Only Time and Light Will Do the Job
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 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.
May 15, 2914 Jennifer Chiaverini continues her portraits of Civil War women in her latest novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, which features Kate Chase Sprague, the daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury. Chiaverini will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 22, 2014, at 6 p.m.
May 5, 2914 In 2011, the Robert Parker estate tapped Ace Atkins to continue the late writer’s beloved series of thrillers. With Cheap Shot, his third Spenser novel, Atkins proves again that he is indeed up to the challenge. Atkins will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on May 15, 2014, at 7 p.m.