Tickets to this season’s Author Spotlight Series in Naples are already sold out, but two remaining talks at the Norris Center still have seats going fast — including one featuring a novelist whose witch-trial thriller shot up bestseller lists in under a month. The fifth annual series, run by the Friends of the Library of Collier County, kicked off last week with a sold-out appearance by Marie Bostwick and continues into the new year with two more nationally known authors.
Marie Bostwick, author of The Book Club for Troublesome Women, drew a packed house as the season’s kickoff speaker on November 12, according to the Miami Herald. Bostwick is best known nationally for her seven-book Cobbled Court Quilts series, which launched in 2008 with A Single Thread, as Fresh Fiction notes. Her 2012 novel The Second Sister later became the basis for the 2018 Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie Christmas Everlasting, starring Patti LaBelle, according to ReadingGroupGuides.com.
A Witch Novelist Takes the Stage in January
Next up is Florida resident Madeline Martin, who speaks at 2 p.m. on January 28, 2027, at the Norris Center, per the Herald’s report. Martin is the author of The Booklover’s Library, set in Nottingham, England, during World War II and centered on a widow named Emma who works in a private lending library while trying to protect her daughter Olivia, and A Time of Witches, which follows two heroines across a dual timeline spanning modern-day London and the 17th-century English witch trials. According to the same report, A Time of Witches became a USA Today and New York Times bestseller in less than a month and has collected thousands of five-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, with at least one online reviewer recommending it as a go-to witch book for the fall.
Martin’s broader body of work has already made her a national name in historical fiction. Her 2021 World War II novel The Last Bookshop in London became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and was translated into more than 25 languages, according to Goodreads. Tickets to her January appearance are almost sold out, the Herald reports.
Naples-Based Author Closes the Season in April
Rounding out the lineup is Martinn E. Winters, a Naples-based author who speaks at 2 p.m. on April 8, 2027, also at the Norris Center. His debut novel, Harry’s Gold, is based on a true story and spans the American experience from 1897 through the 1940s, following a teenager who runs away to the Great Northwest and beyond, encountering Jack London during the Klondike Gold Rush. The novel moves through the Gilded Age, the Jazz Age, World War I, Prohibition, the Roaring ’20s and World War II, and online reviewers have praised its depth, authenticity and complex title character, per the Herald…