Braiding History with Fiction

Saturday, October 19, 2024
Talks Stage, 2:00pm

Join us as two travelers to the Twin Cities present new novels set against historic backdrops—Victorian era London and the Gilded Age of Minneapolis. In The Company, Jon Michael Varese concocts a gothic thriller following one woman’s fight to preserve her luxuriously wallpapered home while battling unspeakable terror, while in The Mesmerist, Caroline Woods explores a true crime tale through the eyes of three very different women who must work together to stop a killer and save the truest home they’ve ever known. Is the truly malevolent force in these vivid and well researched historical fictions the patriarchy? Find out as these writers draw the curtain back on their work!

About the Authors

Jon Michael Varese is the author of numerous pieces on 19th-century literature and culture and the Director of Public Outreach for The Dickens Project, a multi-campus research consortium of the University of California. His previous supernatural thriller, The Spirit Photographer (2018), was lauded in a starred review from Booklist as “An entertaining amalgam of history and fiction, gothic and ghost story.”  Jon credits his love of literature to his grandmother, whose loquat tree served as a reliable reading umbrella during the hottest days of his childhood in his native Miami; he now lives in Western Massachusetts. Visit him at jmvarese.com.

Caroline Woods has loved scary stories, little-known history, and the supernatural since she was very small (and her daughters are now following in her footsteps); as a teenager, she published a book of ghost stories, Haunted Delaware. She has published two historical novels prior to The Mesmerist:  Fräuelein M., a study of family secrets and hidden identities set in 1930s Berlin, and The Lunar Housewife, a suspense novel about a writer who discovers troubling secrets during the Cold War. Raised in the first state, Caroline now lives near Chicago with her husband and two daughters. Visit her at carolinewoodswriter.com.