In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Night Watch, a group of women from the hills of West Virginia survive the horrors of the Civil War and find safety in a humane mental hospital. Phillips will discuss Night Watch at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the funny and thought-provoking sequel to TJ Klune’s bestselling 2020 fantasy novel The House in the Cerulean Sea, provides another chapter in the inspiring story of the mostly unflappable Arthur Parnassus, his sweetheart Linus Baker, and the extraordinary magical children in their care. Klune will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
In his recent novels, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers invites us to set down the blinkered limitations of human perspectives and connect to the natural world in deeper, more urgent ways. Now, with Playground, Powers brings his inimitable storytelling to Earth’s subterranean depths, illuminating the abundant riches of our oceans and the critical dangers they face.
In This Is How a Robin Drinks, Joanna Brichetto makes the case that urban landscapes can be perfect places to fall in love with the wonders of nature. Brichetto will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 23 and the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 26-27.
Wright Thompson’s latest book, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, revisits what is often considered the most galvanizing event of the civil rights era: the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in rural Sunflower County, Mississippi. Thompson will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on October 3 and Barnes & Noble in Brentwood on October 4.
Chattanooga author Natalie Lloyd’s latest tale of heartbreak and hope for middle school readers is The Witching Wind. Roxie Darling and Grayson Patch become friends as incoming sixth graders at Camelot Middle School in fictional Silas County, Tennessee. And, as is always the case in a Natalie Lloyd book, fantastical adventures are soon afoot.
