Book Reviews

Reckoning by V (formerly Eve Ensler) asks readers to understand what violence does to women and anyone who is marginalized. She’ll appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 6.

In America’s Hardscrabble General: Ulysses S. Grant from Farm Boy to Shiloh, Jack Hurst shows how Grant’s upbringing and life’s struggles perfectly prepared him for achieving greatness as a leader in America’s bloodiest war.

Going Up the Country revisits fieldwork expeditions to Mississippi and Louisiana at the height of the blues revival by two young scholars from UCLA.

The pain of dysfunctional relationships is the unifying theme among the 10 stories showcased in Lisa Cupolo’s debut collection, Have Mercy on Us. Set around the globe from Africa to Greece, Canada to Catalina Island, the vignettes Cupolo crafts sharply illustrate often decades-old family dynamics.

Percival Everett’s Dr. No is much ado about nothing. But in this novel, his 23rd, Everett explores the idea that perhaps nothing is something. Or everything.

A good whodunit doesn’t take itself too seriously, and Cherie Priest’s Flight Risk hits a sweet spot between Murder, She Wrote and Gone Girl.