Author talk highlights Monroeville Public Library events

Fans of mystery books should be in for a treat when two noted authors participate in an upcoming Monroeville Public Library event.

Featured from 6:30 to 8 p.m. April 25 are Ann Cleeves (“The Darkest Evening,” “The Raging Storm”) and Lori Rader-Day (“Death at Greenway”), who will talk about their work and their writing processes, with a question-and-answer session to follow.

Rader-Day is an American author of mystery, crime, and suspense novels for which she has won three Anthony Awards, a Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award (2016), and an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel (2021). Cleeves is a British mystery crime writer who wrote the Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn series, all three of which have been adapted into TV shows.

This event will be hybrid. You can attend online using the Zoom registration link, but need to RSVP through our website to attend in person. Both links are available on the library website’s calendar, www.monroevillelibrary.org/calendar.html.

Upcoming library programs also include:

• “Dealing with Death: Conversations with a Death Doula,” hybrid event from 7 to 8:30 p.m. April 19.

There always have been people who help others prepare for death emotionally and spiritually. Today’s death doulas not only provide comfort to clients, but offer assistance to families and friends as they navigate end-of-life services.

Diana McDade, owner of support provider Sunset Crossings, will discuss the importance of conversations about death, what a death doula can provide, and some basic education on more eco-friendly death options.

Registration information also is available by visiting the calendar on the library website.

• Pittsburgh Poetry Society Reading, also scheduled from 7 to 8:30 p.m. April 19.

Carrying on the society’s 99-year tradition, readings from Christine Aikens Wolfe, Karen Howard, Christine Doreian Michaels, Jay Carson and Erin Garstka will be featured.

The in-person event is free, and all are welcome.

• “Good Grief! How to Cope With Life’s Inevitable Losses” with counselor Eileen Colianni, hybrid event from 2 to 3:30 p.m. April 20.

Death, illness, divorce, unemployment, retirement, betrayals, broken relationships, family cutoffs, moving: such losses permeate everyone’s life, eventually.

Whether chosen (as in moving or retirement) or imposed, the healthy, normal human response to loss is grief. When grief is accepted and moved through with awareness and the willingness to express its emotions, it leads to healing and growth.

Colianni will discuss how to handle grief so that it leads to growth, instead of to a sustained state of gloom or depression. Visit the library website’s calendar.

• Tom Roberts & the Hot Club of Pittsburgh: Boogie-Woogie Blues, online event from 7 to 8:30 p.m. April 20.

Roberts will discuss and play boogie-woogie with rare pristine ,shellac-based 78 rpm records from his collection. Originating with Black communities in the 1870s and rising to incredible levels of popularity in the 1920s, boogie-woogie has had a vast influence on both R&B and rock and roll.

Highlights include recordings by Cripple Clarence Lofton, Kimmy Yancey, Sugar Underwood, Blind Leroy Garnett, Speckled Red (Rufus Perryman), Pigmeat Terry, Bat the Hummingbird, Romeo Nelson, Little Brother Montgomery, Pinetop Smith, Cow Cow Davenport and the 1936 Decca recording session held in Angola Penitentiary with Jesse James, who had been incarcerated since 1900. In those recordings are the prototype of blues piano, sounds that predate anything heard before.

Roberts has been acclaimed as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of the art of Harlem stride piano. He has been featured at Jazz in July at the 92nd St. Y, the Professor Longhair Society’s Piano Night at Tipitina’s in New Orleans, Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland.

The link for the event is available through the calendar on the library website.