The celebrated nature writer Robert Macfarlane journeys to three continents to confront the question in his latest book’s title: Is a River Alive? Joined by a changing cast of fascinating characters, he roams three rivers, looking for answers. Macfarlane will give a free public lecture at Rhodes College in Memphis on October 1.
Summer’s Never Over by Darby Bozeman offers the kind of scary story campers tell when they gather around the fire. In this tale, the camp itself goes up in flames, taking the life of a dazzling young counselor. Was it an accident or murder? Darby Bozeman will discuss Summer’s Never Over at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 9.
Tayari Jones’ dynamic new novel Kin revisits the mid-20th century South for a story narrated by orphaned “cradle friends” whose travels take them from rural Louisiana to separate lives, with one landing at an elite Atlanta college and the other finding work in the gritty nightlife of Memphis. Jones will discuss Kin at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 23 and Novel in Memphis on March 18.
In The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers, Cheryl McKissack Daniel chronicles her family’s emergence from artisanal construction work as enslaved laborers to prominence as architects and builders with a Nashville-based company. She will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
Inspired by his family’s history, former journalist Charles B. Fancher set his novel Red Clay on a fictional plantation called Road’s End as the Civil War comes to an end but the threat of violence still lurks.
In An Unfinished Love Story, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin remembers her long marriage to speechwriter and presidential advisor Richard Goodwin and explores the complex symbiosis of the two administrations they championed. Doris Kearns Goodwin will discuss the book with Jon Meacham at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on June 18.
