In her new thriller, Indie Darling, Nashville author Lauren Nossett plumbs a dark side of Music City. Told from the perspective of a badass female private detective investigating the disappearance of a popular singer-songwriter, the story is rife with plot twists, parallel mysteries, and Dolly Parton songs. Nossett will appear at a book launch party at The Sun Room in Nashville on July 27 and at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books on October 17-18.
Leslie Baird’s debut novel, Salomé, offers a genre-defying tale: a bildungsroman wrapped in layers of intrigue, gothic mysticism, and a reimagined classic femme fatale. Set in the quiet French village of Châteaubriant, it’s a mind-bendingly good read. Leslie Baird will discuss the book at The Lipstick Lounge in Nashville on May 26 at 6 p.m.
In her debut novel, Mercy Hill, Hannah Thurman brings a sharp, attentive sensibility to a story of complex family dynamics, control, and the aftermath of a highly pressurized childhood.
Carolyn Newton’s second novel, Songs of the Dead Road, follows a Polish pianist whose life is shaped by wartime loss, Soviet labor camps, and the enduring power of music. The novel explores how memory and art bear witness to histories the world would rather forget.
Three Guesses, the debut novella by Memphian Chris McClain Johnson, offers an epistolary tale of surprising friendship between three very different adults. What begins as a search for the meaning of a painting by one of the three transforms into spirited, platonic exchanges that enrich each character’s life with greater meaning, shared intimacy, and self-actualization.
Dead Man Blues, a crime novel by S.D. House (pen name of bestselling author Silas House), combines a mysterious murder with the tale of a man in search of redemption.
