Fiction

July 18, 2012 Chris Cleave’s second novel, Little Bee enjoyed enormous critical and popular success. A devastatingly emotional but immensely readable tale about a young Nigerian refugee and a suburban London woman whose lives are drawn together by happenstance, Little Bee became a surprise hit, largely due to word of mouth. The novel has over two million copies in print and is being developed into a film by Nicole Kidman. Now, with Gold, his sweeping new novel about an intense competition between two Olympic cyclists, Cleave is poised to repeat that success. He will discuss and sign copies of Gold on July 24 at 6:15 p.m. as part of the Salon@615 series at the Nashville Public Library. The event is free and open to the public.

June 20, 2012 The war is over, Lincoln has been assassinated, all slaves are officially free, and the South is in turmoil: with so many hopes and expectations, so many frustrations and resentments, this is fertile ground in which to plant a novel. In Freeman, Leonard Pitts Jr. makes the most of this setting’s potential for conflict. The book’s main characters include Sam Freeman, a self-educated former slave who escaped to the North fifteen years earlier and is now determined to go back and find his wife; and Prudence Cafferty Kent, a privileged young war widow from Boston with a plan to educate former slaves in the South.

June 8, 2012 In his twenty-ninth thriller, bestselling novelist Jeffery Deaver gives readers triple or quadruple their money: XO includes more twists, turns, and doglegs than an East Tennessee back road, and Deaver pairs the book with an album of country songs, as well. Just when you think you’ve finally hit the mystery’s straightaway, there’s another series of hairpins in your path. On June 12 at 6:30 p.m., Deaver will discuss XO at Parnassus Books in Nashville. On June 13 at 7 p.m., he will answer questions and sign copies of the book at Barnes & Noble in Knoxville.