Book reading and workshop with author Sara Levine

Saturday, July 25th at 10:30am

Registration encouraged: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading event & enter a raffle to win an “Unearth a Story” prize pack!

Stuffed Animal Sleepover & Movie Night

Friday, July 24th at 4:30PM (Movie starts at 5pm)

Come in your pajamas for a night of crafts, snacks and a movie!

Bring a stuffed animal to stay the night at the library and pick them up the next morning with a polaroid photo of what the animals got up to in the library after hours :)

Attend a summer reading event & enter a raffle to win an “Unearth a Story” prize pack!

Water Art with the Whitney Water Center

Wednesday, July 22nd at 11AM

Ages 6 and up. Registration encouraged: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading event & enter a raffle to win an “Unearth a Story” prize pack!

Sunlight Fossil Prints

Sunday, July 19th at 2pm

Learn about fossilized plants and make a sunlight print to take homE! Ages 8 and up.

Limited Spots! Call to register: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading event and enter a raffle to win an “Unearth a Story” prize pack!

SHORE LINE JAZZ QUARTET

Celebrating the music of

Thelonious Monk & Bill Evans

SUNDAY AFTERNOON CONCERT

JULY 19, 2 PM

About the Shoreline Jazz Quartet

The SJQ features Mike Bimonte on drums, Deepak Cyril D’Souza on saxophones, Rich Meyers on vibraphone, and Steve Roane on acoustic bass. SJQ have been playing together in different combinations for several years. They play an eclectic repertoire including jazz standards and the music of more modern composers. SJQ has recorded and performed tributes to jazz greats Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Pat Metheny and most recently an album of music for the Holidays.

For this performance, the quartet explores the music of two of jazz's most influential and contrasting voices: Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. Evans brought a lyrical, impressionistic style shaped by classical harmony, subtle interplay, and introspective beauty. Monk, by contrast, was angular, percussive, and delightfully unpredictable, creating music filled with surprising rhythms, dissonant colors, and unforgettable melodies. Together, they represent two very different paths through modern jazz. One elegant and flowing, the other bold and idiosyncratic, yet both profoundly influential on generations of musicians.

SJQ’s performances are enriched by the group’s diverse backgrounds—Bimonte’s decades-long drumming career and major stage appearances; D’Souza’s dual life in medicine and music; Meyers’ conservatory-trained vibraphone artistry; and Roane’s experience spanning more than 7,000 performances and international tours. Together, they bring an eclectic mix of jazz standards and contemporary compositions to life at venues along the shoreline.

Our apologies! Due to the expected thunderstorms Saturday afternoon, this program is cancelled, but will be rescheduled.

Join us in making a paper-mache dinosaur statue

Saturday, July 18th at 2pm

A community art and building project! Open to all ages and no registration required

WILLOUGHBY BOOK & MOVIE TALK

REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier

Film directed by Alfred Hitchcock

FRIDAY, JULY 17

Film screening: 5 pm

Discussion (and refreshments): 7 pm

Call to register & reserve a copy of the book &/or dvd

203-488-8702

About the book

“From the opening sentence – “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” – to the final – “And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea” – I was hooked…. Rebecca is a masterpiece in which Du Maurier pulls off several spectacular high-wire acts that many great writers wouldn’t attempt.” From the Guardian. Read full review here.

About the film

“An altogether brilliant film, haunting, suspenseful, handsome and handsomely played.”—the NYTimes.

“A masterclass in craftsmanship.”—the Guardian.

Decorate a Book Bag

Wednesday, July 15th at 4:30pm

Limited spots! Call to register: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading event & Enter a raffle to win an “unearth a story” Prize pack!

Sherrie Parenteau
Solo Exhibition, Paintings

Art reception:
Sunday, July 12, 2026
4 to 6 pm
All welcome; no registration required.

Exhibit:
July 10 to August 4, 2026
Keyes Gallery
Exhibit open during library hours

Artist talk:
Friday, July 31, 2026
4 pm
All welcome; no registration required.

Sherrie Parenteau is a professional artist and mother of two based in Sterling, CT. Parenteau obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in 2009. This exhibit features a collection of both new and familiar works, bringing together pieces from different stages of her artistic journey.

