Book Reviews

Richly detailed and atmospheric, Nashville writer J. Nicole Jones’ memoir, Low Country, tells the multi-generational story of Jones’ family but does so by hybridizing that narrative with an ecosystem of history, folklore, and ghost stories long associated with South Carolina’s swamps, beaches, and pine forests.

The Girl from Shadow Springs, the debut YA novel by East Tennessee writer Ellie Cypher, depicts a young woman’s struggle against a brutal environment as she tries to save her kidnapped sister.

Sidney Thompson’s Hell on the Border, the second novel in a planned trilogy, continues the historical tale of Bass Reeves, an enslaved Arkansan who became a legendary frontier lawman. Thompson will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on April 17.

In Whisper Down the Lane, Clay McLeod Chapman reimagines the McMartin preschool trials and the “satanic panic” era of the 1980s. Chapman will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on April 8.

“So here’s the gospel story. Gospel as I know it anyway. Memory’s a funny thing. It’ll fool you.” Thus begins Dennis McCarthy’s reimagining of the legend of Henry McCarty, aka William H. Bonney, aka William Roberts, aka Billy the Kid. The Gospel According to Billy the Kid is at once an unromantic account of the violence and lawlessness of the late 19th-century West and a rollicking good yarn.

In Relentless, Memphis-based author Mark Greaney sends his fictional assassin Court Gentry, aka the Gray Man, to Berlin to protect the woman he loves. A cinematic version of The Gray Man series is in the works, with Ryan Gosling as the title character.