By Kimberla Lawson Roby
William Morrow
288 pages
$23.99
“Since her debut, Roby has refined her winning recipe for whipping up page-turners … served up hot and irresistible to readers.”
—Essence
Sara Evans‘s debut novel, The Sweet By and By, written with Rachel Hauck, is a story of faith, forgiveness, and redemption. While inspirational, the novel is never preachy, and the characters, no matter their faults, are treated with sympathy and even-handedness. In an interview, Sara Evans talks with Chapter 16 about the book, the writing process, and the role faith plays in her own life. She will be performing and signing copies of The Sweet By and By at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on January 11 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Before Americans were hooked on True Blood, before Twilight sank its teeth into millions of readers and moviegoers, Spring Hill’s Sherrilyn Kenyon was swiftly and quietly building her vampire-lit empire. “Kenyon’s writing is brisk, ironic and relentlessly imaginative,” notes The Boston Globe. “These are not your mother’s vampire novels.”
In Amy S. Foster‘s debut novel, When Autumn Leaves, a female healer catches lightning in a bottle because the island town of Avening is a place where events defy logical explanation. The novel, like its setting, is a cozy one. The citizens of Avening, who long ago grew “to accept the bizarre anomalies as normal,” always have a warm cup of peppermint tea at the ready for a visiting neighbor or friend. This is a book about the miraculous, the magical, and the vibrantly hopeful, and its charm lingers long after the book is closed.
When Donna VanLiere writes about single mothers struggling to have Christmas for their children, or a small-town department store owner with a heart of gold, she knows whereof she speaks. The Franklin, Tennessee, writer has become the queen of Christmas with a series of holiday heart-warmers that continues with her new novel, The Christmas Secret. VanLiere will be reading from and discussing her new novel on Sunday, December 13, at 3 p.m. at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin (114 East Main St.) That day, the Lifetime network will also air a marathon of holiday films based upon earlier VanLiere books. The series will culminate in the premiere of Christmas Hope at 8 p.m.
Robert Hicks dreams big. In A Separate Country, his new novel, he re-imagines in 400-plus pages the life and last days of the mythic John Bell Hood, former general of the Confederate States of America. This sort of endeavor is only natural for a man whose first novel was The New York Times bestseller The Widow of the South and who is now leader of Franklin’s Charge: A Vision and Campaign for the Preservation of Historic Open Space. Hicks has never shied from the big task, whether fighting the Herculean sprawl of Williamson County or imagining the thoughts of a legendary figure.
