Fiction

Brandon Taylor’s readers expect his novels to coalesce around deep philosophical thought. In his latest, Minor Black Figures, ideas about God function as the engine of the book.

In Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a middle-aged man embarks on a cross-country journey to rediscover his identity. Markovits will discuss The Rest of Our Lives at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 12.

Three Guesses, the debut novella by Memphian Chris McClain Johnson, offers an epistolary tale of surprising friendship between three very different adults. What begins as a search for the meaning of a painting by one of the three transforms into spirited, platonic exchanges that enrich each character’s life with greater meaning, shared intimacy, and self-actualization.

Liz Parker’s Witches of Honeysuckle House captivates readers with its generation-spanning narrative as several iterations of Caldwell witches each work to break the 13-year curse on the property.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World, a rollicking spy novel by Ace Atkins, is set mostly in Atlanta in 1985, known as “The Year of the Spy.” Soviet and American spycraft, combined with Atkins’ drop-dead Southern observations, creates a tale that reads like a mashup of Robert Ludlum and Charles Portis. Atkins will speak at Novel in Memphis on December 3.

In Come Again No More, David Wesley Williams resurrects the spirit of a dying newsroom with the lyrical gusto of a man both mourning and celebrating his first love. This is a novel about, among other things, the end of an era — the collapse of American newspapers, yes, but also the twilight of a man who is skeptical, rumpled, and in love with ink. David Wesley Williams will discuss Come Again No More at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on November 13.