Gregory Mcdonald’s 1974 novel Fletch created the modern comic mystery, influencing a generation of writers who followed. In addition to nine Fletch books, Mcdonald created such series characters as Flynn, Skylar, and Son of Fletch, writing many of those from his home near Pulaski, Tennessee.
Stan Isaacs stood at the forefront of a group of offbeat sports journalists in the early 1960s, at the start of an influential career that spanned half a century. A decade after Isaacs’s death, Memphis historian Aram Goudsouzian has masterfully edited Out of Left Field: A Sportswriter’s Last Word, a collection that works as both memoir and a showcase of great sportswriting. Goudsouzian will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on April 29.
John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community, by historian Raymond Arsenault, captures the storied life of Rep. John Lewis from his childhood in Alabama through the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, Bloody Sunday, and his long political career.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In 1965, an American rabbi investigating persecution of Jews in the former Soviet Union escaped KGB handlers to make a remarkable discovery, as told in A Visit to Moscow, a graphic history by Memphis native Anna Olswanger.
Jim Minick’s Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas offers a gripping nonfiction narrative of the deadliest tornado in Kansas history. Minick will speak at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City on November 15.
Sidney Thompson talks with Chapter 16 about his trilogy of novels based on the life of Bass Reeves, a celebrated Black U.S. Marshal. Thompson will appear at Novel in Memphis on November 16.
