Essential Toils

By Liz Garrigan

March 7, 2013

March 7, 2013 Becca Stevens, chaplain at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville, has spent the better part of her adult life trying to help women broken by rape, forced prostitution, homelessness, addiction, and other physical and emotional trauma. In her new memoir—equal parts journal, spiritual guide, and history lesson—Stevens details her own sexual abuse and healing and how her ministry has led to the founding of Thistle Farms, a cottage enterprise run by women in the process of healing themselves. As part of the Salon@615 series, Becca Stevens will discuss and sign Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling on March 12 at 6:15 p.m. Doors open at 5:45, and the event is free.

A Feisty First

By Liz Garrigan

February 13, 2013

February 13, 2013 Jenny Milchman’s debut novel, Cover of Snow, is memorable and affecting, and it avoids all signs of banality, that great danger for genre fiction in general and new authors in particular. There’s a good reason the characters feel three-dimensional: though Cover of Snow is Milchman’s first published novel, it is in fact the eighth she’s written, and the eleven years she spent honing her skills are evident in this intricately woven thriller. Milchman will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on February 16 at 2 p.m.

Breakout Fiction

By Liz Garrigan

September 24, 2012

September 24, 2012 J.R. Moehringer, author of The New York Times bestselling memoir The Tender Bar, has always said he wanted to write a novel. So it’s fitting that his first is a work of historical fiction based on the life of William “Willie” Sutton, whose hardships as an Irish-American kid in Brooklyn during the Depression led to a four-decade-long criminal career. “Willie the Actor” was a pacifist bank robber known for using disguises. Though Sutton is a work of Moehringer’s imagination, it also hangs on reams of fascinating research into the life and career of this American folk hero. J.R. Moehringer will discuss Sutton at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 13 at 1 p.m. in the Nashville Public Library Auditorium. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Picture Perfect

By Liz Garrigan

July 12, 2012

July 12, 2012 Vivian Swift, the author of When Wanderers Cease to Roam (2008), abandoned her garden trowel and Adirondack chair, packed her bags, and doodled enough during her honeymoon in France to write a book about the experience. Swift’s ode to travel—and to France, too, though chiefly to travel—includes hundreds of her own watercolor illustrations, notes, and captions, which make the book feel more like an intimate collection of remembrances and a kind of quirky catalog of travel recipes than a straight memoir. “Travel is a lot like sex,” writes Swift. “It’s very personal, prone to fads, and competitive; and we’re all secretly curious how other people do it.” Swift will discuss and sign Le Road Trip at 2 p.m. July 14 at Parnassus Books in Nashville.

One for the Record Books

By Liz Garrigan

June 8, 2012

June 8, 2012 In his twenty-ninth thriller, bestselling novelist Jeffery Deaver gives readers triple or quadruple their money: XO includes more twists, turns, and doglegs than an East Tennessee back road, and Deaver pairs the book with an album of country songs, as well. Just when you think you’ve finally hit the mystery’s straightaway, there’s another series of hairpins in your path. On June 12 at 6:30 p.m., Deaver will discuss XO at Parnassus Books in Nashville. On June 13 at 7 p.m., he will answer questions and sign copies of the book at Barnes & Noble in Knoxville.

Whodunit, Geriatric Style

By Liz Garrigan

May 31, 2012

May 31, 2012 Debut novelist Daniel Friedman’s Don’t Ever Get Old received starred reviews from all four of the pre-publication literary tastemakers (Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist), which happens about as often as newspapers announce they’re expanding their book coverage. Friedman’s hilarious protagonist is eighty-seven-year-old “Buck” Schatz, a legendary Memphis ex-cop who spends his days on the couch, watching Fox News and anticipating his next bowel movement, until he’s inconveniently distracted from it all and must hunt down an escaped Nazi war criminal who nearly killed him. On June 7 at 6 p.m., Friedman will discuss Don’t Ever Get Old at the Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.

“In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation’s complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment.”

~the publisher