Fiction

August 1, 2013 Steve Yarbrough has earned a devoted readership for evocative, emotionally searing stories and novels about his native Mississippi. With The Realm of Last Chances, he turns to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, delivering a strikingly sensitive portrait of Kristin and Cal, an unlikely couple forced by the recession to move cross-country, and Matt, a young interloper whose own thwarted circumstances kindle a spiritual kinship with Kristin that becomes to each of them as necessary as it is doomed. Yarbrough will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. August 6, 2013.

July 30, 2013 The stories of three generations of hard-living, wife-leaving, dream-chasing musicians run through Long Gone Daddies, the debut novel by Memphis writer David Wesley Williams. A coming-of-age story, pilgrimage tale, and homage to the city of Memphis, Williams’s novel delivers a gritty saga in lyrical prose that swings from sly humor to despair with the gutsy style of a great blues song. He will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.

July 18, 2013 Bobbie Ann Mason’s most recent novel is simultaneously a tale of adapting to old age, a charming romance, a food-and-wine tour of Paris and Provence, and a spellbinding World War II suspense thriller. The Girl in the Blue Beret is a richly satisfying page turner and an artful literary novel worthy of a wide audience and a prominent place in its acclaimed author’s award-winning body of work. Mason will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.

July 11, 2013 Matthew Guinn based his novel, The Resurrectionist, in part on the true story of Grandison Harris, a slave ordered to dig up dead bodies for use in anatomy classes. By structuring his story within two timeframes, set more than a century apart, Guinn brings both periods to life, and the result is an engrossing morality tale. He will read from and sign copies of The Resurrectionist on July 17 at 6 p.m. at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis. He will be back in Tennessee again for the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13.

July 10, 2013 From its cover design to its title to its wedding-season pub date, J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements seems shrewdly engineered to snag readers headed for sunny locales. And rightly so: one sinks into the book with the ease of the very best beach reads. But its silky surface belies the serious territory this novel mines. Through the prism of four couples’ stories, Sullivan takes on the institution of marriage and everything in our culture and economy that rides upon it—or props it up. The result is a pleasurable but ultimately ambivalent, even sobering look at conjugal partnership as we know it. Sullivan will discuss The Engagements at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 15 at 6:30 p.m.

July 8, 2013 Wisp of a Thing is Alex Bledsoe’s second fantasy novel about the Tufa, a secretive people bent on protecting the ancient mysteries of their Smoky Mountain community. When an outsider comes in search of a powerful Tufa song, the myths and histories hidden in Cloud County awaken, putting every Tufa tradition to the test. Bledsoe will read from Wisp of a Thing at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on July 13, 2013, at 2 p.m. and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 14 at 2 p.m.