15: Gary Mormino will be discussing one of his books, Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams, recipient of the Florida Historical Society’s Charlton Tebeau Prize. Dr. Gary Mormino is a history professor, newspaper columnist, highly regarded author, avid gardener, Italian foodie and venerable expert on anything and everything Florida. Now retired, he spent 35 years in the history department at the University of South Florida in Tampa and St. Petersburg but still teaches a class on food and history at the St. Pete campus. Widely regarded as Florida’s leading historian, Mormino has been tapped by The New Yorker, the New York Times and NPR to weigh in on Florida-centric stories. His books include The Immigrant World of Ybor City, for which he earned the Theodore Saloutos Prize for Outstanding Book in Ethnic-Immigration History. Fore more info on Gary, click HERE.
July 20: Author Alan N. Kay has dedicated his life to making history fun for adults and children alike. Most of the East Lake community know him as currently teaching History at East Lake High School in Tarpon Springs, FL. but Mr. Kay is an award-winning transplanted Yankee from Massachusetts and is sought after and well loved for his spirited presentations. Alan N. Kay has released his first full length historical fiction novel for adults, Neither King Nor Country, which is available for purchase on Amazon. This story has been years in the making and discloses one of the greatest secrets in American History! If you love history but hated it in school, this book discussion will surely be enjoyable to watch and learn from the author himself! For more info on Alan, click HERE.
August 17: Author D.S. Davis broke onto the scene in 2019 with his debut novel Storyteller, a tragedy written on talent and arrogance and the dangers of both. The book was an examination of the life of an ultra-talented novelist with almost no control over any other aspect of his life. The story is of a narcissist Author T.C. Strickland is a genius and a psychopath living the good life on Florida’s east coast. Since his meteoric rise to literary fame, he’s slumped into a self-indulgent, booze-filled existence of debauchery and chaos, and has refused to care who he hurts along the way. With a destructive disposition and a mob of skeletons in his closet, the only reasonable direction seems to be down for a man who just no longer seems to care. D.S. Davis’s debut novel is an investigation into success and ego seen through the eyes of a talented psychopath. For more info on D.S., click HERE.
September 21: Sterling Watson is a screenwriter and the author of eight novels. His book Weep No More My Brother was nominated for the Rosenthal Award given annually by the National Academy Institute for Arts and Letters. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Florida, co-director of Writers in Paradise and former director of the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. For more info on Sterling, click HERE.
October 19: Gale Massey's book, The Girl from Blind River (July, 2018; Crooked Lane Books) received a 2018 Florida Book Award. She has published in CrimeReads, the Tampa Bay Times, Saw Palm, Tampa Bay Noir and other publications. Gale was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference and a fellow at Writers in Paradise. In her new collection Rising and Other Stories, Gale illustrates the moments that shape and alter destiny. Bringing each to life through interconnected themes of moving water and transience, Massey shares with us an unvarnished narrative of a world that objectifies women and the strength and resourcefulness required to attempt to overcome those limitations. For more info on Gail, click HERE.
Here are the authors who came to the library in 2020:
January 21: Cancelled - but be sure to check out Craig Pittman author of Oh, Florida: How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country on Wednesday, January 8 from 1:00-2:30pm!
February 18: Maggie Amati who publishes under the name Isabella Adams will be here to talk about her Markos Mystery series set in Tarpon Springs. Three books in the series, so far, are: Last Man Out, Dancing For A Stranger, and Never Enough. Isabella Adams was born in New York in the 1970's. She has lived all over the world, and currently lives and works on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
March 17: Cancelled - Ben Montgomery is the author of the New York Times bestseller Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail, which won the 2014 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography; The Leper Spy: The Story of an Unlikely Hero of World War II; and The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression. An award-winning staff writer at the Tampa Bay Times, Montgomery was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2010. He is the James A. Clendinen visiting professor in journalism at the University of South Florida.
April 21: Sterling Watson is a screenwriter and the author of eight novels. His book Weep No More My Brother was nominated for the Rosenthal Award given annually by the National Academy Institute for Arts and Letters. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Florida, co-director of Writers in Paradise and former director of the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg.
May 19: John Andes is the prolific author of a dozen fast-paced crime/murder mystery books. He models his writing after David Baldacci and James Patterson. His writing is based on the premise that each of us struggles against forces that are thrust upon us in situations beyond our normal lives. His earlier books were self-published, but the most recent are published by World Castle Publishing and Mirador.
Writers' Critique Group
The Writers' Critique Group is a workshop for writers of all levels. Writers read excerpts of their work in progress and receive helpful feedback. This group meets the second and fourth Monday of the month. For the specific dates that Writers' Critique is offered, go to http://eastlakelibrary.evanced.info/signup/calendar.