One of our favourite parts about living in Toronto has to be the ever-widening array of cultural offerings. Creative hubs have stepped up to the plate and filled their rosters with a mix of international and homegrown talent. This ethos is particularly apparent in the Toronto Public Library programming, which would stoke excitement in any bookworm.

This fall, the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon will be fuelled with visits from Canadian favourites Chris Hadfield, Mike Myers, and Emma Donoghue. International authors round out the programming, including my own personal can’t-miss: Zadie Smith (December 6), touching down to talk about her new novel Swing Time, which shows us the power of music and friendship.

The fall season kicks off September 9 with Jonathan Safran Foer and his first novel in ten years, Here I Am. You may know Foer from his previous works, Eating Animals and the novel, Everything is Illuminated. His new book explores the multiple identities that we all inhabit in contemporary life in a work of “extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.” On September 20, writer and journalist Carl Hiaasen talks with Linwood Barclay about his new “screwball adventure,” Razor Girl, set in the Florida Keys.

September 26 will feature Ross King, whose new book, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of Water Lilies, looks at the life and career of painter Claude Monet by telling the story of one of his most iconic paintings. On September 27, famed Canadian writer Emma Donoghue is back with her new novel, The Wonder, set in rural Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.

October is chock-full of events, including Bel Canto author Ann Patchett on her new novel, Commonwealth; cartoonist Sarah Glidden, whose graphic journalism re-tells the stories of women she met while on assignment in Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the Awards Ceremony for the Toronto Book Awards with CBC’s Gill Deacon; and an event that explores what The Future Museum will be like with the new heads of AGO and ROM.

As if that weren’t enough, on October 17, famed medical doctor and cancer researcher, Siddhartha Mukherjee (Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer) lectures on the intersections of health, technology and personalized medicine. Roméo Dallaire is also here to discuss his ground-breaking new memoir about his ongoing struggle to overcome PTSD.

October gets rounded out with a sure-to-be crowd-pleaser, Mike Myers, who’s here to discuss his latest book on – what else? – Canada.

November features Canada’s favourite astronaut, Chris Hadfield, in a rare on-stage interactive presentation involving four TPL branches, an Indigenous community in Ontario’s north, and the Appel Salon audience – problem-solving in space, showing the Toronto public what it’s like to think like an astronaut.

Best of all? It’s free! Tickets become available four weeks before the event. Just make sure you hop on that, as they are required for entrance.