For the past 25 years, Thurber House has recognized award-winning and best-selling authors through its Evenings with Authors series, bringing to Columbus some of the most acclaimed authors writing today.

Each featured guest reads from his or her most recent work and chats about the art of writing. A question-and-answer session follows and each event concludes with a coffee and cookies reception, along with the opportunity to buy the author’s book(s) and have them signed. Below is the fall schedule.

Monday, Aug. 25
Celia Rivenbark
Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave.
Celia Rivenbark is an award-winning newspaper columnist and freelance journalist. She has won national and state press awards and is the author of four humor collections including, Bless Your Heart, Tramp, We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier, and Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank. She will read from her latest collection, Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny With a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits, a collection of laugh-out-loud essays.

Tuesday, Sept. 9
A.J. Jacobs
Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave.
A.J. Jacobs is a New York Times bestselling author, Esquire editor and has written for the New York Times and New York magazine, among many others. He has appeared on several television shows including Oprah, The Today Show and is a periodic commentator on NPR’s Weekend Addition Saturday. He will read from his bestselling memoir, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, a hilariously adventurous book chronicling Jacobs’ quest to live the ultimate biblical life as literally as possible, for one year.

Friday, Sept.19
Louis Bayard
Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave.
Louis Bayard is the author of The Pale Blue Eye, which was nominated for both the Edgar and Dagger awards, and Mr. Timothy, a New York Times Notable Book. He is a staff writer and book reviewer for Salon.com. He will read from his latest novel, The Black Tower, a historical suspense novel set in Paris in 1818 that follows the brilliant man known as
Vidocq – a former criminal and father of modern forensic detection – who is close to unveiling the secret fate of Louis-Charles, the lost son of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI.
Monday, Oct. 20
Michael Connelly
Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave.
The No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the successful Harry Bosch series, as well as the winner of every major crime award, Michael Connelly is one of, if not the most, popular writers of crime fiction working today. After three years as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Connelly decided to try writing fiction. The result was the award-winning, The Black Echo, introducing LAPD Detective Hieronymous Bosch. Connelly’s 16th novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, was his first legal thriller and debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times list. The Brass Verdict is Connelly’s brand new novel.

Monday, Nov. 10
Stewart O’Nan
Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave.
Stewart O’Nan will read from two novels: his 2007 New York Times “Editor’s Pick,” Last Night at the Lobster, a novel that paints a poignant portrait of a man on the verge of losing himself, and his latest novel, Songs of the Missing that tells an enthralling account of a family in the aftermath of their daughter’s disappearance.

Friday, Dec. 5
Steve Doocy
Columbus School for Girls
7:30 P.M.
Steve Doocy is an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster who has worked in the news and entertainment divisions of NBC, CBS and ABC. His first book, Mr. & Mrs. Happy Handbook, became an instant New York Times bestseller. In his latest book, Tales from the Dad Side: Misadventures in Fatherhood, Doocy regales readers with tales of his own hilarious, sometimes frustrating, and often moving experiences of being a father.

Tickets: Special offer — a full series of 5 for $90 and get the 6th for free ($75 for students/seniors); Mini-series, choose three authors—$50 ($40 students/seniors); Single
tickets--$18 in advance ($15 students/seniors) or $20 at the door ($18 students/seniors).

For more information, visit www.thurberhouse.org.