Tag: Tell-Tale Talks

Join us at Fountain Bookstore on Wednesday, November 18th for a Tell-Tale Talk with author Diana Peterfreund, who will discuss her YA series: Ellen Poe.

About Ellen Poe: For Evermore

The thrilling sequel to Ellen Poe: The Forgotten Lore in which every mystery Ellen solves uncovers another buried secret about her family and the infamous poet, Edgar Allan Poe.

Ellen Poe is no longer plagued by nightmares of scary restless spirits, and she’s even come to a truce with the oft-annoying ghost of her ancestor: Edgar Allan Poe. But when the coded journal that is tied to his spirit disappears from her family’s home, she’s convinced that the founder of a secret Poe society is responsible for the theft. Ellen finds a cryptic note from the woman, Sara High, and sets out on a dangerous quest to track down the family heirloom that takes Ellen from Baltimore to New York City to Richmond and back. At the same time, Ellen’s visions return, more terrifying than ever, and she realizes it’s not just the journal that’s in danger. Can she head off a potential murder in time? Or will Ellen find herself at the mercy of a killer who won’t stop until they’ve claimed Poe’s spirit for their very own? 

—

DIANA PETERFREUND has published sixteen novels for adults, teens, and kids. Her works have been named to the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age list, the Capitol Choices reading list, the Texas LoneStar List, and the Sunshine State Young Reader Awards List, as well as Amazon’s Best Books of the Year. In addition, she’s written dozens of short stories and a variety of nonfiction essays about popular children’s literature. Diana lives in Maryland with her family.

General Event Information:

SCHEDULE:

5:30 PM – Doors open

5:45 PM – Zoom meeting opens

6:00 PM – Talk begins

VIRTUAL LIVESTREAMS:

Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event. The Zoom invitation is also included in the confirmation email received upon purchase.

WEATHER:
This installment takes place indoors at Fountain Bookstore.

FOOD & DRINK:
One glass of wine included in in-person admission.

OTHER:

Chairs provided.

—

Reserve your tickets below!

Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.

Related Events

• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Lyndsay Faye

  September 17 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Emily Ogden

  October 1 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Join us at The Poe Museum on Thursday, September 17th for a Tell-Tale Talk with author Lyndsay Faye, who will discuss her upcoming novel, RAVEN, to be released in October.

About RAVEN:

An orphaned young woman in antebellum Maryland is pulled into a maelstrom of passion, pain, and occult power in this Gothic homage to the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe.

I died a fortnight ago this coming Thursday. It was a terrifically unpleasant experience—being murdered, I mean to say.

Raven Helen Allan has always been haunted by witchcraft. Since the death of her beloved mother, she has soothed herself by speaking words into spells—a proclivity enhanced by time spent with her aunt’s library of occult books. She also finds a self-destructive solace in transmuting the pain in her heart onto her flesh.

After an itinerant childhood spent first with her mother’s traveling theater troupe and then being passed around from relative to relative, Raven is relieved to finally settle down with Aunt Berenice in her Baltimore townhouse—even if her aunt spends most evenings in a laudanum haze. There she finds a long-sought sense of belonging with the family of enslaved workers in her aunt’s household, especially the brilliantly odd youngest daughter Pym. Raven’s infatuation with her friend only grows more intimate as the girls become women together. But when the household is threatened with financial ruin, Raven must set out to earn her own living. 

Taking a job as a paid companion, Raven arrives at the crumbling Moldavia Manor. Her charge is a delicate young invalid named Lenore Legrand who haunts the Gothic structure like a phantom. Living with them is Lenore’s devoted older cousin Travanion, who shares Raven’s interest in the occult and devotes his days to searching ancient texts for an Elixir of Life that might cure his cousin. Raven finds herself inexorably drawn to both cousins as well as to the secrets hidden in the shadows of Moldavia Manor. Will she find the answers she seeks in Trevanion’s alchemical texts? What is the meaning of glowing green light emitted from the tower windows? And is Raven truly narrating this story from beyond the grave—if so, who murdered her?

