Fiction

May 10, 2012 “If you haven’t already found a woman who will break your heart, find one,” writes Ron Rash in his new novel. “The suffering will be good for you.” A spare, lyrical novel, The Cove juxtaposes the legendarily haunted and severe environs of the Blue Ridge Mountains with the simmering anxiety of the Great War. Rash will read from and discuss The Cove at Nashville Public Library on May 16, as part of the Salon@615 series . The event will begin with a reception at 6:15 p.m., followed by a reading at 6:45. Both are free and open to the public.

May 7, 2012 Nashville medical examiner Samantha Owens lost her husband and children in the 2010 flood. Since then, she has managed to survive by keeping her world small and by containing her grief in a series of compulsive behaviors. But that control is shattered when she’s asked to come to Washington DC to do a second autopsy on the body of a former boyfriend. So begins A Deeper Darkness, the first book in a new suspense series by J.T. Ellison, author of the popular Taylor Jackson mysteries. J.T. Ellison will discuss A Deeper Darkness on May 12 at Mysteries & More in Nashville at 2 p.m.

May 3, 2012 Red Weather, the debut novel by poet Janet McAdams, tracks the story of Neva, a young mixed-race woman who’s searching for her parents. Lyrical and vivid, the mystery unfolds in Central America, in the capital of the small, fictional Coatepeque. There, mounting violence against the country’s indigenous people provides a menacing backdrop to Neva’s crisis of identity, mirroring her lifelong sense of uncertain belonging. Janet McAdams will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 13 at 2 p.m.

May 2, 2012 In The Inquisitor’s Key, Bill Brockton, the fictional incarnation of Bill Bass, world-famous founder of the University of Tennessee’s Body Farm, travels to France, where ancient bones draw him into a very modern murder mystery. In their seventh outing, Jon Jefferson and Bill Bass, the writing team known as Jefferson Bass, have juxtaposed fourteenth-century religious fervor with twenty-first-century science. And if any combination of pursuits can prove deadly, it’s science and religion. Bass and Jefferson will be promoting The Inquisitor’s Key during May at several Tennessee venues.

March 30, 2012 When Ada Howard opens an invitation to her twenty-fifth college reunion, a year away, she is moved to step on a scale for the first time in as long as she can remember. Shocked to find that she’s ballooned to 220 pounds and inspired by the prospect of bumping into her former boyfriend, the five-foot-two-inch Ada sets out on a quest to shed a hundred pounds in twelve months. She starts by writing a list of fifty-three rules. Number one on the list: “Don’t keep doing what you’ve always been doing.” Alice Randall will read from and discuss Ada’s Rules at two Nashville events: Parnassus Books on May 8 at 6:30 p.m. and at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt on May 19 at 2 p.m.