Emily Choate

April 27, 2015 When Anna—the ex-pat heroine of Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel, Hausfrau—falls into an extramarital tangle with a fellow foreigner, the affair seems contrary to her entire nature as a person and threatens the passive surface of her life. Jill Alexander Essbaum will discuss Hausfrau at The Skillery in Nashville on May 1, 2015, at 7 p.m. The event, sponsored by The Porch Writers’ Collective and Parnassus Books, is free and open to the public.

March 2, 2015 In Holly LeCraw’s The Half Brother, Atlanta-raised Charlie Garrett arrives at his teaching post in a wealthy New England boarding school seeking reinvention. When he falls into a powerful entanglement with his school’s chaplain, Charlie finds himself pulled closer into the strong orbit of his own past. Holly LeCraw will discuss The Half Brother at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 9, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

February 6, 2015 In My Sunshine Away, the debut novel from M.O. Walsh, the suburbs of Baton Rouge boil with all the contradictions of a Louisiana summer. In a story that revolves around the unsolved rape of a teenage girl, this novel engages the dangerous terrain of memory, remorse, and forgiveness. M.O. Walsh will discuss My Sunshine Away at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 13, 2015 at 6:30 p.m. and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on February 18, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

January 13, 2015 Regina Mary Robichard, the determined young NAACP lawyer at the center of Deborah Johnson’s The Secret of Magic, finds herself deeply drawn to the case of a brutal murder in segregation-era Mississippi. Investigating, she enters a world of both racial conflict and magical surprise. Deborah Johnson will discuss The Secret of Magic at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 17, 2015, at 2 p.m.

November 10, 2014 In Garth Stein’s new novel, A Sudden Light, fourteen-year-old Trevor and his father head west during a time of family crisis. In a fight over the fate of Riddell House, the crumbling mansion built from their family’s timber fortune, conflicting agendas of both the dead and the living come to light. Stein, the bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, will discuss A Sudden Light at the Nashville Public Library on November 14, 2014, at 6:15 p.m.