Fiction

October 1, 2015 In Tom Piazza’s new novel, A Free State, a runaway slave, Henry Sims, joins a troupe of minstrels in blackface, but for Henry the only possible freedom comes from the liberating power of music. Piazza will discuss A Free State at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on October 8, 2015, and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.

September 29, 2015 Claire Vaye Watkins’s stunning new novel, Gold Fame Citrus, imagines an utterly drought-ravaged California and the perilous options that remain for escape. Watkins will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.

September 25, 2015 Matthew Guinn has created a rich, realistic portrait of Atlanta in 1881 for his new thriller, The Scribe, which features detective Thomas Canby, the target of a Reconstruction-era corruption charge, who must return to his native Atlanta to track down a serial killer. Guinn will discuss The Scribe at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on September 29, 2015, at 6:30 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.

September 23, 2015 Every so often, the Pisgah County Police Department reopens the cold case that is colder than any other: the 1989 murder of ten-year-old Teresa Ewing. And when they do, it turns the lives of the people who were once her friends into a nightmare. Sallie Bissell will discuss the latest book in her Mary Crow series, A Judgment of Whispers, at BookManBookWoman in Nashville on October 3, 2015, at 3 p.m.

September 22, 2015 Lauren Groff’s third novel, Fates and Furies, is part love story, part tragedy, and part black comedy. It surveys the long marriage of a golden boy to a mystery girl and leaves the reader to ponder the possibility that a couple can love profoundly without ever really knowing each other at all. Groff will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.