History Book Club
Curious Owl
The Archivists
History is not a closed book — it is a conversation across time.
Saturday, December 5th • 9:00–10:00 AM
Curious Owl Bookshop
181 West Main St
Spindale, NC 28160
Join us for the monthly meeting of The Archivists, Curious Owl Bookshop’s official History Book Club.
Whether you are drawn to ancient civilizations, revolutions, biographies, wars and peaces, local stories, forgotten voices, or the quiet details that reshape what we think we know, you will find fellow readers here who care about the past — and what it asks of us now.
There are no membership fees and no pressure. Simply read the month’s featured book and join us.
This month’s featured book:
Book of Forbidden Words
by Louise Fein
Across 400 years, an encrypted manuscript keeps finding the women brave enough to protect it. In 1552 Paris, as presses spread dangerous ideas and heretic-hunters answer with fire, ex-nun Lysbette Angiers brings a forbidden text to printer Charlotte Guillard. Four centuries later, in McCarthy-era New York, former Bletchley Park cryptographer Milly Bennett is handed that same relic — and pulled into a fight over who gets to speak, publish, and be believed.
Inspired by the real Voynich manuscript, Louise Fein’s dual-timeline novel is rich historical fiction about censorship, courage, and the stubborn life of words that refuse to stay buried. Come ready to talk the three women at its center, the cost of free expression then and now, and the ideas that make a book worth risking everything to save.
Copies of Book of Forbidden Words are available now at Curious Owl Bookshop — stop in, grab a copy, and read along with us before we meet on December 5.
