Mary Alice Monroe’s Beach House for Rent links the story of two women struggling to overcome loss with the environmental concerns on coastal South Carolina’s Isle of Palms. Monroe will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 29 at 6 p.m., and at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Chattanooga on June 30 at 7 p.m.
In Jennifer Close’s The Hopefuls a young married couple moves to Washington, D.C., and becomes enmeshed with the lives of a budding politician and his appealing wife. Close will discuss her new novel at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 27 at 6:30 p.m.
Ann Patchett talks about the paperback edition of her number-one New York Times-bestselling novel Commonwealth, her desire to study acting, how being a bookseller affects her reading list, the nonfiction book she’s writing about women’s suffrage, and the importance of voting in our current age.
As a teenager, Maeve Donnelly was bitten by a shark only moments after her first kiss. Fifteen years later, she returns to Florida to face two dangerous passions—sharks and first love. Ann Kidd Taylor will discuss her new novel, The Shark Club, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 14 at 6:30 p.m.
In Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate imagines the murky family history of a clan ripped apart by Georgia Tann, the real-life director of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, which served as a front for a black-market adoption operation out of Memphis. Wingate will appear at the Arts Building in Chattanooga on June 14, and at the Blount County Library in Maryville on June 15.
Cousins Liv and Nora have booked their families on a joint holiday cruise to Central America. But even before their children go missing, the characters seem primed for disaster. Maile Meloy will discuss Do Not Become Alarmed at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 13 at 6:30 p.m.
