William Gay’s writing doesn’t capture Middle Tennessee; it is Middle Tennessee, as much a part of the landscape as its fields and barns and creeks. Every turn of phrase, every scene describes with effortless perfection the curve of a hill, the angle of an eave, the lilt in a drawl.
Copyboy, the new middle-grade novel by Vince Vawter, is a sequel worthy of its exceptional predecessor, Paperboy, a 2014 Newbery Honor Book. Vawter will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on July 31 and at East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on August 7.
Beatriz Williams’s The Summer Wives follows a young woman’s long entanglement with an insular island community and its coded world of secrets, gossip, and cross-cultural tensions. Williams will discuss The Summer Wives at Novel in Memphis on July 15.
There are few unsavory aspects of modern life that Kingsport native Kimberly Belle doesn’t weave into Three Days Missing, a thriller that tells the heart-racing story of an eight-year-old boy gone missing. Belle will appear at Allandale Mansion in Kingsport on June 26 and at Novel in Memphis on July 9.
In her new book, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, Dayton author Rachel Held Evans attempts to reconcile the simple religious instruction she received as a child with the complicated reality of life outside her faith community.
Rain in Our Door: Duets with Robert Johnson is the last and most radical collection by the late Nashville poet Diann Blakely. The book’s title is taken from the Mississippi musician’s own lyrics: “You better come on in my kitchen, cause there’s gonna be rain in our door.”
