The author of "The Lioness of Boston" joins us to discuss her new book in conversation with Dawn Tripp, author of "Jackie".About this Event
If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160.
About ticketing:
- Admission to the event is $5.
- To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee.
- If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5.
Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event.
Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event.
Lastly, please be aware of our new parking system for the lot behind the store. Parking is free, but you must check in with Vend Park. We recommend setting this up before the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the stormy, scandalous summer of 1816, daring eighteen-year-old Claire Clairmont changed the course of literature forever. But then--unlike her stepsister Mary Shelley--she was forgotten, until now.
During the dangerous storms of The Year Without Summer, a group of famous young writers gathered at a mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Brilliant Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her fiery fianc Percy Shelley, the famously promiscuous Lord Byron, and John Polidori, his sexually tormented personal physician. At the group's center was Claire Clairmont, Mary's impressionable, clever, and dangerously loyal stepsister.
Those months of desire, betrayal, and creative passion gave the world the works of Frankenstein, the modern vampire, and the mythic image of these Romantic literary giants. In this intense and propulsive story of love, lust, art and betrayal Claire tells her story, trying to solve the mystery of why she was all but erased from history.
Claire--herself a writer--is desperate to free herself from the uncomfortable role she plays in her sister's marriage in London. Fueled by Jane Austin's romantic novels, and believing love offers freedom, Claire begins an affair with celebrity Lord Byron and convinces Mary and Shelley to follow him to Switzerland.
With the threat of paparazzi lurking nearby, Claire's intimate connection to each member of the celebrity group grows more complex. Her journey of self-discovery leads her to document everyone's secrets in her journal, and when climate disaster causes food shortages, Claire learns to forage, determined to prove her worth in a world built by and created for men.
The real Claire Clairmont poured her love, life, and razor-sharp wit into her pages, yet her journal from 1816 is curiously missing and each member of the group had a reason to take it.
With searing relevance to our here and now--of celebrity worship, climate disaster, of complicated femininity, Love & Other Monsters is the untold origin story of Frankenstein, a feminist reckoning of sisters, survival, and the creation of monsters--both those on the page and those who walk among us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of twenty-five books including The Lioness of Boston, based on the life of trailblazer Isabella Stewart Gardner, now in its eleventh printing and recently featured as a clue on Jeopardy! Her fiction, poetry, essays, and photos have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, and The Journal of the American Medical Association, among many other places, as well as featured and read aloud on National Public Radio, longlisted for the London Sunday Times Short Story Award and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. Her next novel Love & Other Monsters, historical fiction based on the forgotten—but important life of Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister who was integral in the creation of Frankenstein, will be published in April 2026. She lives outside of Boston with her spouse and four children.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Dawn Tripp is the nationally bestselling author of five novels. Her most recent, Jackie, a fictionalized biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award and won the San Diego Writers Historical Fiction Award. She is also the author of Georgia, finalist for the New England Book Award and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature from the Library of Virginia. Previous novels include Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Harvard Review, Conjunctions, NPR, and others. Her books have been published into a dozen languages. She graduated from Harvard and lives on the Massachusetts coast with her sons. She currently serves as chair of the board of the Boston Book Festival, and as visiting writer at the Island School.
Event Venue
Wellesley Books, 82 Central Street, Wellesley, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 34.47
