Perpetually on the Lam
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.
August 5, 2014 The best books for young readers are as controversial and thought-provoking as anything written for their parents. Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature by Betsy Bird, Julie Danielson, and Peter D. Sieruta casts a revealing light on children’s books and their creators. Danielson will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 7, 2014, at 6:30 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.
August 4, 2014 With In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, Memphis native Hampton Sides, known for his suspenseful historical writing, records a heroic three-year struggle for survival by the crew of a nineteenth-century polar expedition. Sides will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on August 8, 2014, at 7 p.m., and also at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on August 12, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.