The Flood of History
In Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a broad cast of characters living in North Dakota struggle to survive the 2008 economic downturn. Erdrich will appear at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on October 18.
Fiction
Muscadine Vines
Cookeville writer Monic Ductan’s debut story collection, Daughters of Muscadine, reveals the entangled historical and psychological legacies at work in several generations of Black families in Muscadine, a fictional rural town in northeast Georgia. Monic Ductan will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
Small Victories
In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Night Watch, a group of women from the hills of West Virginia survive the horrors of the Civil War and find safety in a humane mental hospital. Phillips will discuss Night Watch at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
Brave Enough to Try
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the funny and thought-provoking sequel to TJ Klune’s bestselling 2020 fantasy novel The House in the Cerulean Sea, provides another chapter in the inspiring story of the mostly unflappable Arthur Parnassus, his sweetheart Linus Baker, and the extraordinary magical children in their care. Klune will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
The Depths
In his recent novels, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers invites us to set down the blinkered limitations of human perspectives and connect to the natural world in deeper, more urgent ways. Now, with Playground, Powers brings his inimitable storytelling to Earth’s subterranean depths, illuminating the abundant riches of our oceans and the critical dangers they face.
A Magical Mountain Fairy Tale
Chattanooga author Natalie Lloyd’s latest tale of heartbreak and hope for middle school readers is The Witching Wind. Roxie Darling and Grayson Patch become friends as incoming sixth graders at Camelot Middle School in fictional Silas County, Tennessee. And, as is always the case in a Natalie Lloyd book, fantastical adventures are soon afoot.
