The public is invited to hear author Sydney Eddison at an open meeting of the Durham Garden Club on Thursday, June 9, at 10 a.m. at the Durham Public Library, 7 Maple Ave.

Eddison will present a talk on “Change: The Passage of Time in the Garden.” She will also have on hand her latest book, “Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older.”

A nationally recognized gardener, author of seven books and a popular lecturer, Eddison will share her joy, enthusiasm and experience as a life-long gardener.

“Gardening for a Lifetime” is a memoir about having to scale back after widowhood and painful joints made it impossible to keep up with a large country garden. Intermixing personal experience with practical gardening tips, Eddison presents a road map for accepting and embracing a new and simpler way of gardening.

Refreshments will be served. The suggested donation is $5.

Brad Szollose, author of "Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia," discuss the laws for becoming a liquid leader and how to lead a multi-generational workforce.

Brad will be speaking and signing books at Burgundy Books, 4 Norwich Road, in East Haddam on May 21 from 3 to 5 p.m. A reception will follow the lecture.
Admission to the event is $10. For more information or to register for this event, call (860) 399-1706.

By VIKTORIA SUNDQVIST

Sometimes, I find the best books are the ones you have no idea what they're going to be about. "A Watershed Year" by Susan Schoenberger was one of those books for me.

My interested was piqued by the fact that Schoenberger is the West Hartford editor for Patch.com, and I had seen her around Twitter and other social media circles. "Let's see if she can really write," I told my co-workers.

Turns out, she can.

I was instantly drawn into the life of Lucy McVie, the main character. The book starts with McVie saying farewell to a dear friend, and possibly the love of her life, as he is dying of cancer. But after his death, she receives some emails he had arranged to send her every month, and she decides to make some changes in her life.

The most intriguing part of the book to me was Lucy's travels to Russia to adopt a 4-year-old boy - all on her own. Her struggles to make the boy love her are sincere and heart-wrenching. But with the support of her somewhat unusual family - all very strong characters in the book - Lucy perseveres.

Schoenberger will speak about her book at Essex Library on May 31. DETAILS HERE.

Like the celebrities of TV's hit, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and untold millions of other Americans, Joseph Cone was curious about his ancestors. But Cone is not a celebrity with a crew of assistants, so he went about digging up the past the old-fashioned way, doing painstaking research himself in libraries and archives.

Begun long before the current TV craze, Cone's labors bore fruit in a story of colonial New England that "still astonishes" him. His book, "A Man Named Daniel," tells the vivid story of Daniel Cone, a founder of Haddam and East Haddam, and the first of the Cone name in North America.

Cone, a Scottish prisoner of the final battle of the English Civil War who was deported to New
England in 1652, would most likely have been forever lost to history—like nearly all of his compatriot prisoners—if it were not that he became an indentured servant in one of the most notable and influential Puritan families, the Winthrops. As a result of about five years of service to John Winthrop Jr., governor of the Connecticut Colony, Cone is mentioned in a variety of documents associated with Winthrop, and from them, and Winthrop’s well-documented life, and other primary sources, the story of Daniel can be fleshed out.

The 169-page "Man Named Daniel" focuses on the tumultuous period in New England from 1645 to 1665, a time marked by the expansion of the first settlements of the Puritans beyond Massachusetts, the founding of and competition among nascent colonies of New Haven, New London, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and the attendant strife with native peoples.

The extraordinary challenges of uprooted individuals like Daniel of making a new life in New England comes alive against the powerful forces of the era: the English Civil Wars, the Puritan revolution, and the passions of their radical religion. Much more than an unexpected portrait of an obscure common man, Daniel reveals the culture and social structure of this seminal period in American history.

The career of Daniel from soldier, prisoner, and trusted servant, to freeman, husband and pioneer, is amply supported by 33 pages of endnotes and bibliograpy. A chronology and 23 illustrations are also provided.

Joseph Cone, a tenth generation descendant of Daniel, is a writer and documentary filmmaker, a
graduate of Yale and the University of Oregon, and a faculty member at Oregon State University.

Daniel follows publication of the non-fiction "Fire Under the Sea" (William Morrow) and "A Common Fate" (Henry Holt), and a screenplay, "Verdi’s Triumph" (Text & Context). "A Man Named Daniel" is available from Amazon.com or direct from the publisher at textandcontext.com. List price, $16.95.

The Essex Library hosts former Hartford Courant sportswriter Jeff Goldberg, who’ll be talking about his debut book, “Bird At the Buzzer” on May 17 at 7 p.m.

Goldberg covered the UConn Women’s basketball team from 2001 to 2006, and his book recreates the classic March 2001 Big East contest between UConn and Notre Dame, with in-depth interviews with key players, including Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Ruth Riley, and opposing coaches Geno Auriemma and Muffet McGraw.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing. The program is free and open to all. Register by calling (860) 767-1560.

Dione Longley, a former director of the Middlesex County Historical Society, and Buck Zaidel, a dentist in Cromwell, are working on a book about Connecticut soldiers in the Civil War.

The book will feature images and words of local soldiers and their families, and is expected to be published in 2012 by Wesleyan University Press.

Longley and Zaidel will speak at Russell Memorial Library in Middletown on Wednesday, May 11, about how you can learn of your ancestors' military history to find out if one of them were part of the Civil War. The program starts at 7 p.m. and is free.

NEW YORK (AP) — New books on Osama bin Laden and the Navy SEAL unit that killed him are coming soon, according to the Associated Press.

Random House says it hopes to have a collection of essays out quickly on the al-Qaida terrorist leader, who was killed in a helicopter raid and gunfight on Monday in Pakistan. The Free Press says it's planning an e-book "as fast as possible" based on material from Peter Bergen's "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda."

Bin Laden was killed by a unit called Navy SEAL Team Six, ending a nearly 10-year hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

St. Martin's Press is moving up publication of "SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper," by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin. The book was scheduled to come out May 24 but likely will be released within a week.

Meet author Susan Schoenberger, whose debut novel, “A Watershed Year” won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2006, on May 31 at 7 p.m. at the Essex Library in Essex.

Schoenberger’s career has included stints with the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant, and her short stories have been published in Inkwell and Village Rambler. She is currently the editor of West Hartford Patch, and online news site covering West Hartford.

Schoenberger will read from and discuss her work, and books will be available for sale and signing. To register, call (860) 767-1560.