Book Reviews

Brad Watson‘s new collection, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, returns to the post-Faulkner, post-modern South of bleak strip malls, cheap motels, tacky Gulf Coast beaches, and lonely outposts surrounded by murky water, the faint odor of decay, and the ever-present specters of longing and loss. But despite the well-known milieu, these new stories demonstrate a mastery of the surreal that lifts them above the typical conventions of Southern Gothic. Brad Watson will be at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on March 30.

Mullaby, North Carolina, is like many a small Southern town, complete with barbeque joints, eccentrics, and neighbors with long memories. The setting for author Sarah Addison Allen‘s latest novel, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, Mullaby is a place where mysteries are so commonplace the town’s inhabitants have come to view them with an air of blasé acceptance. Allen will be in Nashville to read from her gentle new mystery at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on March 25 at 7 p.m.

In the way of most seventeen-year-olds, young Morgan Kinneson is certain about life. As the Civil War rages far away, his family of Vermont abolitionists holds to its beliefs by being a critical stop on the final leg of the Underground Railroad. When an elderly runaway named Jesse Moses is killed by slave hunters while under Morgan’s care, the guilt-stricken youth vows to avenge the slave’s death. Instead, he finds himself on the run from the same pack of slave hunters, protecting a rune-covered stone that Moses had slipped into his pocket. Unaware of the stone’s full significance, Morgan nonetheless recognizes the need to keep it safe. Thus begins the journey at the heart of Howard Frank Mosher‘s Walking to Gatlinburg, his beautifully written and utterly engrossing tenth novel. Mosher will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 21 at 4 p.m.

Lisa Lutz brings her four-novel mystery series to a close with The Spellmans Strike Again, another outing with this delightfully dysfunctional family of detectives. The family saga is narrated by Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, whose life has been a series of bad choices, poor judgment, bone-headedness, and other deep character flaws. Fortunately for Izzy, her mother, father, uncle, sister, brother, and assorted friends and lovers are equally eccentric—and equally annoying and lovable. Described by People magazine as “the love child of Dirty Harry and Harriet the Spy,” the Spellman books offer an addictive romp from the first page of the book to the last, including all the footnotes and appendices. Lutz will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 22 at 7 p.m.

At the beginning Faster Pastor, a NASCAR mystery jointly written by novelist Sharyn McCrumb and driver Adam Edwards, it’s particularly appropriate that race-car driver Camber Berkley should crash into the funeral of an avid racing fan in the small Tennessee town of Judas Grove. Even more appropriate, this deceased fan has willed the proceeds of his estate to a yet-to-be-identified local church. To determine the recipient, all the churches’ pastors must race each other; the winner will inherit the legacy. Arrested for reckless driving, Camber is put in jail and sentenced to community service: teaching the preachers to race. McCrumb and Edwards will discuss their book at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on March 19 at noon.