April 5, 2012 While a major home-renovation project would keep most people busy, Miss Julia finds time to run to West Virginia to break a man out of the hospital and crash a snake-handling worship service. But in this thirteenth outing for Ann B. Ross’s popular heroine, things aren’t much quieter back home, where she must battle some New Age cultists for the body and soul of her carpenter. Ann B. Ross will discuss Miss Julia to the Rescue at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 9 at 6 p.m., at Books-A-Million in Nashville on April 10 at 7 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on April 14 at 1 p.m.

April 2, 2012 In Reap What You Sew, her sixth Southern Sewing Circle mystery, Elizabeth Lynn Casey returns to Sweet Briar, South Carolina, where Tori Sinclair has her dream job as the director of the town’s library, is engaged to a handsome and kind schoolteacher, and—perhaps most important—is now firmly ensconced in the town’s sewing circle, which has become family to her. But then a murder occurs, and Tori’s new friends are implicated. The result is a classic Casey cozy. To celebrate the fourth anniversary of Mysteries & More in Nashville, Elizabeth Lynn Casey will discuss and sign copies of Reap What You Sew on April 7 at 2 p.m.

March 13, 2012 In her debut novel, Amy Franklin-Willis tells the story of a family that seems destined to repeat the same mistakes, generation after generation. With Ezekiel Cooper, there’s finally a real chance to make a new life, but can he break the family pattern? In answering this question, The Lost Saints of Tennessee—which has been praised by Pat Conroy, Dorothy Allison, and Mark Satterfield—seems destined to take its place among novels that truly capture the heartbreak and hope of the working poor. Amy Franklin-Willis will read from The Lost Saints of Tennessee on March 17 at 1 p.m. at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis, and on March 21 at 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville.

October 28, 2011 Members of the Victorian upper crust, like rich people of all times, feared losing their money. They were afraid their children wouldn’t make good marriages. They worried about keeping reliable servants. But, as former Franklin novelist Tasha Alexander clearly understands, the greatest fear of Victorian society was the loss of respectability. The perp in Alexander’s latest Victorian mystery, A Crimson Warning, plays on this fear as Lady Emily Hargreaves and her husband Colin race to find the culprit before the bodies stack up.