February 18, 2014 Elizabeth Spencer’s story collection, Starting Over, explores the exquisite tension between husbands and wives, parents and children, familial belonging and the yearning of the individual heart. Spencer has published seven previous story collections, and she won the first of her five O. Henry prizes in 1960. She is, by any measure, a master of the form, and the stories in Starting Over show all the deftness and insight for which she has long been known.
February 13, 2014 In Everything That Remains, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus offer a modern application of the long tradition of living better with less. This memoir about the transition of two upwardly-bound young men into what they call a minimalist life gives readers a how-to example. Millburn and Nicodemus will discuss Everything That Remains at Union Avenue Books in Knoxville on February 17, 2014, at 7 p.m.; at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 20, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.; and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on February 21, 2014, at 7 p.m.
February 12, 2014 North Carolina-based author Wiley Cash garnered widespread praise for his 2012 debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, which explored a small town’s dark secret through multiple narrators. He returns to the technique in his new novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, a short, gripping thriller in which the action unfolds via four very different voices, against the backdrop of the 1998 home-run race between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. Cash will discuss and sign This Dark Road to Mercy at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on February 17, 2014, at 6 p.m.
February 10, 2014 A story of love, betrayal, and the gaping hole left in a family by the unresolved disappearance of a loved one, Laura Lippman’s After I’m Gone is a reminder that a well-done mystery novel is as great a work of art as any piece of literature. Lippman will discuss After I’m Gone at the Nashville Public Library on February 12, 2014, at 6:15 p.m., as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.
February 4, 2014 In June 1966, James Meredith began his “March Against Fear” from the sidewalk just outside the Peabody Hotel. As Aram Goudsouzian, a historian at the University of Memphis, documents in Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear, his gripping account of that summer in Mississippi, Meredith’s march occurred at a turning point for the civil-rights movement. Goudsouzian will discuss Down to the Crossroads on February 11, 2014, at Parnassus Books in Nashville; on February 13, 2014, at Rhodes College in Memphis; and on February 24, 2014, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.
February 4, 2014 High school is challenging enough under ordinary circumstances, but in Changers, Book One: Drew, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, Nashville teenager Ethan Miller wakes up to a new form of teen torture: he no longer inhabits his own body. Instead, he’ll spend his first year of high school as Drew Bohner, a petite blonde girl. The authors, who divide their time between East Tennessee and New York, will discuss Changers at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 8, 2014, at 2 p.m.
