Love, life, and loss are inseparable in Jill McCorkle’s new novel
August 6, 2013 Jill McCorkle’s novel Life After Life focuses on old age and death as way of seeing into the human heart. In this multi-layered narrative, death and loss are ever-present, and so is love. Jill McCorkle will read from and sign Life After Life at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
Denise Kiernan’s new book exposes the secret lives of the Tennessee women who unknowingly built the first nuclear bombs
August 5, 2013 Denise Kiernan’s engaging new book explores the human side of the story of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the best-kept secrets in the saga of how the United States built the first nuclear weapons. Kiernan will discuss The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
In a new thriller, former crime reporter Ace Atkins creates memorable villains and an endearing hero
August 2, 2013 Perhaps it’s no wonder that Ace Atkins writes such believable thrillers: Atkins started his career as a crime reporter at The Tampa Tribune, where he earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for investigative work. In 2011, the Robert B. Parker estate chose Atkins to continue the popular series featuring Parker’s beloved character Spenser, a Boston private investigator. Atkins will discuss Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
Steve Yarbrough masterfully chronicles an unlikely love triangle cast against the bleak landscape of academic politics
August 1, 2013 Steve Yarbrough has earned a devoted readership for evocative, emotionally searing stories and novels about his native Mississippi. With The Realm of Last Chances, he turns to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, delivering a strikingly sensitive portrait of Kristin and Cal, an unlikely couple forced by the recession to move cross-country, and Matt, a young interloper whose own thwarted circumstances kindle a spiritual kinship with Kristin that becomes to each of them as necessary as it is doomed. Yarbrough will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. August 6, 2013.
In The Faithful Executioner, Joel Harrington examines the meaning of justice, honor, and the law in Reformation-era Europe
July 31, 2013 During the late sixteenth century, the city of Nuremberg was a bustling commercial metropolis at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. As one of the first cities to convert to Lutheranism in the 1520s, it was also on the front lines of the Reformation. In The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, Vanderbilt historian Joel Harrington considers this world as it is revealed in the extensive diary of Frantz Schmidt, the city’s public executioner for more than forty years. Harrington will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
In David Wesley Williams’s debut novel, three generations of bad-boy musicians land in Memphis
July 30, 2013 The stories of three generations of hard-living, wife-leaving, dream-chasing musicians run through Long Gone Daddies, the debut novel by Memphis writer David Wesley Williams. A coming-of-age story, pilgrimage tale, and homage to the city of Memphis, Williams’s novel delivers a gritty saga in lyrical prose that swings from sly humor to despair with the gutsy style of a great blues song. He will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
