Tag Archives: ocean state

6/13/2026 6pm: Stewart O’Nan at the Carriage Barn

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From Ashaway Free Library:

Please join us for a special evening with bestselling and award-winning author Stewart O’Nan to benefit the Ashaway Free Library. We’ll discuss his newest novel, Evensong, and his 2022 thriller, Ocean State, which is set in Ashaway!

The evening will kick off with a reception, featuring food, drinks, and an opportunity to explore our wonderfully unique venue, a private carriage museum in North Stonington, CT. An author chat, during which Stewart O’Nan will be in conversation with library director Heather Field, will follow.

Tickets are $100 and include food, a drink ticket, access to the carriage museum, the author visit, and a hardcover copy of Evensong. All proceeds will support the Ashaway Free Library’s collections, services, and programs.

We expect tickets for this extraordinary opportunity to sell out. Be sure to grab yours early to avoid disappointment!

Thank you to our generous sponsor, Washington Trust.

Photo credit: Antone Botelho Photography.

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From The New York Times Book Review: 6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week – Ocean State

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Ocean State is one of the six! Check it out at The New York Times.

OCEAN STATE, by Stewart O’Nan.

In the first line of this novel, its narrator announces that her teenage sister helped kill a local girl. What starts as a fast-paced thriller set in coastal Rhode Island morphs into a chilling novel about class, desperation and young love.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/10/books/review/new-paperbacks.html

In Alum Stewart O’Nan’s Ocean State, Teenage Passion Turns Deadly

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Check out the in-depth article on Ocean State in Bostonia, Boston University’s Alumni Magazine!

“When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.” 

So begins Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel, Ocean State, a taut, deeply empathic exploration of a teenage love triangle with devastating consequences. 

“In writing the book, I wanted to be able to convey the feeling of what it feels like to be headlong, wildly, in love and how wretched and destroyed you can feel from love,” says O’Nan (ENG’83). “It’s a love story, not a murder story or a thriller.” 

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https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/stewart-onan-new-book-ocean-state/