Book Reviews

In Patricia Cornwell’s Autopsy, Dr. Kay Scarpetta must determine whether a pair of astronauts were killed by possible space debris that ripped through their satellite or by a surviving astronaut. To do so, she must remotely navigate a rescue team through a pair of autopsies in space. Zoom anyone?

Music journalist Stephen Deusner’s Where the Devil Don’t Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers chronicles an enduring band’s unlikely rise and wild ride.

Nashville writer Ann Patchett’s second volume of essays, These Precious Days, can be enjoyed as a grab bag of personable pieces depicting her interesting life and times. But everyone who opens the book will also be confronted by serious, universal themes — the abundant gifts of life and the tragedy of its inevitable end. Patchett will discuss the book at a virtual event with novelist Amor Towles on December 7.

The essays in Padgett Powell’s Indigo, his first collection of nonfiction, introduce readers to the bizarre characters and brilliant prose that fans of his fiction have come to expect.

In his latest book, Entertaining Race, Michael Eric Dyson considers the performative aspect of race in American culture and politics. Dyson will discuss Entertaining Race at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 12.

Between Shades of Gray, an award-winning 2011 YA novel by Nashville writer Ruta Sepetys, has been adapted as a stunning graphic novel illustrated by Dave Kopka and a talented support team. The story explores the horrors of Stalin’s gulags as experienced by a young Lithuanian artist deported to Siberia in 1941 with her mother and brother.