Book Reviews

The reissue of Kiese Laymon’s Long Division echoes a familiar Black church precept of doing your first works over. In this new iteration of his 2013 debut novel, Laymon separates the story into two books, or testaments, each centered around 14-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson.

In Lee Cole’s debut novel Groundskeeping, Owen returns to his hometown in Kentucky to work as a groundskeeper at a small college where he enrolls in a creative writing course. Cole will discuss Groundskeeping at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 3.

Spenser, a hard-punching, Shakespeare-quoting private eye created over 50 years ago by Robert B. Parker, is hired to safeguard a congresswoman chased by homegrown terrorists in Robert B. Parker’s Bye Bye Baby, the tenth installment in the iconic series from the pen of Ace Atkins.

There is twice the action at hand for fans of Mark Greaney’s Gray Man as the covert operative chases down a ghost from his past in the new thriller Sierra Six. Greaney will celebrate the launch of Sierra Six at Novel in Memphis on February 19.

In Madrigalia, poet Lisa Russ Spaar demonstrates a deft hand and a careful eye as she combines selections from an oeuvre spanning more than 20 years. Spaar will read from her work at Vanderbilt University’s Buttrick Hall on February 17.