Gothic and atmospheric, Raven is an aching tale of loss, freedom, death, and resurrection by the celebrated author of Jane Steele and Dust and Shadow.

—

Lyndsay Faye is the internationally bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels and two short story collections. She has been published in fifteen languages, nominated for two Edgar Awards, and received an American Library Association award for Best Historical Novel. A notable writer of Sherlock Holmes pastiches including Dust and Shadow and Observations by Gaslight, she also particularly enjoys upending classical literature, as in Jane Steele, which transforms Jane Eyre into a feminist serial killer. A true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, Faye lives in Queens with her husband Nicholas and her cat Prufrock.

General Event Information:

SCHEDULE:

5:30 PM – Doors open

5:45 PM – Zoom meeting opens

6:00 PM – Talk begins

VIRTUAL LIVESTREAMS:

Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event. The Zoom invitation is also included in the confirmation email received upon purchase.

WEATHER:
This event takes place outdoors. Please dress according to the weather forecast. In case of inclement weather, an alternate location may be announced.

FOOD & DRINK:
One glass of wine included in in-person admission. Complimentary snacks and refreshments available.

PARKING:
The Poe Museum has a small gravel lot attached on 20th and Main Streets. If the lot is full, there is street parking available on surrounding streets.

OTHER:

Chairs provided. Exhibits remain open to explore before or after the talk.

—

Reserve your tickets below!

Thank you to Fountain Bookstore, who will sell books after the talk.

Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.

Related Events

• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Emily Ogden

  October 1 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Diana Peterfreund

  November 18 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Join us at The Poe Museum on Thursday, May 14th for a Tell-Tale Talk with author Emily Carpenter, who will discuss her newest novel, A Spell For Saints And Sinners.

About A Spell For Saints And Sinners:

In front of an elegantly shabby townhouse on a Savannah side street sits a hand-painted sign: Miss Edie, Psychic. Ingrid White inherited the house and business from her beloved grandmother, a local celebrity in town. But unless Ingrid can find a way to pay for crushing property taxes and mounting repairs, she’s going to lose them both. Then Sailor Loeffler’s bachelorette party arrives at her door. Sailor is local royalty—part of the vast “Savannah Sauce” empire, beautiful and wealthy beyond imagining—and Ingrid’s reading is so accurate that she’s welcomed in as the bride-to-be’s confidante. To keep that access and all the privileges it brings, Ingrid relies more and more on hexes and dark spells—using the baneful magic Edie always warned her against. As Ingrid works even riskier spells, she is drawn further into the Loefflers’ inner circle and the obstacles in her path melt away. But is it witchcraft or other, more earthbound forces? Ingrid can feel the lines blurring even as her powers seem to grow, until she must confront the truth about just how far some people, including herself, will go to keep the life they’ve always wanted…

About Emily Carpenter:

Emily Carpenter is a bestselling author of novels of suspense. Her previous novels include Gothictown (A Southern Living Best Book of 2025…so far), Burying the Honeysuckle Girls, The Weight of Lies, Every Single Secret, Until the Day I Die, and Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters, which Publishers Weekly called a “refreshingly modern gothic tale” and Kirkus called “an exciting, gothic-tinged quest.” After graduating from Auburn University in Alabama with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication, Emily moved to New York City. She’s worked as an actor, producer, screenwriter, and behind-the-scenes soap opera assistant for the CBS shows, As the World Turns and Guiding Light. Emily is a member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her family. Savannah is the city she dreams about moving to one day.

Website: www.emilycarpenterauthor.com
Instagram: @emily.d.c
Threads: @emily.d.c
Facebook: @ecarpenterauthor

Copies of Emily’s book will be available for purchase during the event.

Reserve your tickets below!

