Bloodsuckers 1.0
June 6, 2010 Acclaimed nature writer Michael Sims turns his attention to the unnatural world of vampires, compiling a fascinating anthology of Victorian-era tales.
Fiction
Ross on the Road
July 2, 2010 On Tuesday, in the fourth stop on his book tour in support of Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross landed at the legendary Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi—arguably the Holy Land of Southern Literature—where, according to the store’s blog, he made an unprecedented impression: “Writers have been speaking and reading at Square Books for thirty years, and we’ve heard just about everything, it would seem. But we’d never heard a reading like this. When Mr. Ross finished, a stunned audience sat speechlessly, then broke into loud applause.” The post concluded: “Today it feels, as it shall in days to come, like an ‘I was there’ moment.”
True Blues
July 1, 2010 The raw emotion of the blues meets the rough world of crime fiction in
Making It in Music City
June 30, 2010 It’s graduation day, and there’s little that Retta Lee Jones will miss about Starling High School. Nineteen years old and raised in small-town Starling, Tennessee—about two and a half hours outside Nashville—she’s desperate to “get on with my real life”—the life she’s been “staring out the window and daydreaming about all through high school.” The heroine of Suzanne Supplee’s new novel, Somebody Everybody Listens To, Retta has plans—big ones: Retta Lee Jones wants to make it in country music.
Worlds Will Collide
June 23, 2010 David Baldacci. Stuart Woods. Lisa Gardner. Besides churning out at least one thriller a year, all have created a series featuring a particular set of characters, only to move on to a whole new series at the height of their bestselling success. Once the second series wins fans, the writers merge the two worlds, with new books in which protagonist A meets protagonist B, sidekick C competes with sidekick D, and the bad guys are all over the place. Plots and past histories weave together like the final season of Lost, and only dedicated fans can follow the nuances. But with a crime writer as sophisticated as Karin Slaughter, the collision of two worlds can blossom into something as complex as a Bach fugue—something that is ultimately just as beautiful and satisfying. Slaughter will sign copies of her new book, Broken, at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 23 at 7 p.m.
"What Did You Do?"
June 22, 2010 When Alice Pepin is found dead of anaphylactic shock, the result of a catastrophic peanut allergy, it’s not clear why she ever sat down in front of a plate of peanuts in the first place, or why all the EpiPens in the apartment are missing. Why did Alice die? Did she commit suicide? Or was she murdered—by her husband, or, even more incredibly, by marriage itself? This unconventional premise is only one reason that Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut—a dark examination of sex, marriage, and murder—is already this year’s most talked-about fiction debut, though it hits stores for the first time today. Ross will discuss Mr. Peanut at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville tonight at 7 p.m., and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on June 24 at 6 p.m.
