June 19, 2012 Award-winning children’s author Patricia McKissack collaborates with her son, Frederick McKissack Jr., to tell the unlikely and compelling story of the most famous African-American cowboy. Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love is a biography of Nat Love, a contemporary of General Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, and the Masterson brothers. Love, a.k.a. “Deadwood Dick,” rose from slavery to become an accomplished and respected member of the Wild West community during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Vivid, colorful paintings by illustrator Randy DuBurke provide a stunning visual component to this graphic novel for adventurous readers aged twelve and up.

April 3, 2012 On February 1, 1968, Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death when a loose shovel fell into the mechanism of the garbage truck in which they were riding. Eleven days later, nearly one thousand sanitation, sewer, and roadway workers in Memphis began a city-wide strike for safer and more humane working conditions, higher and more consistent wages, and the right to have a voice in their own treatment. Two months after that, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on a motel balcony. Marching to the Mountaintop, Ann Bausum’s careful and thorough portrayal of this pivotal period, shows young readers how one event can set in motion forces powerful enough to change a city, a state, a nation—and maybe even the history of the world. Bausum will appear in Memphis at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on April 5 at 6 p.m.