A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

When the Killer’s Not the Mystery

May 17, 2013 It can be a little disorienting to pick up a detective thriller only to discover that the identity of the homicidal maniac is no mystery. To find, in fact, that the killer is making a movie about his serial crimes, directing an imaginary crew to pull back on this decapitated head, move in tighter on that drowning body, etc. But, hey, this is Hollywood, where backstabbing producers must die, and violently. Heywood Gould will discuss and sign copies of Green Light for Murder, the first in a series of Detective Tommy Veasy mysteries, at Mysteries & More in Nashville on May 18 at 2 p.m.

Hellhound on His Trail

May 16, 2013 “The past keeps happening to us,” writes Bill Cheng in his debut novel, Southern Cross the Dog. “No matter who we are or how far we get away, it keeps happening to us.” These words are potent, both for their echo of Faulkner’s famous dictum (“The past is never dead”) and for the fact that their author is a Chinese-American New Yorker. Despite having never set foot in Mississippi, Cheng has staked a formidable claim in the heart of Faulkner Country. Cheng will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22, 2013, at 6:30 p.m.

Twisted Souls

May 15, 2013 Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena puts a human face on the dehumanizing forces of war, revealing the ways in which the lives of people in a small mountain village in Chechnya are overturned by fifteen years of conflict with the Russian Federation. Memorials to the disappeared are a form of defiance, and even a single life spared from obliteration feels like a moral victory. Anthony Marra will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 2 p.m. on May 18, 2013.

Eat! Drink! Be Merry!

May 9, 2013 Julia Reed’s new essay collection, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!, is a happy, happy book, intended to make readers laugh out loud and reminisce about family culinary traditions, to inspire them to labor in a kitchen, perhaps with a frothy cocktail in hand, and then to share the delicious rewards. Reed will read from and discuss But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria! at the Southern Food Writing Conference, held in Knoxville on May 16 and 17.

Seeing What’s Essential

May 8, 2013 The only people who don’t love Robert Benson’s mother, the author writes in this memoir, “are the ones who have not met her yet.” Benson has written many books about the contemplative life and teaches prayer and writing workshops around the country. His beloved mother, Peggy Jean Siler Benson, is the mother of five children, widow of a former pastor, and a successful writer and speaker in her own right. Moving Miss Peggy is Benson’s poignant book about “the beginning of the end of her life.” Robert Benson will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Dream Season

May 3, 2013 Wayne B. Drash’s On These Courts: A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever is the story of how former NBA star guard Penny Hardaway coached the boys’ basketball team at Lester Middle School—where he had once played himself—to a Tennessee state championship. That season provides a backdrop to the most inspiring sports story to come out of Memphis since Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and like that book, it too seems custom-made for Hollywood. Drash and Hardaway will discuss and sign copies of On These Courts at the University of Memphis Bookstore on May 8 at 6 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on May 10 at 6 p.m.

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