Beginning in January, the Free Library will continue its Year of Dickens 2012 with monthly literary salons, each featuring a different Dickens novel. The salons are free and open to all readers, whether it’s your first or 100th time to crack open Oliver Twist.

Taking place in the Elkins Room of the Rare Book Department at Parkway Central, the salons are held the third Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m. The first book up for discussion, on January 19, is Dickens’s earliest novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The following months’ line-up includes:

• February 16 – Oliver Twist
• March 15 – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• April 19 – The Old Curiosity Shop
• May 17 – David Copperfield
• June 21 – Great Expectations
• July 19 – A Tale of Two Cities
• August 16 – Barnaby Rudge
• September 20 – Nicholas Nickleby
• October 18 – Bleak House
• November 15 – Our Mutual Friend
• December 20 – A Christmas Carol

To register for any of the salons, visit freelibrary.org/dickens.

Along with the literary salons, special guest authors and writers will visit the Library during reading periods for the novels as a part of the Boz Bicentenary Speaker Series, named after Dickens’s self-stylized nickname. The schedule, which can also be found at freelibrary.org/dickens, includes Richard Bravo on The Pickwick Papers on January 11; Matthew Pearl on The Mystery of Edwin Drood on March 6; and Wesley Stace on David Copperfield on May 9.

We hope you continue to join us in our celebration of all things Dickens!