With Gold Digger, spoken-word artist Minton Sparks explodes into song
December 4, 2014 “In my family, the only lucrative line of work is gold-diggin’,” Nashville-based spoken-word artist Minton Sparks announces in her fifth album, Gold Digger. Sparks will perform at The Basement in Nashville on December 5, 2014, at 7 p.m.
In a new biography of Ralph Peer, Barry Mazor untangles the roots of American roots music
December 3, 2014 Barry Mazor’s Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music traces the life and career of Ralph Peer, who rose from Kansas City phonograph salesman to one of history’s most influential A&R scouts, record producers, and music publishers. From the birth of what came to be known as country music to the popularization of blues, regional, and eventually Latin music, Mazor tracks it all.
In Richard Ford’s new volume of novellas, Let Me Be Frank With You, Frank Bascombe returns to reflect on life’s final act
December 2, 2014 Despite a body of work that traverses a broad landscape of American character and experience, Richard Ford will always be recognized first as the creator of Frank Bascombe, American Everyman. Bascombe returns in Let Me Be Frank With You, a series of spare, ruminative tales of quiet longing in New Jersey in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Richard Ford will appear on December 10, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is back in Patricia Cornwell’s newest novel, Flesh and Blood
November 25, 2014 Flesh and Blood is Patricia Cornwell’s twenty-second novel featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Since the series began, with the 1990 publication of Postmortem, Cornwell’s books have sold more than 100 million copies in 120 countries, and fans will be glad to know that Flesh and Blood includes the same core cast of characters they have come to know and love.
In Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine revisits the parables with an eye toward their first-century context
November 24, 2014 Short Stories by Jesus, the latest book by Vanderbilt professor Amy-Jill Levine, analyzes a misunderstood and nearly forgotten literary form: the parable. Levine, a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, argues that Jesus’s parables have been domesticated into easy lessons, robbed of their power to surprise, subvert, and indict.
Sharyn McCrumb brings back fans’ favorite characters in her new Ballad novella
November 21, 2014 Sharyn McCrumb gives fans of her Ballad series an early Christmas present with her new novella, Nora Bonesteel’s Christmas Past, which is told in alternating vignettes featuring Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and Nora Bonesteel, two popular characters from the series.
