Book Reviews

In Jennifer Haigh’s new novel Mercy Street, snow blankets the Boston area as characters with connections to a women’s health clinic attempt to make sense of their chaotic lives. Haigh will discuss Mercy Street in a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books on February 7.

Perpetual West, Mesha Maren’s second novel, follows a troubled couple from Appalachia to the U.S.-Mexico border on a perilous journey of self-discovery.

In The Visitors, Greg Howard’s third middle-grade novel, a 12-year-old boy is “stuck” in a neglected plantation in South Carolina, along with other inhabitants — some benevolent, some definitely not. When three visitors arrive to investigate a long-ago mystery, the boy starts to unearth memories of his past. Greg Howard will discuss The Visitors at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 31.

In Slow Fuse of the Possible, poet Kate Daniels takes readers inside her harrowing experience as an analysand, exploring how poetry and psychoanalysis come from the same psychic place. Kate Daniels will read from her work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on February 3.

Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue — a new anthology of speculative fiction co-edited by acclaimed Memphis writer Sheree Renée Thomas — recognizes and celebrates the boundless wealth of creative sustenance offered by our world’s bodies of water.