The co-founder of the New England Jewish Poetry Festival and online magazine Soul-Lit prepares for an April appearance in Cambridge for Poetry Month.

CitySprouts, our homegrown group of urban gardening educators, has come a long way in 22 years – and now has its own staff-written picture book, “We Garden Together!” with step-by-step photos of introductory nature activities for kids and families.

Lyssa Mia Smith went from authorial frustration to selling her young-adult novel “Revelle” to HarperCollins at auction in a six-figure, two-book deal.

Everyone should read this absorbing, deeply reported love story, which tears through centuries of history found in Historical Commission archives, copies of the Cambridge Tribune, minutes of organizations and increasingly poignant poems of old white men finding the market to be a metaphor for mortality. Will they, though?

Whether you’re looking for last-minute gift ideas or want to cozy up with a romantic read this week, here are word-focused recommendations from local authors, booksellers at our independent shops and readers.

Jonathan Wilson’s “The Red Balcony” applies a novelistic sheen to a true-life, still unsolved murder set in the Palestine of 1933, a moment swastikas flew over Jerusalem.

In his written peeks into the restaurant industry, as well as a radio show exploring the same territory, Tom Schaudel finds much to be amused by in his dining rooms.

After teaching English literature at Harvard for 10 years, Henriette Lazardis became a full-time writer with a new novel: “Terra Nova,” a story of love, betrayal and adventure set against the backdrop of Antarctic discovery.

Sociologist Jamie McCallum brings his “Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice” to a Harvard Book Store reading on Tuesday.

The hero of Amy Baron’s “The Gentle Bulldozer” dreams of something bigger than working at construction sites – as Baron did as an optometrist who loved to write.