Fiction

April 29, 2010 Lee Smith wrote her first novel, 1968’s The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed while still an undergraduate at Hollins College. Since then she’s written eleven more, plus three collections of short stories. A playwright as well, Smith’s Good Ol’ Girls—written with fellow author Jill McCorkle and featuring music courtesy of Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman—made its off-Broadway debut last winter. With her latest effort, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger: New and Selected Stories, Smith only adds to her successes. As the narrator of “Folk Art” says, “Once you get something going, it takes on a life of its own.” Smith will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 30 at 6 p.m., and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 1 at 2 p.m.

April 26, 2010 In summer 2008, Ace Atkins, author of three previous thrillers based on historical events, was in Memphis researching a new book. While he was at the courthouse one day, a clerk mentioned having stumbled across the file of George “Machine Gun” Kelly, who was arrested in South Memphis in 1933 after a nation-wide manhunt by the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation. Atkins was intrigued and asked for a copy of the file. By the time he was finished reading, he had set aside the novel he was working on in favor of what would become Infamous, a cinematic true story that reads like classic film noir with a dash of Coen brothers. Atkins will read from the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 26 at 6 p.m.

April 20, 2010 Since Jay McInerney’s emergence as part of the 1980s literary brat-pack, his work has read much like a series of letters from a cultured but slightly deviant friend: the type of person who runs with the too-fast/too-rich set, frequents the hot clubs, and gets invited to all of those parties we imagine as unspeakably glamorous but which are actually full of hopeless vanity. And yet, like our insider friend—whom we both pity and envy; whom we love but aren’t sure we particularly like—we still find ourselves fascinated by these people and their stories. We want to be invited to their parties, even if we don’t really want to attend them, and we’re grateful to have a reliable correspondent to document every excess.

April 19, 2010 Southern writers don’t let their men off easily. Think of Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, and George Singleton, to name just a few: their protagonists are a thick crowd of failed or ridiculously flawed, if infuriatingly likeable, Southern men—men who are more often than not their own worst enemies, men who pilot pickups across modern Southern landscapes that look and feel nothing like the generous front porches and magnolia-scented breezes of Southern Lit as we once knew it. Enter Jack Lang, a modern Southern man whose life crisis is held up, often comically, for observation in This Is Just Exactly Like You, the debut novel from North Carolina writer Drew Perry, who will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 21 at 7 p.m.

April 16, 2010 A page-turner about a Benedictine order of Renaissance nuns may seem like a far-fetched concept, but Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant's latest novel, achieves the remarkable. Ecstasy, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, adolescent rebellion, and romance swirl like trails of incense behind the impenetrable walls of the Italian convent, Santa Caterina. Dunant will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 20 at 7 p.m.

April 15, 2010 is the author of two earlier novels: The Illuminator, set in England during the fourteenth century, and The Mercy Seller, set in fifteenth-century Prague. With The Heretic’s Wife, she brings her characters and readers into the relatively modern age of early sixteenth-century England. Henry VIII is king, and Vantrease’s main protagonist is the beautiful Kate Gough, a descendent of characters first introduced in The Illuminator. A former Nashville teacher and school librarian, Vantrease once again returns to the theme of censorship and faith, this time conveying the intensity and danger of the Tudor period. She appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 15 at 7 p.m.