Fiction

October 9, 2014 Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, The Hundred-Year House, reveals its secrets slowly, layer by layer, as the reader travels back in time from 1999 to 1900. At the center of the story is a house that becomes a character in its own right as Makkai combines straightforward narrative with snippets of poetry, telegrams, and letters to create a mood that is both modern and mysterious, historical and haunting. Makkai will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.

October 2, 2014 So much of what’s appealing about Lev Grossman is on display in the 400-plus fantastical pages of The Magician’s Land: his easy way with grandly deployed plotlines, his nuanced attention to the ways men and women communicate (or fail to), and his taut pacing. Lev Grossman will discuss the final volume in his fantasy trilogy at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 18, 2014 In 2007, Ishmael Beah received widespread praise for his memoir, A Long Way Gone, a troubling account of his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. In his first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah lyrically explores a village much like his own as it struggles toward normal life after a wartime massacre. Beah will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 16, 2014 With Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle, singer and lyricist for The Mountain Goats, has produced an LP of a novel that delves into the damaged psyche of a disfigured young man who retreats into a role-playing game he has invented, a fantasy world where he—and others—can feel safe. Darnielle will discuss Wolf in White Van at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 24, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

September 11, 2014 In The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories, seasoned anthology editor Michael Sims has compiled a book sure to send a shiver down the spine of even the most skeptical reader. Included are all the standard tropes of the genre: haunted houses, the walking dead, cursed objects, and eerie landscapes, as well as the expected Victorian flourishes of fainting females and their brave but clueless male champions. Sims will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

September 10, 2014 Huddy Marr, the protagonist of Stephen Schottenfeld’s Bluff City Pawn, knows guns—and gold, and guitars, and jewelry. He also knows that the blood bank replacing the liquor store next door to his pawn shop signals the last, irreversible step in the decline of his particular neck of a slumping city. In his debut novel, Schottenfeld capably shows Memphis as the home of a different kind of blues. Schottenfeld will appear at the University of Memphis on September 16, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Bluff Room of the University Center. He will also appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. Both events are free and open to the public.