Sand Bucket of Mystery Treasures:

A Summer Reading Archeology Program for Kids

Wednesday, July 8th at 2pm

Explore your very own bucket of sand to find treasures you get to take home

Limited spots! Call to register: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading event & enter a raffle to win an “unearth a story” prize pack!

WILLOUGHBY BOOK TALK

What We Can Know, a novel by Ian McEwan

Booker Prize winning author of Atonement

THU | JUL 2 | 7 PM

a genre-bending novel full of secrets and surprises, and an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known

REVIEWS

“It gave me so much pleasure I sometimes felt like laughing. . . . It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order.” —New York Times

“What We Can Know feels like a direct descendant of Atonement, McEwan’s most beloved work, where an illicit relationship generates unexpected tremors, and fantasy and memory rush into the gaps between facts.” —New Yorker

“This is all brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted. . . . [T]here is a daring realignment that boldly shifts the perspective and demonstrates with shocking intensity how little we can ever really grasp about the strange evasions of the heart.” —Washington Post

“McEwan is a novelist of consummate skill, and his latest book is a deeply intelligent addition to—perhaps even a crowning of—his oeuvre.” —Wall Street Journal

“[A] carefully plotted literary novel with insightful characterisation and the propulsive drive of a thriller. . . . McEwan’s most entertaining and enjoyable novel for years.” —Financial Times

“McEwan’s elegantly structured and provocative novel is a strong argument for how little raw data, or even the most sublime art, can tell us about humans and their contrary natures.” —L.A. Times

“McEwan’s prose has never been looser or more humane. . . . The sentences are warm even when the world they describe has cooled due to nuclear dust settling into the atmosphere as The Derangement faded. . . . McEwan, who turned 77 this year, writes with the lucidity of a craftsman who knows he’s constructing his own monument to a future he will never know. . . . If Atonement asked whether fiction could redeem guilt, What We Can Know suggests that the very possibility of redemption might be foolhardy.” —The New Republic

“McEwan fans, rejoice: the novel ranks high among his oeuvre… close to Atonement and Amsterdam.” —The Boston Globe

“What We Can Know may well have created a new genre: the postapocalyptic campus novel. Imagine AS Byatt’s Possession crossed with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Dark academia meets the big ideas novel, all conveyed in McEwan’s trim, beautifully ordered sentences.” —Sunday Times

“A big, unabashed crowd-pleaser… What We Can Know delivers one of McEwan’s finest comic set pieces… [and] can be read as an optimist’s manifesto, a rage against our consensus of decline… [and] a cautionary tale of unchecked nostalgia.” ―Times Literary Supplement

“[A] dazzling novel… [What We Can Know] has an eloquent fury about the way our misguided present is allowing nature to shrivel by ‘slow roasting.’” ―Independent

IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

What if you found a fossil on a hike? What if it came to life?!

Connecticut State Parks Educational Team from D.E.E.P. leads an interactive workshop on fossils

Thursday, July 2nd, 4:30pm

Registration encouraged: 203-488-8702

Attend a summer reading program to be entered into a raffle to win a special “unearth a story” prize!

Summer reading is just around the corner!

Join us Wednesday, June 24th from 4-6pm for our kick-off event

Games | facepaint | icecream | raffle | crafts | music

Sunday Concert Series: Organic Groove Project

Sunday, June 21st at 2pm

Free & open to all | No registration required

Dennis Masback
Along the Shoreline, Paintings

June 12 to July 6, 2026
Keyes Gallery

Art reception:
Sunday, June 14, 2026
4 to 6 pm.
All welcome. No registration.

Dennis Masback received a BFA and MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971 and 1973. In 1991, he was awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts. His work has been featured in Artforum and reviewed by The New York Times, Artforum and ARTnews. In 1993, he began teaching painting and drawing at Pratt Institute and retired as Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts in 2018. He lives and works in Branford, CT.

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

THE BARGAIN

SUN | JUNE 7 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

COLLAGE CLUB

Saturday | May 30th | 11am-1pm

Free. All supplies included. All welcome. No experience necessary.
Hosted by Dorothy. For more information, call the library 203-488-8702 or email dlevine@wwml.org.

