Laughter in the Face of Despair
Steve Stern’s A Fool’s Kabbalah affirms the power of stories — and a dose of humor — to protect a people and its history. Stern will discuss the novel at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on March 13.
Indomitable Spirit
Chantha Nguon’s Slow Noodles chronicles her life growing up in Cambodia and her family’s flight to Vietnam to escape persecution under Lon Nol, before Year Zero and the terror of the Khmer Rouge. The book also describes the comfort of the delicious food made by Nguon’s mother, her sister, and later, by her. Nguon invites readers to understand Cambodian culture through both the pain of the past and the delicious flavors that fed hope for the future. Nguon, along with her daughter Clara Kim and co-author Kim Green, talked with Chapter 16 about how the memoir came to be.
Fierce Protection
A man is murdered in the midst of a contentious divorce, and his estranged wife’s family is thrown into turmoil. Who is responsible? And why? Those are the questions Tova Mirvis asks in her fourth novel, We Would Never.
Just the Facts
Alternative Facts, the debut story collection by Emily Greenberg, is equal parts brilliant and bonkers as it interrogates the slippery thing we call truth. Greenberg will appear at Novel in Memphis on February 6.
Abundant Goodness
Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s latest book, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, offers a veritable smorgasbord of flavors and a multi-course menu of memories. Nezhukumatathil will appear at Begonia Labs in Nashville on January 16.
Loving the World More Fully
Leaf, Cloud, Crow, a companion to Margaret Renkl’s 2023 book The Comfort of Crows, is a weekly journal organized by season, encouraging readers to look closely at the plants and creatures that surround them, “to understand them more intimately, and to love them more fully.” Margaret Renkl will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
