Schreiner University Professor Kathleen Croom will present the next Monday Night Fiction Series Oct. 16 at 7 p.m.

Croom will facilitate a discussion on the novel “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo.

Dominated by the Whiting family, the founders of the three mills that provided employment for most of the New England town's residents, Empire Falls finds itself in sharp decline at the turn of the twenty-first century. Its mills are closed, stores are boarded up, and its population is dwindling. The families who remain live on memories of the past and the shared fantasy that the mills will reopen and the once-thriving town will experience a renaissance.

The New York Times calls “Empire Falls” "Rich, humorous, and elegantly constructed . . . easily Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far,” while the Christian Science Monitor exclaims, "The history of American literature may show that Richard Russo wrote the last great novel of the 20th century." Russo is also the author of previous award-winning fiction titles “Mohawk”, “The Risk Pool”, “Nobody’s Fool”, and “Straight Man.”

Monday Night Fiction, sponsored by the Center for Innovative Learning, meets in the Scarle-Philips Room in the William Logan Library on the Schreiner campus. The evening begins at 7 p.m. and lasts a couple of hours. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to read the book that is the evening’s topic for discussion. The featured book may be obtained in the Schreiner University Book Store or at your local bookstore or library.

For more information, contact Martha York, director of CIL, at 830-792-7352 or mlyork@schreiner.edu, or visit www.schreiner.edu.