Maggie Shipstead’s century-spanning Great Circle traces aviator Marian Graves’ single-minded pursuit of flight and the lives of numerous characters connected to her, including a scandalous movie star preparing to play Marian onscreen. Shipstead will discuss the novel at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 20.
Running through the core of Anjali Enjeti’s debut novel, The Parted Earth, is the volatile atmosphere of India’s Partition, a deadly era of violence that tore apart communities and families. Spanning generations and countries, the story examines the personal costs of starting over in the face of tragedy.
Natalie Standiford’s Astrid Sees All follows Phoebe, a naïve young woman under the sway of an intoxicating friendship, into the perilous, glamorous world of early 1980s New York City. Standiford will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 20.
Richly detailed and atmospheric, Nashville writer J. Nicole Jones’ memoir, Low Country, tells the multi-generational story of Jones’ family but does so by hybridizing that narrative with an ecosystem of history, folklore, and ghost stories long associated with South Carolina’s swamps, beaches, and pine forests.
Richard Schweid takes a sympathetic look at the working conditions for in-home caregivers in one New York community in The Caring Class.
The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus corrals nine ambitious, verbally rich narrative worlds. Through humor or gut-punching drama, these stories showcase Gurganus’ penchant for lifting the veneer of small-town niceties, exposing the vast terrain of his characters’ interior lives.
