Book Reviews

August 8, 2014 After five novels, Christina Baker Kline has her first bestseller with Orphan Train, which has sold more than one million copies thanks to community-reading projects and book clubs. This quiet novel dissects not only a remarkable historical phenomenon but also the enduring emotional scars left by family tragedy. Kline will discuss Orphan Train at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

August 7, 2014 In her new novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin celebrates books and those who read them. Based loosely on the hero of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, that high-school standard, A.J. Fikry is a sad man whose life is changed when a baby is left in his store. Gabrielle Zevin will discuss the novel at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

August 6, 2014 In Richard Bausch’s new novel, Before, During, After, the events of 9/11 rush Michael Faulk and his fiancée, Natasha Barrett, into a new era. Poised to begin their new life together in Memphis, they find that their experiences of that day have cast their love, and their future, into danger.

July 31, 2014 Lee Smith’s literary gifts make her distinctly qualified to take on the treacherous task of reimagining the last days of Zelda Fitzgerald, the muse behind The Great Gatsby, whose tragic life and more tragic end have haunted readers for generations. Smith will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.