Wright Thompson’s latest book, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, revisits what is often considered the most galvanizing event of the civil rights era: the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in rural Sunflower County, Mississippi. Thompson will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on October 3 and Barnes & Noble in Brentwood on October 4.
Chattanooga author Natalie Lloyd’s latest tale of heartbreak and hope for middle school readers is The Witching Wind. Roxie Darling and Grayson Patch become friends as incoming sixth graders at Camelot Middle School in fictional Silas County, Tennessee. And, as is always the case in a Natalie Lloyd book, fantastical adventures are soon afoot.
Margot Livesey’s The Road from Belhaven follows a gifted girl’s passage from child to adult. Livesey will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
Rachel M. Hanson’s The End of Tennessee takes readers inside a teen girl’s decision to run away from an abusive home and her struggle to create a new life.
In Tell Me Everything, Strout unites her most famous and beloved characters — Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and Bob Burgess — in a haunting but nevertheless optimistic examination of the way we depend on stories to survive. Strout will appear at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on September 12.
In his debut story collection, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. uses a broad array of literary styles and emotional registers to capture the breadth of the immigrant experience. He will discuss the book at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
