Fernanda Moore

October 21, 2010 Late, Late at Night, Rick Springfield’s tell-all memoir, opens with a seventeen-year-old Rick swinging from a noose, convinced his life is not worth living. Happily for Rick, as well as for the zillions of fans who would, in the 1980s, fall in love not only with his endlessly catchy parade of hit singles like “Jessie’s Girl,” but also with Dr. Noah Drake, the sexy character he played to perfection on the venerable soap opera General Hospital, the noose gave way just in time. Springfield talked with Chapter 16 prior to his Nashville and Murfreesboro appearances on October 22 and 23.

The plot could have come straight from a bodice-ripper: she was a stunning young art teacher from Arkansas; he was a notoriously macho New York author twice her age. Hoping for an autograph, she cadged an introduction, and sparks flew. In A Ticket to the Circus, Norris Church Mailer tells the story of her thirty-two-year love affair with and marriage to Norman Mailer, the American writer as famous for his peccadilloes (six wives, eight children, and dozens of mistresses) as for his Pulitzers (two). Norris Mailer spoke with Chapter 16 in advance of her appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 6 at 6 p.m.

A century ago, the City of Light went dark as the river Seine overflowed its banks. Memphis professor Jeffrey H. Jackson describes the forgotten Parisian flood of 1910 and the massive human effort required to save the city. Jackson will read at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on January 19 at 6 p.m.; at Vanderbilt University on January 21 at 4 p.m.; and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on January 21 at 7 p.m.