Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Of Flight and Flappers

Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America, 1927 chronicles five eventful months of popular history

By Michael Ray Taylor | October 9, 2013

October 9, 2013 Nonfiction author Bill Bryson is legendary for his ability to mine a readable story from a vast subject. In a twist, Bryson’s new book, One Summer: America, 1927, takes a deceptively narrow focus, describing events that occurred over a five-month period in Jazz Age America—but what a summer 1927 proved to be. Bryson will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Brat Out of Hell

With Doomed, cult hero Chuck Palahniuk brings Madison Spencer up from the depths of Perdition into Purgatory—AKA Los Angeles

By Ed Tarkington | October 7, 2013

October 7, 2013 With Doomed—the sequel to 2011’s Damned—Chuck Palahniuk brings Madison Spencer back from hell to roam the earth as a specter, haunting the ex-schoolmates who once tormented her and the insufferable parents who ignored her, ultimately finding herself at the center of yet another diabolical plot by the Evil One. Chuck Palahniuk will discuss Doomed at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Life Among the Fallen

Allan Gurganus takes a darkly comic look at small-town life in Local Souls

By Maria Browning | October 3, 2013

October 3, 2013 In Local Souls, Allan Gurganus offers up a trio of comic novellas set in fictional Falls, North Carolina, a twenty-first-century village where the insular coziness of small-town life is being diminished by newcomers, digital communication, and natural calamity. Gurganus will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013.

A Flood of Emotion

The Tilted World, a novel by Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin, sets romance and suspense against the great Mississippi flood of 1927

By Michael Ray Taylor | September 30, 2013

September 30, 2013 The Tilted World, by poet Beth Ann Fennelly and novelist Tom Franklin, is a novel set against the great Mississippi flood of 1927. In the book, their first literary collaboration, male and female protagonists speak in alternating chapters to create a story of both brutal action and satisfying romance. Fennelly and Franklin will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on October 4, 2013, at 5 p.m., and at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013.

Pursuing Ghosts

John Searles’s Help for the Haunted features a teen determined to solve the mystery of her parents’ murders

By Sarah Norris | September 26, 2013

September 26, 2013 Sylvie, the teenaged narrator of John Searles’s searing third novel, Help for the Haunted, awakes to the sound of the gunshots that killed her parents. Left in the care of her older sister, she works to piece together what happened that night—endangering her own life along the way. Searles, author of the bestselling mysteries Boy Still Missing and Strange but True, will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Troubled Bones

In a Southern Gothic memoir, Brent Hendricks writes of his pilgrimage to the Tri-State Crematory

By Sarah Norris | September 25, 2013

September 25, 2013 In his debut memoir, A Long Day at the End of the World: A Story of Desecration and Revelation in the Deep South, Brent Hendricks writes about the “largest mass desecration in modern American history” and of learning that his own father’s corpse lay among hundreds of bodies discarded outside at Georgia’s Tri-State Crematory. Hendricks will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker