Book Reviews

In her new memoir Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams tells the backstory of her songs and her life.

Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds links the stories of two unnamed women, working in different centuries, who both find themselves apprenticed to male botanists cataloguing every species of plant growing among the stones of the Roman Colosseum.

Lee Smith’s ability to spin tragedy into comedy is challenged as never before in her new novel, Silver Alert, as a motley cast of characters navigates a world filled with pain and loss, while at least one stubbornly clings to her hope for a better future.

Meredith Bagby spotlights NASA’s first diverse astronaut class, which included Tennessean Rhea Seddon, in The New Guys.

In her debut collection, Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility, poet Anna Laura Reeve depicts motherhood with startling honesty and insight, enmeshed with experiences of the natural world and the enduring drive to make art. Reeve will discuss the book at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 16.

In It. Goes. So. Fast., NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly describes the challenges of being both a mother and a journalist, determined to do right by both roles. Kelly will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 20.