Taking Charge
August 12, 2013 In Coup: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Republican Lamar Alexander in Office Early, and Stopped a Pardon Scandal, Nashvillian Keel Hunt remembers a day in 1979 that will long stand as both a model of bipartisanship and a defense of the people’s right to honest government. Hunt will discuss Coup at the Nashville Public Library (where he will appear with journalist John Seigenthaler) on August 15, 2013, at 6 p.m.; at at Vanderbilt University (where he will appear with Senator Lamar Alexander) on September 20 at 4:30 p.m.; and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All events are free and open to the public.
August 9, 2013 Franklin novelist Kristin O’Donnell Tubb takes readers on a madcap quest through the streets of New Orleans in her zodiac-themed thriller, The 13th Sign. On the day Jalen Jones turns thirteen, she pays a visit to the French Quarter emporium of voodoo priestess Madame Beausoleil and leaves the shop with a small leather book called The Keypers of the Zodiack. She hopes reading it will shed some light on her future. Instead, by opening the book, she unleashes ancient forces of chaos and finds herself in the fight of her life to regain the world she knows and protect the people she loves. Tubb will read from the novel at the twenty-fifth annual 
August 6, 2013 Jill McCorkle’s novel Life After Life focuses on old age and death as way of seeing into the human heart. In this multi-layered narrative, death and loss are ever-present, and so is love. Jill McCorkle will read from and sign Life After Life at the twenty-fifth annual 
August 5, 2013 Denise Kiernan’s engaging new book explores the human side of the story of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the best-kept secrets in the saga of how the United States built the first nuclear weapons. Kiernan will discuss The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II at the twenty-fifth annual 
August 2, 2013 Perhaps it’s no wonder that Ace Atkins writes such believable thrillers: Atkins started his career as a crime reporter at The Tampa Tribune, where he earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for investigative work. In 2011, the Robert B. Parker estate chose Atkins to continue the popular series featuring Parker’s beloved character Spenser, a Boston private investigator. Atkins will discuss Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland at the twenty-fifth annual 
August 1, 2013 Steve Yarbrough has earned a devoted readership for evocative, emotionally searing stories and novels about his native Mississippi. With The Realm of Last Chances, he turns to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, delivering a strikingly sensitive portrait of Kristin and Cal, an unlikely couple forced by the recession to move cross-country, and Matt, a young interloper whose own thwarted circumstances kindle a spiritual kinship with Kristin that becomes to each of them as necessary as it is doomed. Yarbrough will appear at 