Book Reviews

Making sense of the land mines of life is the theme of Nashville author Mary Laura Philpott’s new memoir in essays, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. Philpott will celebrate the launch of Bomb Shelter at an event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 10.

In Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey returns to the love and pain of her childhood and the trauma of her mother’s murder. Trethewey will speak at East Tennessee State University on April 6.

In The Silent Unseen, YA author Amanda McCrina returns to the setting of her previous novel, Traitor, to look more deeply into Polish and Ukrainian experiences during World War II. McCrina will discuss The Silent Unseen at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 5.

Tara M. Stringfellow’s debut novel Memphis opens with the North family tree, simply but beautifully designed. We can’t know where this family is going to take us, but we know there will be complexity and depth. A family tree contains multitudes. Stringfellow will celebrate the book’s release at Novel in Memphis on April 5.

In Nathan Elias’ Coil Quake Rift, the lives of four characters living in Los Angeles, connected by love and betrayal, are thrown into disarray when an earthquake opens a mysterious chasm.

Amy Wright’s Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round compiles interviews with a variety of thinkers and artists who explore an array of topics from climate change to ketchup. Wright will deliver the Basler Chair Lecture at ETSU on March 28 and will appear at ETSU’s Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative on April 12. She’ll also read at Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre on April 10.