STONY CREEK FORUM | A Lecture & Ideas Series

Why Is Everybody Talking About AI (and what is it anyway)?

A PRESENTATION BY JEFFREY DAVITZ

TECHNOLOGIST, SCIENTIST, ENTREPRENEUR

THU | MAY 28 | 7 PM

Stony Creek Forum presents its inaugural event.

Why is Everybody Talking about AI (and what is it anyway)?

Artificial General Intelligence, or AI, is here. Everywhere. Some of us, many of us, are engaging with. Others, not so much. We don’t trust it, don’t know it, or don’t know how or why. What can it do for us, to us? To give us a sense of what we have here in our lives and in our world, we have invited Jeffrey Davitz to tell us more and answer some of our, your, questions. This is the first talk on the subject. Most likely, not the last one.

ABOUT THE TALK

The goal of this non-technical talk is to give the audience a feel for what this new (not so new actually) technology is all about.  What is it?  How does it work?  We’ll be really clear about how far we’ve gotten.   We’ll then switch over to the good and the bad.  How might AI impact us?  What might it help with?  How might it be bad?   Unfortunately, a lot of what is talked about is extreme in both directions, and very unhelpful. The truth is that we don’t know the vast majority of the answers.  We are learning as we go and it’s important that all of us participate in how we develop and apply it.   We are all going to be impacted, and so we all deserve and need to know about this strange new force in our world. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

JEFFREY DAVITZ is an experienced technologist, scientist and entrepreneur. He has managed large and small scale advanced technology and development projects in research (Stanford Research Institute and DARPA) and industry. He’s been a principal in all aspects of start-ups, from developing core technology, raising venture capital and managing business and technical teams. He has founded is own ventures and consulted with start-ups and large companies. He did his PhD in Applied Statistics at Columbia University and during graduate school did research at the Complex Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jeffrey lives in Stony Creek.

Willoughby Book & Movie Talk

HAMNET by MAGGIE O’FARRELL

Fri | May 22

Film screening: 5 pm

Talk (& refreshments): 7 pm

Call to register | 203-488-8702

ABOUT THE BOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

Maggie O’Farrell has written a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play Hamlet.

“Miraculous. . . . Brilliant. . . . A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse. . . . A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down–a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.

Reviews

“O’Farrell has a melodic relationship to language. There is a poetic cadence to her writing and a lushness in her descriptions of the natural world. . . . We can smell the tang of the various new leathers in the glover’s workshop, the fragrance of the apples racked a finger-width apart in the winter storage shed. . . . As the book unfolds, it brings its story to a tender and ultimately hopeful conclusion: that even the greatest grief, the most damaged marriage, and most shattered heart might find some solace, some healing.”
—Geraldine Brooks, the New York Times Book Review

“All too timely . . . inspired. . . . [An] exceptional historical novel ”
—The New Yorker

“Magnificent and searing. . . . A family saga so bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection. . . . Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life, about whether he even wrote his own plays, here is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.”
—The Boston Globe

The Film

Hamnet, 2025, 2h 5m

Director, Chloe Zao

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Zac Wishart

Academy& Bafta award for best actress in a leading role, Jessie Buckley.

Golden Globe award for best film

Wednesday | May 13th | 4-5pm

Make your own bird feeder with a pine cone, sunflower butter, seeds and an wooden ornament decoration!

This is a free, drop-in event held in the library’s outdoor space. No registration necessary

DIY PAPER MAKING

SUNDAY, MAY 10TH AT 2PM

Join visiting artist Bella Bartner for a paper making workshop! Free and open to all ages.

Call to register: 203-488-8702

Artist Talk with Janet Warner

Where the Light Gets In

THU | MAY 7 | 7 PM

In the Keyes Gallery

YOUR THIRD ACT

Life After Retirement

A Series of Four Workshops | 4 Wednesdays in May

5/6, 5/13, 5/20, 5/27

2.00 - 3.30 pm

SHERILYN SCULLY

Please register for the complete series. Call 203-488-8702

Session One | Transition & Curiosity

Wed | May 6 | 2-3.30 pm

ABOUT THE SERIES

Please join us for a discussion-based series where participants engage in group conversations on the topic of transitioning into the “Third Act” or post-retirement phase of life.

