Chapter 16 - Part 404

Missing

A family’s heartbreak drives Laura Lippman’s new mystery

By Chris Scott | February 10, 2014

February 10, 2014 A story of love, betrayal, and the gaping hole left in a family by the unresolved disappearance of a loved one, Laura Lippman’s After I’m Gone is a reminder that a well-done mystery novel is as great a work of art as any piece of literature. Lippman will discuss After I’m Gone at the Nashville Public Library on February 12, 2014, at 6:15 p.m., as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.

The Last Great March

Aram Goudsouzian’s new book recounts the story of James Meredith’s final push for civil rights

By Clay Risen | February 6, 2014

February 4, 2014 In June 1966, James Meredith began his “March Against Fear” from the sidewalk just outside the Peabody Hotel. As Aram Goudsouzian, a historian at the University of Memphis, documents in Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear, his gripping account of that summer in Mississippi, Meredith’s march occurred at a turning point for the civil-rights movement. Goudsouzian will discuss Down to the Crossroads on February 11, 2014, at Parnassus Books in Nashville; on February 13, 2014, at Rhodes College in Memphis; and on February 24, 2014, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.

In the Heat

By Stephen Usery | February 6, 2014

February 6, 2014 Aram Goudsouzian’s previous two books consider the lives of actor/director Sidney Poitier and basketball legend Bill Russell, both major cultural icons–and civil-rights activists– during the 1960s. In his new book, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear, Goudsouzian (chair of the history department at the University of Memphis) looks at civil rights head-on.

Turn and Face the Strange

Changers, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, explores both sides of the gender divide

By Stephen Trageser | February 4, 2014

February 4, 2014 High school is challenging enough under ordinary circumstances, but in Changers, Book One: Drew, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, Nashville teenager Ethan Miller wakes up to a new form of teen torture: he no longer inhabits his own body. Instead, he’ll spend his first year of high school as Drew Bohner, a petite blonde girl. The authors, who divide their time between East Tennessee and New York, will discuss Changers at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 8, 2014, at 2 p.m.

The Known and the Unknown

Alan Lightman ponders it all in The Accidental Universe

By Maria Browning | February 3, 2014

February 3, 2013 Writer, physicist, teacher, and philanthropist Alan Lightman is best known for his novels, including the widely acclaimed Einstein’s Dreams, but in his new collection of essays, The Accidental Universe, he sets fiction aside to confront head-on some of the big questions about reason, faith, and our place in the cosmos. Lightman will appear at Rhodes College in Memphis on February 6, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. and at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on February 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

“Household Fire”

By Gary L. McDowell | January 31, 2014

January 31, 2014 Gary L. McDowell is the author of Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014), American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009), and he is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and lyric essays are forthcoming in The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Quarter After Eight, and others. McDowell lives in Antioch, Tennessee, and is an assistant professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville. On January 31, 2014, at 7 p.m. he will appear—along with poets TJ Jarrett and Jeff Hardin—at Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt in Nashville. The event, part of the Lyrical Brew reading series, is free and open to the public.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly