"Three Men and a One-Shilling Knife: a Genealogical Look at Local History" speaker program at NHSL!

Join us in continuing our celebration of America's 250th with our final speaker program of the year, "Three Men and a One-Shilling Knife: a Genealogical Look at Local History".

Presented by Robert Cameron Weir and Virginia Hansen from the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.

This engaging program uses a dramatic 1788 tavern killing in New Durham to show how genealogists uncover the stories from the past. Through newspapers, court records, military records, petitions, and other original sources, the lecture follows the intertwined lives of three Revolutionary War veterans and reveals how family history research can illuminate the people, events, and communities of New Hampshire’s past.-- program blurb

Speaker Information:

Robert Cameron Weir is a genealogical researcher, educator, and author who lives in Dover, New Hampshire. He specializes in hard problems related to New England genealogy, from 1620 to the present. He is a member of the Association for Professional Genealogy and is Vice President and Publications Director of the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.

Virginia Hansen resides in Laconia, NH. She serves as the Treasurer for the NH Society of Genealogists. Since retiring from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then embarking on a 3-year sailing adventure, she settled in Laconia and resumed her genealogical research. She has published several manuscripts on her own family and NH families. She is currently the manager of Bayside and Union Cemeteries in Laconia and volunteers with the Laconia Historical and Museum Society.

Event info: Free and open to the public!

Wednesday, November 4th from 1-2 pm at the NH State Library, 20 Park St., Concord, NH 03301

Click here for the Facebook event.

Questions?: contact Felicia Martin at 603-271-2316 or felicia.t.martin@dncr.nh.gov

Book of the Week (10/12/2026)

Beneath The Surface Waters: A Lake Winnipesaukee Fish Tale by Jeremy Osgood (Self-published, 2025)

Reuben’s got a secret twisting his insides like fishing line in a blender. He’s seen turtles older than the mountains, their shells thick as iron. Rainbow trout that radiate light as warm as a thousand shimmering candles. And he’s felt the pull of darker things, from the bone graveyard near Rattlesnake Island to a hidden sea beneath Lake Winnipesaukee where ancient creatures still dwell. Now he’s ready to tell what really happened that February at the fishing derby.

When Reuben and his brothers are transformed by an old family potion, their only hope lies in a perilous journey through fossil catacombs and into the Earth’s mantle. There, they stumble into a Jurassic world and uncover a brewing catastrophe: a super volcano stirring beneath the Ossipee Mountains that could wipe out their hometown.

Now the brothers must decide. Save themselves, or risk everything to stop a disaster that could bury everyone they love.

A thrilling middle-grade fantasy of family, courage, and the mysteries that lie beneath the surface. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Jeremy Osgood grew up in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, a small New England town in the lakes' region, affectionately known as "the oldest summer resort in America". With the picturesque setting as the perfect backdrop, he developed a love for the outdoors, photography, and writing. He combined his passions with a photoblog called Wolfeboro Chronicle while working in town.

Some of his earlier influences included his time out west where he earned a Bachelors Degree in Environmental Conservation and Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He spent six years working with National Geographic Maps as the Eastern Sales and Support Manager and eight years selling real estate while coaching basketball at various levels during that time. Currently, he owns and operates Jeremy Osgood Photography. When not taking photographs, or writing, he enjoys spending time with his wife, two daughters, and their rescue dogs near their Nashville, TN home.

Arthur turns 30!

Arthur Is Turning 30! 

So, grab your library card and join the friends from Elwood City for ARTHUR’s 30-Day Reading Challenge during the month of November!

The Challenge: 

Children ages 4-8 are invited to participate as part of a classroom, library program, afterschool program, homeschool group, or family reading routine.

How It Works:

• Read for 30 minutes a day throughout November.

• Track your reading using the challenge materials.

• Read independently, read with a grown-up, listen to someone read,

or read to a younger sibling, friend, or even a pet. It all counts!

FREE Reading Challenge Resources:

Access ARTHUR’s 30-Day Reading Challenge Digital Toolkit, packed with everything you need to get started:

• A 4-page Reading Challenge Guide with tips, rules, activities, and helpful links

• 4 themed booklists with discussion questions and reading ideas

• 4 weekly reading trackers to help kids celebrate their progress

• A Certificate of Achievement and fun printable activities

Click here to access the Digital Toolkit!

Book of the Week (10/5/2026)

What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison edited by Chad Wriglesworth (University of Michigan Press, 2026)

What Clever Friends, is a selection of engaging, frank letters between poet Jane Kenyon and fiction writer Alice Mattison. Ranging from their first meeting in 1979 to Kenyon’s death in 1995, this fifteen-year conversation between close friends reveals their experiences pursuing writing while living out the responsibilities of ordinary life. Writing to each other often, they help each other, confide in each other, and argue through the strains of rejection and acceptance, good reviews and bad, periods in which writing comes easily or when it does not. Over time, both writers emerged from obscurity to gain award-winning recognition as prominent voices in their respective genres.

Witty, tender, and aware; tempestuous and lyrical, these letters trace the evolution of a deep and largely unknown friendship that situates Kenyon’s work within a collaborative environment of other poets and novelists who were committed to the flourishing of contemporary women’s writing. With more than 500 edited and annotated letters, a retrospective foreword written by Alice Mattison, and a scholarly introduction written by Chad Wriglesworth, What Clever Friends conveys a compelling story that will interest readers and writers. --Publisher's blurb

About the authors:

Jane Kenyon, former New Hampshire Poet Laureate grew up in the Midwestern U.S. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an M.A. in 1972. As a university student, Kenyon met poet Donald Hall (also a former NH Poet Laureate). In 1972, they married and moved to his ancestral home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Kenyon died in 1995 from leukemia.

Alice Mattison was born in Brooklyn and attended Queens College and Harvard University, where she received a doctorate in literature. She has lived in New Haven, Connecticut since the 1970s and has taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College since 1995. Mattison began her career as a poet, but also began writing short stories in the 1980s.

3 on a Theme: Brothers & Sisters

The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia

Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace

My Sister, the Freak: A Graphic Novel by Dani Jones

NHBF Author: Alexandra Villasante

Alexandra Villasante has always loved telling stories—though not always with words. She has a BFA in Painting and an MA in Combined Media (that’s art school speak for making work out of anything). Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, Alex has the privilegio of dreaming in both English and Spanish.
Her latest novel, Fireblooms, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from Kirkus and Booklist. It was selected as one of NPR’s Books We Love 2025. Alex’s debut YA novel, The Grief Keeper, was a Fall 2019 Junior Library Guild Gold Selection and winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s Literature/Young Adult Fiction. She's a contributor to several Young Adult short story anthologies including, Our Shadows Have Claws, Relit: 16 Latinx Remixes of Classic Stories and We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters Angels and Other Creatures. Alex is a co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival and of the LKBF Latinx Storytellers Conference. When she’s not writing, planning or painting, Alex works for Boyds Mills, formerly known as the Highlights Foundation. 

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.  

NHBF Author: S. J. Taylor

S. J. Taylor writes stories steeped in folklore and magic, where young protagonists tackle big adventures and bigger questions. Although she grew up in Arizona's desert, her heart yearns for the Nordic lands. When she's not writing, she can often be found knitting yet another sweater (sweater weather is the best weather). She lives in Connecticut with her family.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.