In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves are spirited away to freedom by an actual network of trains. The Underground Railroad is the 2018 Memphis Reads selection. Whitehead will discuss the novel at Christian Brothers University on September 5 and at Rhodes College on September 6. Both events are free and open to the public.
Big Angel de la Cruz, protagonist of Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels, is dying and hopes to make peace with his family before he dies. Urrea will appear at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.
Tayari Jones, who will talk about her novel An American Marriage during the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 12-14, sets her fiction in Atlanta because the urban South is “a microcosm of all the issues facing the country.”
J.T. Ellison’s latest, Tear Me Apart, is a jaw-dropping story of suspense about a young athlete, the injury that leads to a shocking medical diagnosis, and the race to make sense of her past before it’s too late. Ellison will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 29, and at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14.
Lisa Patton’s Rush is a deep dive into sorority culture and a powerful treatise on the importance of extricating what’s genuinely valuable from a matrix of history, tradition, and social torpor-and leaving the rest. Patton will appear at Novel in Memphis on August 21, at Books-A-Million in Jackson on August 22, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 23, at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 20, and at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.
In Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s new novel, The Queen’s Promise, three women must make dangerous choices as England collapses into civil war. Vantrease will appear at Parnassus Books on August 19, and at the Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14. Both events are in Nashville.
