At 7pm on Tuesday, July 7^th, Writer’s Block Bookstore (124 Welbourne Ave, Winter Park) will be hosting Jean-Philippe Blondel, Author of The 6:41 To Paris, for another summer reading.

Cecile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the reader gaining entrée to the most private of thoughts. This is a psychological thriller about past romance, with all its pain and promise.

We’ve all heard campfire stories designed to provide a collective shiver; we’ve all heard traditional ideas of heaven and hell. But how can we use these concepts in our fiction in ways that enhance our writing?

In this workshop, author Heather Startup will examine several novels and one short story, searching for commonalities among their portrayals of the afterlife as well as the unique aspects of each story. Heather will discuss techniques to strengthen characters, the narrator’s reliability, and your story as a whole.

Stories for discussion include: “Louise’s Ghost,” by Kelly Link; The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver; The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien; and The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James.

• Tuesday, June 23, 7 p.m. at the OCLS Alafaya Branch.
  12000 E. Colonial Dr.
  Orlando, FL 32826

Register here. For more information, contact the library at (407)-835-7323.

How different are Modern and Biblical Hebrew? What Biblical Hebrew words continue to be the source of so many disputes? How did Hebrew survive in the USSR when the language was forbidden? Dr. Norman Berdichevsky, author of Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language will answer all of these questions.

• Tuesday, June 16, 6:30pm at Orlando Public Library, Library Central
  101 E. Central Blvd.
  Orlando, FL 32801

For more information, contact the library at (407)-835-7323.