May 7, 2010 It’s the strangest thing to watch televised images of people carrying other folks out in boats and know it’s happening only a few blocks away. I could hear the helicopter broadcasting the pictures I was seeing. Looking at the aerial shot of Bellevue, it was hard to believe anything was left of our little town. It felt wrong to be sitting there watching it, to be observing the wreckage of my neighbors’ lives.
May 7, 2010 In Jeffrey Stepakoff’s Fireworks over Toccoa, it’s 1945, and Lily Davis Woodward is waiting for her husband to come back from World War II. In fact, the entire town of Toccoa, Georgia, is preparing to celebrate the return of its soldiers. The welcoming ceremonies will include a fireworks display, and the town has imported a technician named Jake Russo, a handsome young immigrant from Italy. Elaborate pyrotechnics are, of course, Jake’s stock in trade (and elaborate metaphors are this genre’s). Jeffrey Stepakoff will be in Nashville on May 10 at 7 p.m. to sign copies of his debut novel at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.
One thing all nursing homes have in common is that no one really wants to be there—not the residents, not the employees, and not the visitors. It’s hard to imagine anything especially cheering or life-affirming happening in a nursing home, no matter how well it’s marketed. Novelist Todd Johnson doesn’t shy away from this desolation in The Sweet By and By, but he also shows how those at life’s end can still find meaning in their days. Johnson appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 13 at 6 p.m.
In Miss Julia Renews Her Vows, the eleventh book of the series, Ann B. Ross gives her heroine about all she can handle. And readers will love every page of the adventure. Ross will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 9 at 7 p.m.
At the beginning Faster Pastor, a NASCAR mystery jointly written by novelist Sharyn McCrumb and driver Adam Edwards, it’s particularly appropriate that race-car driver Camber Berkley should crash into the funeral of an avid racing fan in the small Tennessee town of Judas Grove. Even more appropriate, this deceased fan has willed the proceeds of his estate to a yet-to-be-identified local church. To determine the recipient, all the churches’ pastors must race each other; the winner will inherit the legacy. Arrested for reckless driving, Camber is put in jail and sentenced to community service: teaching the preachers to race. McCrumb and Edwards will discuss their book at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on March 19 at noon.
Linda Fairstein worked in the Sex Crimes Unit in Manhattan for twenty-five years. In Hell Gate, she showcases her experience of both investigation and the back-room politics that probably characterize any large city but seem particularly evident in New York. As her protagonist, Alexandra Cooper, investigates a case of human smuggling, she is not so much stymied by criminals as by her own boss, the district attorney, and the mayor, who are more concerned with their own political futures than with catching the bad guys. Fairstein will sign Hell Gate at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 19 at 6 p.m.
