June 4, 2014 The stories in John Brandon’s new collection, Further Joy, pack a novel’s worth of engaging conflict and intriguing personalities into small packages. Stuck in small Florida towns that have no tourist attractions or natural beauty, Brandon’s characters make a game of their lives just to withstand them. John Brandon will read from Further Joy at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on June 9, 2014, at 6 p.m.
June 3, 2014 The One & Only, the seventh novel by bestselling author Emily Giffin, focuses on Shea Rigsby, a thirty-something living in fictional Walker, Texas, where life revolves around the local college football team. Shea’s world is turned upside down when she must choose between her best friend and her romantic feelings for her best friend’s father. Giffin will discuss The One & Only at the Nashville Public Library on June 9, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
May 27, 2014 “The soul is liquid, and slow to evaporate,” writes Elizabeth McCracken. “The body’s a bucket and liable to slosh. Grieving, haunted, heartbroken, obsessed: your friends will tell you to cheer up. What they really mean is dry up. But it isn’t a matter of will. Only time and light will do the job.” The metaphor is typical of the stories that make up Thunderstruck, a collection of achingly honest, haunting, and often darkly comic tales. McCracken will discuss the book on June 3, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville.
May 23, 2014 When last seen, Captain Alan Lewrie had suffered a serious leg wound. In Dewey Lambdin’s twentieth series installment, The King’s Marauder, Lewrie must recover and then coax a new commission out of the admiralty. Along the way, as always, he introduces readers to a colorful cast of characters and a wealth of information about the life of a British navy captain during the early years of the nineteenth century.
May 21, 2014 When last we heard from retired Memphis Police Detective Baruch “Buck” Schatz, the hysterical Jewish octogenarian in Daniel Friedman’s 2012 debut novel, Don’t Ever Get Old, he was taking a break from watching Fox News, considering his bowel progress, and smoking Lucky Strikes while an escaped Nazi war criminal tried to kill him. Friedman will discuss the book’s sequel, Don’t Ever Look Back, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on May 27, 2014, at 6 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 1, 2014, at 2 p.m.
May 19, 2014 The publisher of Zig Zag Wanderer, Madison Smartt Bell’s third short-story collection, is the innovative Concord Free Press, which gives away all its books with the understanding that readers will “pay it forward” by making a donation to a charity or a person in need. Bell answers questions from Chapter 16 about the stories and CFP’s unique approach to publishing.
