Book Reviews

July 20, 2015 The protagonist in Erica Wright’s debut crime thriller, The Red Chameleon, is Kathleen Stone, a retired NYPD cop once on the organized-crime beat. At just twenty-five, Stone is already a veritable has-been, a P.I. who now parlays her gift for disguises into spying on marital philanderers and other seemingly less dangerous pursuits. Then she wanders into her client’s murdered husband in an Upper East Side bar. Erica Wright will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015. All festival events are free and open to the public.

July 17, 2015 Susan Elizabeth Miller’s 2014 novel, newly published in paperback, reads like a Jane Austen novel crossed with a Led Zeppelin song. A prolific, bestselling novelist, Phillips will discuss Heroes Are My Weakness at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on July 29, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

July 9, 2015 In Long Black Curl, the latest installment in Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa series, Appalachian blood feuds recur through the generations like repetitions of an Irish reel. When Bo-Kate Wisby, an exiled daughter of Cloud County, returns home, she initiates a brutal power struggle that will test her entire community. Alex Bledsoe will discuss Long Black Curl at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 18, 2015, at 2 p.m.

July 7, 2015 With Code of Conduct, bestselling Nashville novelist Brad Thor turns up the heat on his superspy, Scot Harvath. Plagues and terrorism, secret cabals and patriots, make for a worthy summer thriller. Thor will discuss Code of Conduct at the Nashville Public Library on July 13, 2015, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.