Book Reviews

Susan Choi’s National Book Award-winning and Pulitzer-nominated Trust Exercise is a novel that sneaks up on readers in the best possible way. A free online public masterclass about the book will be led by University of Tennessee, Knoxville professor Hilary Havens on June 3 at 7 p.m. EDT.

“To a Southerner, any place outside of the South is ‘out there.’ There’s the South, and then there’s everywhere else,” writes Claire Fullerton in her novel Little Tea. Celia Wakefield has worked hard to put the tragic events of her Southern upbringing behind her, but when her friends are in trouble, she must go home again.

Memphis author Richard Alley looks at 20th-century Mississippi and Memphis through a photographer’s eyes. Amelia Thorn is a tale of love, loss, and luck.

Children’s entertainer and musician Emily Arrow pens her first picture book with Studio: A Place for Art to Start. Illustrated by The Little Friends of Printmaking, Studio explores the various spaces artists find to create their art.

In Operation Dimwit, the second Penelope Lemon novel from Tennessee native Inman Majors, our plucky protagonist must stare down a suspicious cat, trap a trained skunk, and resist the intimidations of a weirdly competitive gym trainer.

By delving into intimate moments of her characters’ lives, Johnson City writer Shuly Xóchitl Cawood taps a deep well of compassion in her story collection, A Small Thing to Want.