Fiction

Don’t be fooled by the title or the sunny yellow cover of Erin McGraw’s new collection, Joy: And 52 Other Very Short Stories. In these snapshots of lives under extreme pressure, each narrator claims the spotlight to tell a powerful, often dark story. McGraw, who lives in Sewanee, will appear at Star Line Books in Chattanooga on March 6.

Court Gentry, the hero of Mark Greaney’s Mission Critical, pursues bad guys all over the world in a bare-knuckled, uniquely American style. Greaney will discuss Mission Critical at Novel in Memphis on February 23, and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 28.

Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway is an epic tale of love, grief, and candlepin bowling. McCracken will discuss her third novel with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 22.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, the debut novel by veteran nature writer Delia Owens, a young girl is abandoned in the coastal marshlands of North Carolina. Owens will discuss the novel, a 2018 selection of Reese Witherspoon’s book club, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 18.

Tim Johnston’s new thriller, The Current, starts with a fatal car accident, when two college students are pushed into an icy river. The murder investigation dredges up painful memories of a similar tragedy ten years earlier. Johnston will appear at Novel in Memphis on February 12 and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 21.