Too bad you’re not in Grades 1 through 3 at the Cambridgeport School. B.J. Novak sold out his Thursday reading in Harvard Square of “The Book With No Pictures.”

Ellen Cooney, a one-time Cambridge resident who has taught at Harvard and MIT, brings “The Mountaintop School for Dogs” and a Porter Square Books first.

The Dante Alighieri Society of Massachusetts’ free weekend lecture is particularly on point: It explores the moral systems of Dante and Dickens.

Story Club – a literary event that operates like a poetry slam – returns with six slots for skilled raconteurs, including one who runs ‘Bare’ monthly at The Middle East.

Newbery Award-winning author Rebecca Stead reads Wednesday from her latest novel, “Liar & Spy,” as part of Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Winter Residency.

What are the odds you get to hang out with Harvard grad Amram Shapiro, one-third author of “The Book of Odds,” on the very day HarperCollins publishes it? Really good.

Much of David Beckett’s “The Cana Mystery” will be familiar to fans of “The Da Vinci Code,” and some of it will be even more familiar to Cantabrigians, especially those intimate with Harvard Square.

With its debut Thursday, Story Club Boston becomes the latest chapter in a storytelling renaissance, and one you need to stick with to the end to see how it comes out.

The blogger who caused a kerfuffle in March by declaring Somerville the hippest city in America is back with her first novel, set – where else? In Somerville – and a free teaser prequel in e-book formats.

As the James “Whitey” Bulger trial churns on in U.S. District Court in Boston, this is the ideal time to catch up on the history behind it – all three centuries of it.