This Spiteful Old House
August 15, 2014 The locals call it “Spite House,” the structure at the center of Courtney Miller Santo’s new novel, Three Story House. Lizzie Linwood, granddaughter of the man who built the Memphis home to “spite” his brother, joins forces with her two cousins to renovate the dilapidated structure, exposing old wounds and revealing buried truths along the way. Courtney Miller Santo will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on August 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
August 14, 2014 Martha Woodroof’s debut novel, Small Blessings, features a collection of eccentrics at a small women’s college in Virginia and examines the heartaches and hopes beneath their quirks. Woodroof will discuss Small Blessings at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on August 24, 2014, at 2 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 25, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
August 11, 2014 There is endless debate about whether zealous policing and harsh sentences are effective in reducing crime, but according to sociologist Alice Goffman they have a profoundly damaging effect on troubled, low-income communities. In On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, Goffman reports her observations from six years spent in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood, where she found that aggressive law enforcement cripples lives, ruins relationships, and creates a major barrier to escaping crime and poverty. Goffman will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.
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.