November 5, 2010 Lee Sandlin’s Wicked River is a wickedly funny new history of the great Mississippi, whose violent, profane, drunken, calamitous, hypocritical character is perhaps an archetype of the American character itself. Sandlin will discuss Wicked River at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on November 9 at 6 p.m.
November 3, 2010 J.T. Ellison delivers her trademark blend of police procedural doused in the macabre with The Immortals, the fifth in her Nashville-based Taylor Jackson series. When the ritualistic murder of eight teenagers on Halloween shocks an upper-middle-class neighborhood that prides itself on its normality, homicide lieutenant Jackson and her team are plunged into a dark world of teenage Goths and black magic. Ellison will discuss The Immortals at Sherlock’s Books in Nashville on November 6 at 7 p.m.
November 2, 2010 John and Angelina Rice groomed their only child for an exceptional life. Condoleezza Rice’s new memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People, lovingly dedicated to her parents and her grandparents, is the former secretary of state’s testament to their strong values, “hard work, perfectly spoken English,” and, most importantly, their unrelenting focus on education. Her college-educated parents, Rice asserts, “were convinced that education was a kind of armor shielding me against everything—even the deep racism in Birmingham and across America.” Rice will discussExtraordinary, Ordinary People at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on November 3 at 6 p.m.
October 27, 2010 With his new collection of short fiction, Burning Bright, Ron Rash offers a scaled-down version of the same concerns on display in his bestselling novel, Serena, employing a sweeping cast of characters and historical milieus, ranging from the Civil War era to the present day. Ron Rash opens the 2010-11 Lipscomb University Landiss Lecture Series on October 28 at 7:30 p.m. in the Doris Swang Chapel of the Ezell Center on the Lipscomb University campus. A reception follows the program with a book signing. Admission is free.
October 22, 2010 Lady Emily has not had the most auspicious beginnings to married life. Her first husband, essentially a stranger, died as a newlywed. On her second honeymoon, she was shot while helping her husband Colin, a British intelligence agent, on one of his investigations and suffered a subsequent miscarriage. In Dangerous to Know, Tasha Alexander’s fifth Lady Emily novel, the protagonists have returned to Colin’s mother’s house in France to recuperate. Naturally, this recovery is hampered.
October 20, 2010 Novelist and anthologist Sonny Brewer may have hit upon the best-ever idea for an essay collection. Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit contains accounts by Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Winston Groom, and a score of other Southern writers on the sorts of work they did on their way to becoming professional writers.
