On the Brink
In The Best That You Can Do, a new story collection, Amina Gautier depicts women in the process of growing up and moving on. Gautier, a professor at the University of Miami, is a former fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Fiction
Cracks in the Foundation
Phyllis Gobbell’s novel Prodigal explores the impact of a son’s return to his family in the wake of his grandmother’s sudden death. Phyllis Gobbell will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 21.
Sinister Stories
Smoking Guns, an anthology from the East Tennessee chapter of Sisters in Crime, offers a dozen “tales of crime and mystery” that take readers into the dark corners of humanity.
On This Hill
James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a powerful tale of early 20th-century Jewish and African American communities bonding together to protect a disabled orphan. McBride will deliver the Nashville Public Library Foundation Literary Award lecture at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Nashville on November 9.
Author, Author
A Very Bad Thing, the latest thriller from Nashvillian J. T. Ellison, takes readers on a wild ride of secrets, lies, and hidden connections. Ellison will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 1.
Lambs to Slaughter
In We Burn Daylight, Bret Anthony Johnston evokes Romeo and Juliet’s teenage lovers amid a religious community’s fiery standoff with authorities that closely parallels the 1993 Waco siege. Bret Anthony Johnston will discuss We Burn Daylight at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 26-27.