Thank you to Fountain Bookstore, who will sell books after the talk.

Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.

Related Events

• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Lyndsay Faye

  September 17 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Emily Ogden

  October 1 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Diana Peterfreund

  November 18 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Join us at The Poe Museum on Wednesday, April 8th for a Tell-Tale Talk featuring Professor Joshua Barton on “How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken”: The Tarnished Mirror of Southern Gothic Literature.

“How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken”: The Tarnished Mirror of Southern Gothic Literature

This talk will introduce Southern Gothic fiction as a genre, focusing on how its decaying settings, eccentric characters, and moral tension reveal the cultural anxieties of the postbellum American South. Moving beyond haunted houses and grotesqueries, we will explore how writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams use distortion to expose themes of guilt and social decline. We’ll look at how the uncanny nature of Southern Gothic fiction often serves as a mirror to reflect the cultural and historical pressures of the American South, while also offering a vicious critique of its past. Through this discussion, Barton invite you to examine how the elements of these stories function as tools for social critique and psychological insight.

About Joshua Barton:

Joshua Barton is a professor of writing and literature and a lecturer on horror content of all kinds. He attended George Mason University as an undergraduate, where he completed a BA in English in 2009; for his MA in literature, he attended Southern New Hampshire University. His key area of academic research is horror literature, with a particular focus on Gothic fiction, haunted house stories, and feminist horror. He has taught at American University, George Mason University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, and developed horror literature courses with an emphasis on American monsters and cultural analysis. He is also a frequent collaborator with Profs & Pints, where he has lectured on everything from Victorian ghost stories to folk horror to the link between romance and monsters. Outside of literature, his interests include games (of all kinds), baking, and dogs!

General Event Information:

SCHEDULE:

5:30 PM – Doors open

5:45 PM – Zoom meeting opens

6:00 PM – Talk begins

VIRTUAL LIVESTREAMS:

Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event. The Zoom invitation is also included in the confirmation email received upon purchase.

WEATHER:
This event takes place outdoors. Please dress according to the weather forecast. In case of inclement weather, an alternate location may be announced.

FOOD & DRINK:
One glass of wine included in in-person admission. Complimentary snacks and refreshments available.

PARKING:
The Poe Museum has a small gravel lot attached on 20th and Main Streets. If the lot is full, there is street parking available on surrounding streets.

OTHER:

Chairs provided. Exhibits remain open to explore before or after the talk.

Reserve your tickets below!

Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.

For questions or media inquiries, please email Nicole Coppino at nicole@poemuseum.org.

Related Events

• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Lyndsay Faye

  September 17 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Emily Ogden

  October 1 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Diana Peterfreund

  November 18 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Join us at The Poe Museum on Wednesday, March 25th for our first Tell-Tale Talk of 2026, featuring author Levi Lionel Leland, who will discuss his newest work, Edgar Allan Poe: The Master of the Macabre.

About Edgar Allan Poe:

Edgar Allan Poe dives deep into the life, stories, and legacy of the man who defined gothic fiction in the 19th century. Poe’s works such as The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher continue to inspire readers, writers, and artists around the globe. This new release offers a fresh perspective and insight on Poe’s contributions to literature, his personal struggles, and the mysteries that shrouded his life and death. 

About Levi Lionel Leland:

Levi Lionel Leland is a born and raised Rhode Islander with a new lifelong passion for Poe and his works. After visiting every Poe Museum or house in the country, he focused his attention homeward, learning all that he could about Poe’s time in Providence and creating the Edgar Allan Poe RI website and A Walking Tour of Poe’ Providence, where he shares his research and passion for our favorite gothic poet.

Copies of Levi’s book will be available for purchase during the event.

Reserve your tickets below!

Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.

Related Events

• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Lyndsay Faye

  September 17 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Emily Ogden

  October 1 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• 

  Tell-Tale Talks Featuring: Diana Peterfreund

  November 18 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm