With The Story of Charlotte’s Web and The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Michael Sims invented what amounts to a new genre: the biography of a particular book. In Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, he follows literary and historical clues to identify the origins of the most famous fictional detective in the world.
Loosely based on a real incident, The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers is the tale of a pampered seventeen-year-old daughter of a South Carolina plantation owner who marries a widowed Confederate major. Rivers will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on January 25 at 6:30 p.m.
In Kevin Wilson’s Perfect Little World, a child psychologist’s Infinite Family Project brings ten newborns and their parents to a compound outside Nashville, where they will live and grow together, their every need met. Wilson will discuss his second novel at Bounty on Broad in Memphis on January 24 at 6 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 26 at 6:30 p.m.
Acclaimed poet Joy Harjo’s most recent collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, delivers the exquisite mix of beauty, transcendence, and pain her work is known for. Harjo joined the creative-writing faculty at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville this year and will give a free public reading at UT’s Hodges Library on January 23 at 7 p.m.
In Carve the Mark, bestselling YA author Veronica Roth builds a universe around two teenagers who must confront their own identities. Roth will appear at the Nashville Children’s Theatre on January 20 at 6:15 p.m. Tickets are $27.50 and include a signed copy of Carve the Mark.
Zadie Smith’s Swing Time tells the story of a childhood friendship and grapples with themes of race, class, and gender. It transcends the personal without ever losing sight of human passion, embodied in the intense feelings between two little girls. Smith will appear at Belmont University in Nashville on January 19 at 6:30 p.m.
