KENT—Joanna Margaret, author of The Bequest, will appear at the House of Books, 10 North Main St., Friday, Oct. 20m at 6 p.m. in conversation with Katharine Otis, marketing manager for the store.

Margaret is an art historian whose previous writing and scholarly work has focused on Florentine aristocrats in 16th-century France. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews and an MFA from NYU, where Joyce Carol Oates served as her thesis advisor. The Bequest is her first novel.

That first novel is a Gothic mystery set in Scotland, Italy, and France where, following her professor’s suspicious death, a Ph.D.bg student uncovers dark machinations among her academic associates.

To RSVP or for more information, click here.

The House of Books participated in Banned Book Week (Oct. 1-7) by transforming its “little house of books” to spotlight the current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. In the U.S., the current movement to censor books and remove them from shelves continues to grow. The American Library Association documented 1,269 attempts to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since the ALA began compiling censorship data more than 20 years ago. Book challenges in 2022 are nearly double the 729 book objections reported in 2021.