Looking for Home
Kelsey Norris’ debut story collection, House Gone Quiet, chronicles characters at a turning point. Norris will appear with Tiana Clark and Alina Grabowski at Vanderbilt University on April 3.
Book Reviews
A Mother’s Whisper
In Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s new novel Happy Land, Black mothers and daughters reconnect with each other and the land that shaped them. Perkins-Valdez will discuss Happy Land at Novel in Memphis on April 11.
Invincible Language
Major Jackson’s sixth poetry collection, Razzle Dazzle, sets the biographical details of the poet’s life alongside the evolution of his work. Jackson will give a reading at the CMAC Building at Lane College in Jackson on April 2, and he will appear with Jad Abumrad at Analog at Hutton Hotel in Nashville on April 8.
The Best Night of His Life
“I’m a baseball player,” 12-year-old Timothy “Pumpsie” Strickland declares. “Baseball is my life.” In Andrea Williams’ new middle-grade novel, Inside the Park, Pumpsie must overcome his fears and think fast to save the day when sinister forces threaten his beloved team, the Nashville Wildcats.
Pain and Pure Beauty
Author Chris Offutt wastes no time in the opening of The Reluctant Sheriff, as two liquor delivery drivers come across a dead body in the parking lot of a local tavern. This body is only the first to fall. Readers who’ve come to know and love Offutt’s Mick Hardin series can safely anticipate that there will be more to follow.
Color Lines
The opening essay of Imani Perry’s Black in Blues sets up the book’s premise: that woven throughout the story of Black life, history, and culture, you’ll find blue — the color itself, the “blues” as an expression for melancholy, and its namesake sound, the Black-born music of heartache and hope.
