January 30, 2014 “Elspeth Howell was a sinner.” Thus begins James Scott’s harrowing debut novel, The Kept, in which Elspeth is made to pay a hefty price for her sins: after a long foot journey through snow, she returns home to find her husband and four of her five children murdered. Rendered in delicate, measured prose that makes the unfolding of weighty truths and painful discoveries all the more resonant, The Kept is a provocative hybrid of period suspense thriller and domestic literary novel. James Scott will appear in conversation with Jamie Quatro at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 3, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

January 28, 2014 Threadgill Pickett, the 114-year-old protagonist of Charles McNair’s novel Pickett’s Charge, is the last surviving Confederate soldier. Roused from his Alabama rest home by a mysterious visitation from his long-dead brother, Threadgill sets out on a long trek to Bangor, Maine, where he plans to kill the last surviving Union solider. Absurdity and tragedy follow Threadgill wherever he goes, and revenge begins to seem a tougher, stranger business than he’d anticipated. McNair will appear at Howlin’ Books in Nashville on January 30, 2014, at 6 p.m.