Stand By for a Fighter Pilot
July 23, 2015 “In the odd, bewildered world of children, we knew we were in the presence of a fabulous, overwhelming personality, but we had no idea we were being raised by a genius of his own mythmaking,” write Pat Conroy in his new memoir. With The Death of Santini, the beloved author of runaway bestsellers like The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and, of course, The Great Santini, lays bare the origin of his storytelling impulse. Conroy 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 22, 2015 Novelist Alan Lightman is the grandson of M.A. Lightman, who founded the Malco movie theater chain and was the formidable patriarch of a smart, talented, temperamental family. In Screening Room Lightman recounts the history of his remarkable kin and the Memphis they helped to shape. He will appear at the 
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 
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 15, 2015 Jesse’s Girl by Miranda Kenneally is a girl-meets-boy romantic romp through a star-crossed high-school Career Day in a story that quickly calls to mind Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Kenneally, a Manchester native, will read from her new YA novel at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 26, 2015, at 2 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.