Through readings, videos, writing prompts and dialog, participants will emerge from the series with increased clarity of what gives meaning and purpose while navigating the Third Act of life. Even if you are not yet retired and are experiencing another type of crossroads professionally or personally, this series through will give you space for personal reflection as you navigate future.

The course will meet weekly for four consecutive weeks and explore themes of transition, purpose, connection and resources.

Each session is themed by a unique topic:

• SESSION ONE | TRANSITION & CURIOSITY | MAY 6

• SESSION TWO | CLARITY OF PURPOSE | MAY 13

• SESSION THREE | CONNECTING | MAY 20

• SESSION FOUR | EXPERIMENTATION & STORYTELLING | MAY 27

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

SHERILYN SCULLY served as the long-term Dean of Students and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs and Student Life of the Yale School of Management.  Her portfolio included lead oversight of student programs and resources including, academic services, academic advising, academic support, and the Professional Communications Center.

Sherilyn has served on the Leadership Conference Advisory Group to the Graduate Management Admissions Council and on the Executive Board of the Student Services Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

She also served as a facilitator for the discussion sections of Yale SOM’s program, the Experienced Leader’s Initiative.

She is a Fellow of Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University.

Prior to her career at Yale, Sherilyn was a practicing attorney in Boston. She also served as the Dean of Students and as an adjunct professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law. She is a native of Connecticut and resides in the shoreline area of Connecticut with her husband.     

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

THE MATTHEW MCLEAN JAZZ QUARTET

SUN | MAY 3 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Willoughby Book Talk

HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE

What History Reveals About Our Future

by

Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

THU | APR 30 | 7 PM

Call to register 203.488.8702

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The urgent and influential guide to the forces that have undermined democracies across the globe — hailed as “a touchstone” (The New Yorker) that “comes at exactly the right moment” (The Washington Post)WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Foreign Affairs, WBUR, Paste

“Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“[Levitsky and Ziblatt] expand the conversation…to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein

The current era has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die. Now the question is, can our democracy be saved?

REVIEWS

“The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s Fear or Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency and entitled How Democracies Die.”—The Economist

“If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is How Democracies Die.”—Paul Krugman

“Scholarly and readable, alarming and level-headed . . . the greatest of the many merits of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s contribution to what will doubtless be the ballooning discipline of democracy death studies is their rejection of western exceptionalism.”—The Guardian

“[An] important new book.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

“The political-science text in vogue this winter is How Democracies Die.”—The New Yorker

“The great strength of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is that it rejects the exceptionalist account of US democracy. Their lens is comparative. The authors say America is not immune to the trends that have led to democracy’s collapse in other parts of the world.”—Financial Times

“A powerful wake-up call.”—Foreign Affairs

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Steven Levitsky

David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).   He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world.

Professor Levitsky has written for New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).

Daniel Ziblatt

Eaton Professor of the Science of Government

Daniel Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He also leads a research group on democracy and democratic erosion at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Germany.

He is the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” The book has been translated into thirty languages. In 2017, he authored Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), an account of the history of democracy in Europe, which won the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations and American Sociological Association’s 2018 Barrington Moore Prize. His first book was an analysis of 19th century state building, Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (Princeton, 2006). In Fall 2023, his newest book entitled Tyranny of the Minority (co-authored with Steve Levitsky) puts America’s contemporary transition into a multiracial democracy in comparative and historical perspective, and shows the distinctive vulnerabilities of the U.S. constitutional order.

Ziblatt maintains an active research program that is published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and World Politics. In 2023, he was elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

STILL RIVERS

SUN | APRIL 26 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Still Rivers makes music that sounds and feels like a cozy and loving home. Their music explores everyday life and the joys and griefs that come along with it, delving into the human condition, family values, and hopefulness. With Mike’s unique rhythmic guitar style and Chandra’s warm harmonies, they present a familiar yet original bent on the singer songwriter, Americana genre. Still Rivers is Mike and Chandra Rivers. Their new record “Our Little Life” honors family, love, loss, life, and community.

COLLAGE CLUB

Saturday | April 25th | 1pm-3pm*

Free. All supplies included. All welcome. No experience necessary.
Hosted by Dorothy. For more information, call the library 203-488-8702 or email dlevine@wwml.org.

*Please note the time change!