Fall Reading Challenge Kickoff! | Chelmsford Public Library

This fall, Chelmsford Public Library is challenging you to get social! Our Fall Reading Challenge not only encourages readers to try new books and revisit classics, but also share what you’re reading with us online!

Use the prompts in the list at the bottom of this post. Then, show us your choices and photos for each prompt by tagging us on:

If you don’t know where to start with the challenge, we have suggestions to get cozy with as the weather grows colder.

Fall in love with a romance book!

Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson is a hot new romance novel to put you in the mood for Halloween.

PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.

It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something). It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

Cook a new cookbook dish and show it off.

Tieghan Gerard’s cookbook Half Baked Harvest is chock full of hearty recipes that will satisfy your fall cravings. Filled with seasonal produce and easy meal prep, this cookbook is a great pick for trying something new.

While it might be a trek to get to Tieghan’s barn-turned-test kitchen, her creativity shines here: dress up that cheese board with a real honey comb; decorate a standard salad with spicy, crispy sweet potato fries; serve stir fry over forbidden black rice; give French Onion Soup an Irish kick with Guinness and soda bread; bake a secret ingredient into your apple pie (hint: it’s molasses). And a striking photograph accompanies every recipe, making Half Baked Harvest Cookbook a feast your eyes, too.
Whether you need to get dinner on the table for your family tonight or are planning your next get-together with friends, Half Baked Harvest Cookbook has your new favorite recipe.

Reread a book you’ve read for school.

The beloved American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness — in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.