In Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense, Joe Manchin describes how he rose to political power as a Democrat, then quit the party when he felt it no longer reflected his values. The book is a political memoir that passionately warns his fellow Americans of the dangers of putting party ahead of country. He will discuss Dead Center in a conversation with Brad Paisley at Vanderbilt University on September 17.
In The Shape of Wonder scientists Alan Lightman and Martin Rees attempt to counter the growing mistrust of scientific institutions around the world by helping readers “understand scientists as people and what they actually do, how they think, work, and live.”
In Eliana Ramage’s debut novel, To the Moon and Back, Steph Harper is a queer Cherokee girl whose sole ambition is to become the first Cherokee astronaut.
James Wade’s Narrow the Road, set in the Shawnee Prairie of East Texas in 1932, follows the odyssey of William Carter, a 15-year-old left in charge of a failing farm and a dying mother. The boy’s quest through a damaged land to retrieve his absent father carries echoes of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and even Ray Bradbury — yet it is wholly original and breathtaking. And there’s a gorilla. Wade will speak at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 18–19.
By turns plaintive and exhilarating, Silas House’s All These Ghosts conjures an attentive, nuanced reckoning with what it means to call a place our home ground. House will discuss All These Ghosts at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
In her debut novel, Hothouse Bloom, Atlanta native Austyn Wohlers tells the story of a young painter, Anna, who leaves everything behind to care for the orchard she inherits when her estranged grandfather passes away.
