Only Time and Light Will Do the Job
May 27, 2014 “The soul is liquid, and slow to evaporate,” writes Elizabeth McCracken. “The body’s a bucket and liable to slosh. Grieving, haunted, heartbroken, obsessed: your friends will tell you to cheer up. What they really mean is dry up. But it isn’t a matter of will. Only time and light will do the job.” The metaphor is typical of the stories that make up Thunderstruck, a collection of achingly honest, haunting, and often darkly comic tales. McCracken will discuss the book on June 3, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville.
May 21, 2014 When last we heard from retired Memphis Police Detective Baruch “Buck” Schatz, the hysterical Jewish octogenarian in Daniel Friedman’s 2012 debut novel, Don’t Ever Get Old, he was taking a break from watching Fox News, considering his bowel progress, and smoking Lucky Strikes while an escaped Nazi war criminal tried to kill him. Friedman will discuss the book’s sequel, Don’t Ever Look Back, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on May 27, 2014, at 6 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 1, 2014, at 2 p.m.
May 15, 2914 Jennifer Chiaverini continues her portraits of Civil War women in her latest novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, which features Kate Chase Sprague, the daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury. Chiaverini will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 22, 2014, at 6 p.m.
May 14, 2014 Uganda Be Kidding Me is the fourth memoir by Chelsea Handler, comedian and (until recently) host of the late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately. The new book offers exuberant accounts of Handler’s exotic travels, along with a healthy dose of Handler’s First World problems (like feeling fat in Botswana), and is rife with the comedian’s trademark R-rated humor. Chelsea Handler will appear at Peter Nappi in Nashville on May 17, 2014, at 2 p.m.
May 12, 2014 Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly, an essay collection edited by Lee Gutkind and Beth Ann Fennelly, is about blowing it, betraying loved ones, sleeping with the wrong people, breaking the law, and, most importantly, having the nerve to fess up. In the South, this is not as easy as it may seem.