David Burnsworth explores the seedy side of Charleston in his debut novel
June 5, 2015 Brack Pelton plans to have a birthday dinner with his uncle in a nice Charleston restaurant but instead ends up holding him as he dies. Brack has no idea why anyone would want to kill his hippie, bar-owning uncle, but he’s determined to find out. David Burnsworth will discuss his debut novel, Southern Heat, at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 13, 2015, at 2 p.m.
In a new Body Farm novel, Jefferson Bass heaps Job-like catastrophes on the famous forensic anthropologist
June 4, 2015 In The Breaking Point, their ninth Body Farm novel, Jon Jefferson and Bill Bass, collectively known as Jefferson Bass, inflict every possible personal and professional disaster on their protagonist, Bill Brockton. He should break, but will he? Jefferson Bass will appear this month in Maryville, Nashville, Memphis, and at several Knoxville locations.
In Matthew Thomas’s debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves, striving Irish Americans learn to improvise when tragedy threatens to derail their dreams
June 2, 2015 In Matthew Thomas’s debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves, Eileen Tumulty is determined to rise above her Irish working-class roots. When she meets Ed Leary, a scientist who is also from Queens, she thinks she has found the perfect companion to accompany her on the upward journey. Matthew Thomas will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 5, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
Novelist Steve Stern found his fictional world by searching for a lost Jewish tradition
June 1, 2015 I grew up wanting something I couldn’t name. I was raised in the Reform Jewish “tradition,” though the word here is gross hyperbole. The temple I attended as a kid in Memphis represented a variety of Judaism designed to be invisible, to blend indistinguishably with the Christ-haunted Southern landscape. As a consequence, I was virtually untouched by tradition and had not even an awareness of its absence. Nevertheless, one Sunday, playing hooky from confirmation class, I went exploring the old red brick pile of our temple along with a couple of partners in crime.
With The Pinch, Steve Stern continues his dazzling fictional exploration of the intersection of reality, spirituality, and mysticism
May 28, 2015 High-wire acts performed by an acrobatic enchantress; a young couple making love in a giant tree in the midst of an earthquake; a drug-dealing bookstore clerk who finds a decades-old history of his neighborhood and discovers that he himself appears as a character in its pages—these are some of the elements of The Pinch, Steve Stern’s latest novel. Stern will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis at 6 p.m. on June 4, 2015.
What Lies Behind, J.T. Ellison’s new thriller, whiplashes Samantha Owens from a crime of passion to a global conspiracy
May 20, 2015 Samantha Owens, the protagonist of What Lies Behind, J.T. Ellison’s latest thriller, has left crime-scene investigation to take a plum job in academia. Then a brutal crime pulls her back in. Ellison will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 26, 2015; at Reading Rock Books in Dickson on May 28, 2015; and at Books-A-Million at Nashville on May 29, 2015. All events are free and open to the public.
