September 10, 2014 Huddy Marr, the protagonist of Stephen Schottenfeld’s Bluff City Pawn, knows guns—and gold, and guitars, and jewelry. He also knows that the blood bank replacing the liquor store next door to his pawn shop signals the last, irreversible step in the decline of his particular neck of a slumping city. In his debut novel, Schottenfeld capably shows Memphis as the home of a different kind of blues. Schottenfeld will appear at the University of Memphis on September 16, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Bluff Room of the University Center. He will also appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. Both events are free and open to the public.

September 8, 2014 A novel with enormous scope and an ambitious time-jumping structure, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven paints its post-apocalyptic world in both bold brushstrokes and tiny points of background detail. Mandel will discuss Station Eleven at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on Oct. 10-12.

September 5, 2014 The Story of Land and Sea, Katy Simpson Smith’s debut novel, considers parental love, faith, and friendship in coastal North Carolina at the end of the American Revolution. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 11, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

September 3, 2014 Antonya Nelson has often been praised as one of the great contemporary writers of the short story. With Funny Once, her newest collection, she more than delivers on that reputation with nine stories and a novella that are object lessons in exquisitely crafted literary fiction. Antonya Nelson will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.