Faye Jones

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.

October 25, 2011 In Yankee Doodle Dixie, Franklin resident Lisa Patton brings her popular character Leelee Satterfield home to Memphis after a tumultuous and cold year in Vermont. Leelee believes that all will be well once she returns to Tennessee. But will she be able to settle back into her old life? Does she want to? Patton will read from and discuss the book as part of the Evening with an Author series at the University Club of Nashville on October 27 at 6 p.m.

September 28, 2011 “The Ballad of Tom Dooley,” a megahit for the Kingston Trio back in 1958, tells a tale of love gone wrong. It is a sad story but a straightforward one: man meets woman; man kills woman; man hangs. In fact, the story is so straightforward that Sharyn McCrumb at first resisted using the song as the foundation for her next novel based on Appalachian ballads. Then she did some research. The resulting book, The Ballad of Tom Dooley, takes readers on a dark journey of love, betrayal, and irrational hatred that is worthy of Emily Bronte. Or the Coen brothers. Sharyn McCrumb is on an extensive book tour that includes seven appearances in Tennessee; click here for details.

May 5, 2011 In The Dashwood Sisters Tell All, the third Jane Austen-themed novel by Nashvillian Beth Pattillo, estranged sisters Ellen and Mimi Dodge take a Jane Austen walking tour to scatter their mother’s ashes. It is clear, even to them, that their mother’s final wish was designed to bring them closer together. The sisters doubt her plan will work, but as the week proceeds, they learn more about themselves, each other, their mother, and even some secrets about Jane Austen herself. Beth Pattillo will read from The Dashwood Sisters Tell All at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on May 6 at 7 p.m.

March 16, 2011 The Victorians were a resourceful group: once they realized how absolutely engrossing readers found crime stories, they invented lady detectives, though the actual gumshoes of the age were uniformly male. In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, Michael Sims has collected a fascinating group of Victorian stories featuring female detectives and offers an intriguing analysis of these ancestors of Miss Marple. Sims will discuss The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime on March 19 at 1 p.m. at BookMan/BookWoman in Nashville.