Three free online author talks in August offer food history, Black botanical heritage and a new Miss Marple mystery
Julia Child’s kitchen lives at the Smithsonian now — more than 1,000 parts and pieces, from copper pots to knick-knacks, reassembled exactly as they were in her Cambridge home. In August, one of the curators who helped bring it there will tell Pasadena how it got from a house on Irving Street to the National Mall, and why it still matters.
That conversation is one of three free virtual author talks the Pasadena Public Library is offering in August through its partnership with the Library Speakers Consortium. The lineup spans food history, science and race, and murder in the Swiss Alps — a range that reflects the library’s continuing effort to bring nationally recognized writers and scholars to Pasadena and Altadena residents at no cost.
The series opens on Tuesday, August 4, at 11:00 a.m. with “The Legacy of Julia Child’s Kitchen,” featuring Paula J. Johnson, a curator and public historian at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Johnson directs the museum’s Food History Project and was one of the curators who collected Child’s 20-by-14-foot kitchen in 2001, according to her biography on the event’s registration page. The kitchen — part workspace, part recipe-testing lab — has been on display in Washington, D.C., for most of the years since, drawing visitors to its pegboard-hung pots, well-used appliances and bits of whimsy.
Johnson is the author of “Julia Child’s Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space,” published by Abrams Books in 2024. The talk is billed as a collaboration between the Library Speakers Consortium and the Smithsonian Institution.
On Tuesday, August 25, at 11:00 a.m., plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery will discuss her book “When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy,” published by Henry Holt in January 2026. Montgomery, a professor of biology at Grinnell College and a current fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, explores the ways seven tree species — pecan, sycamore, willow, poplar, oak, mulberry and apple — and the cotton shrub are intertwined with Black American history, according to the book’s publisher.
Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine. Sycamore trees served as signposts for people escaping enslavement. Poplar trees carry the weight of a darker association. Montgomery, who holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis, and co-founded Black Botanists Week, weaves these histories together with plant science and her own path to botany.
The final talk, on Thursday, August 27, at 11:00 a.m., features Lucy Foley discussing “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel,” a new Miss Marple mystery scheduled for publication in September 2026. Foley, a No. 1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author whose books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, was commissioned by the Agatha Christie estate to write the first new Miss Marple novel in 50 years, according to the Christie estate’s website.
The book transports Miss Marple to a snowbound luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps where a body turns up and no one can leave. Foley’s previous novels include “The Guest List,” a Reese’s Book Club selection and Goodreads Choice Award winner, and “The Midnight Feast.” Attendees who watch the August 27 talk live will have a chance to win a copy of the new novel, according to the event listing.
“The Legacy of Julia Child’s Kitchen with Smithsonian Curator Paula J. Johnson” takes place Tuesday, August 4, at 11:00 a.m. “When Trees Testify: Reclaiming America’s Black Botanical Legacy with Beronda Montgomery” takes place Tuesday, August 25, at 11:00 a.m. “High Altitudes and High Stakes: A Miss Marple Mystery with Lucy Foley” takes place Thursday, August 27, at 11:00 a.m. All three talks are free, virtual and open to adults 18 and older; no venue or parking applies. Registration is required and available at libraryc.org/
The library’s August calendar reaches from a mid-century kitchen in Cambridge to a plantation pecan grove to a fictional hotel above the snow line — three very different rooms, each with a story to tell.
