Talking with the Dead
July 16, 2013 Like James Merrill’s Sandover trilogy, which critic Helen Vendler described as “a conversation with dead friends and spirits in another world,” Rick Hilles’s new book of poems invokes the dead, most dramatically by assuming their very personae. This poetic strategy may be the result of hubris or humility or both, but whatever it is, it works. The great strength of A Map of the Lost World, beyond its thematic gravity and masterful architecture, is its extraordinary writing. Rick Hilles will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
July 11, 2013 Matthew Guinn based his novel, The Resurrectionist, in part on the true story of Grandison Harris, a slave ordered to dig up dead bodies for use in anatomy classes. By structuring his story within two timeframes, set more than a century apart, Guinn brings both periods to life, and the result is an engrossing morality tale. He will read from and sign copies of The Resurrectionist on July 17 at 6 p.m. at 
July 10, 2013 From its cover design to its title to its wedding-season pub date, J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements seems shrewdly engineered to snag readers headed for sunny locales. And rightly so: one sinks into the book with the ease of the very best beach reads. But its silky surface belies the serious territory this novel mines. Through the prism of four couples’ stories, Sullivan takes on the institution of marriage and everything in our culture and economy that rides upon it—or props it up. The result is a pleasurable but ultimately ambivalent, even sobering look at conjugal partnership as we know it. Sullivan will discuss The Engagements at 
July 8, 2013 Wisp of a Thing is Alex Bledsoe’s second fantasy novel about the Tufa, a secretive people bent on protecting the ancient mysteries of their Smoky Mountain community. When an outsider comes in search of a powerful Tufa song, the myths and histories hidden in Cloud County awaken, putting every Tufa tradition to the test. Bledsoe will read from Wisp of a Thing at 
July 3, 2013 Set against a backdrop of explosive civil-rights unrest, Susan Crandall’s Whistling Past the Graveyard follows nine-year-old Starla, who is white, and Eula, a young black woman who has stolen an abandoned white infant, on a strange odyssey that will challenge everything they believe about themselves and the people they love, and change their lives forever, if they manage to survive. Susan Crandall will appear at the 
July 2, 2013 “Standing in that hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me. Had you told me that I was seven again, I might have half-believed you, for a moment,” says the adult narrator of the new novel by fantasy-master Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He is recalling a three-week school holiday in Sussex when he was seven years old, and the strange events that transpired—events both unforgettable and near-impossible to remember. Gaiman will appear at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville on July 10 as part of the Salon@615 series. This will be Gaiman’s final author tour. Tickets are $30 and include a copy of the book. Click 