J. Courtney Sullivan at the Cambridge Public Library

When:
Monday, Jun 23, 2025 6:00p -
7:30p

Where:
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138

EventScheduled OfflineEventAttendanceMode

Admission:
FREE

Hosted by:
...
harvardbooks Harvard Book Store

Categories:
Lectures & Conferences, Social Good

Event website:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/j-courtney-sullivan-at-the-cambridge-public-library-tickets-1359005735739?aff=oddtdtcreator

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome J. Courtney Sullivan—New York Times best-selling author of the novels Commencement, Maine, The Engagements, Saints for All Occasions, and Friends and Strangers—to celebrate the paperback release of her new novel The Cliffs, a Reese's Book Club Pick, named a "Best Book of the Month" by The New York Times, Real Simple, and Kirkus. She will be joined in conversation by Joanna Rakoff—author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age. 


ABOUT The Cliffs

A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers. 

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.


Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.


Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

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06/23/2025 18:00:00 06/23/2025 19:30:00 America/New_York J. Courtney Sullivan at the Cambridge Public Library <p>Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome&nbsp;<strong>J. Courtney Sullivan</strong>—<em>New York Times&nbsp;</em>best-selling author of the novels&nbsp;<em>Commencement</em>,&...

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