Historical Fiction & Historical Fantasy: An Evening with Kathleen Foster and Emily Franklin

Wondering what to choose for your next book club selection? In this fun and open conversation, Kathleen and Emily, two writers with longstanding ties to Milton, will discuss their new novels and talk about finding inspiration in the stories that are missing from the historical record. What kind of research goes into creating a novel? How do we describe what we’ve never seen? And when is it ok to let our imaginations fill in the gaps?

Kathleen will be talking about her debut novel, The Jewel of Corlivo, a historical fantasy set in a world inspired by the early Byzantine empire, out on October 27th. Emily will be talking about both her latest book of historical fiction, Love & Other Monsters, as well as her bestselling The Lioness of Boston. 

This will be a cozy, informal event with refreshments, book signing, and book sales courtesy of The Next Chapter bookstore. Historical fiction and fantasy lovers, mark your calendars!

Registration is encouraged (registrants will receive a reminder email) and will open four weeks before the event. Kindly sponsored by the Friends of the Milton Public Library.

Kathleen Carr Foster is an award-winning author of speculative fiction. She earned an MFA from Boston University, where she was the recipient of the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Prize, and she won the Davis Prize for Fiction as an undergraduate at Wellesley College. She has also received an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and her short fiction has been published in Slice Magazine, on Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories website, and in 236, BU Creative Writing’s Literary Journal. She teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A mother of two, she lives in Milton with her family and an anxious rescue dog named Wendy. Her debut novel, The Jewel of Corlivo, will be published in October 2026.

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 work has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, and The Journal of the American Medical Association, among many other places, as well as featured and read aloud on National Public Radio and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She grew up half in the UK and half in Boston where she lives now with her spouse and four children. Her latest novel, Love & Other Monsters, is the untold origin story of Frankenstein told from the perspective of Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister and Lord Byron’s lover, who changed the course of literature forever—and then was erased.