With echoes of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Sybil Baker’s new novel, While You Were Gone, deftly explores family relationships—and family secrets. Baker will appear at Star Line Books in Chattanooga on June 22, and at the Chattanooga Readers and Writers Fair on June 23.
In his latest book, Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America, Bill Ivey, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, addresses the moral failings of the U.S. and offers ideas for how to create a better world.
Graham Hoppe’s Gone Dollywood explores the theme-park juggernaut, the genius behind Dolly Parton’s stardom, and the effect of Pigeon Forge’s culture on Appalachian identity.
The late Nashville Scene film critic and editor Jim Ridley wrote about movies with dazzling insight, humor, and honesty. In People Only Die of Love in Movies editor Steve Haruch has collected some of the best of Ridley’s work.
Karen White’s Dreams of Falling ticks the boxes for a perfect summer read: evocative setting, tragic romance, unsolved mystery, and family drama. White will appear at a fundraiser for the Southern Lit Alliance in Chattanooga on June 14.
Hannah Pittard’s new novel describes a plane crash’s effect not just on the white, rich, cultured elite—the “visible empire” that makes up Atlanta’s ruling class in 1962-but also on the city’s disenfranchised. Pittard will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 13.
