Saturday April 25, 2015
Signing: 1:00
Every Father’s Daughter: Twenty-four Women Writers Remember Their Fathers $29.95
Kingston, NY: McPherson (2015)
“What is it about the relationship between fathers and daughters that provokes so much exquisite tenderness, satisfying communion, longing for more, idealization from both ends, followed often if not inevitably by disappointment, hurt, and the need to understand and forgive, or to finger the guilt of not understanding and loving enough?” writes Phillip Lopate, in his introduction to Every Father’s Daughter, a collection of 25 personal essays by women writers writing about their fathers. The editor, Margaret McMullan, is herself a distinguished novelist and educator. About half of these essays were written by invitation for this anthology; others were selected by Ms. McMullan and her associate, Philip Lopate, who provides an introduction. The contributors include many well-known writers—Alice Munro, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Hong Kingston, among others—as well as writers less well-known but no less cogent, inventive, perceptive, lacerating, questioning, or loving of their fathers.
Includes Jane Smiley, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bliss Broyard, Jill McCorkle, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Joyce Maynard, Lee Smith, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jayne Anne Phillips, Antonya Nelson, Alice Munro, and 12 other writers.
Wednesday April 22, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
How I Shed My Skin $23.95
Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin (2015) As new in dust jacket.
“White people declared that the South would rise again. Black people raised one fist and chanted for black power. Somehow we negotiated a space between those poles and learned to sit in classrooms together . . . Lawyers, judges, adults declared that the days of separate schools were over, but we were the ones who took the next step. History gave us a piece of itself. We made of it what we could.” —Jim Grimsley
More than sixty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that America’s schools could no longer be segregated by race.
Critically acclaimed novelist Jim Grimsley was eleven years old in 1966 when federally mandated integration of schools went into effect in the state and the school in his small eastern North Carolina town was first integrated. Until then, blacks and whites didn’t sit next to one another in a public space or eat in the same restaurants, and they certainly didn’t go to school together.
Going to one of the private schools that almost immediately sprang up was not an option for Jim: his family was too poor to pay tuition, and while they shared the community’s dismay over the mixing of the races, they had no choice but to be on the front lines of his school’s desegregation.
What he did not realize until he began to meet these new students was just how deeply ingrained his own prejudices were and how those prejudices had developed in him despite the fact that prior to starting sixth grade, he had actually never known any black people.
Now, more than forty years later, Grimsley looks back at that school and those times–remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture. The result is a narrative both true and deeply moving. Jim takes readers into those classrooms and onto the playing fields as, ever so tentatively, alliances were forged and friendships established. And looking back from today’s perspective, he examines how far we have really come.
Tuesday April 21, 2015
Signing: 1:00
The Bone Tree $27.99
New York, NY: William Morrow (2015) As new in dust jacket.
Greg Iles continues the electrifying story begun in his smash New York Times bestsellerNatchez Burning in this highly anticipated second installment of an epic trilogy of blood and race, family and justice, featuring Southern lawyer Penn Cage.
Former prosecutor Penn Cage and his fiancée, reporter and publisher Caitlin Masters, have barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by wealthy businessman Brody Royal and his Double Eagles, a KKK sect with ties to some of Mississippi’s most powerful men. But the real danger has only begun as FBI Special Agent John Kaiser warns Penn that Brody wasn’t the true leader of the Double Eagles. The puppeteer who actually controls the terrorist group is a man far more fearsome: the chief of the state police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, Forrest Knox.
The only way Penn can save his father, Dr. Tom Cage—who is fleeing a murder charge as well as corrupt cops bent on killing him—is either to make a devil’s bargain with Knox or destroy him. While Penn desperately pursues both options, Caitlin uncovers the real story behind a series of unsolved civil rights murders that may hold the key to the Double Eagles’ downfall. The trail leads her deep into the past, into the black backwaters of the Mississippi River, to a secret killing ground used by slave owners and the Klan for over two hundred years . . . a place of terrifying evil known only as “the bone tree.”
The Bone Tree is an explosive, action-packed thriller full of twisting intrigue and deadly secrets, a tale that explores the conflicts and casualties that result when the darkest truths of American history come to light. It puts us inside the skin of a noble man who has always fought for justice—now finally pushed beyond his limits.
Just how far will Penn Cage, the hero we thought we knew, go to protect those he loves?
Thursday April 16, 2015
Signing: 4:00
The Way to Stay in Destiny $16.99
New York, NY: Scholastic Press (2015) As new in dust jacket.
Wednesday April 15, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
The Wedding Circle $15.00
New York, NY: Kensington Publishing (2015)
In the charming small town of Cherico, Mississippi, the Cherry Cola Book Club meets to discuss classic Southern literature, sample favorite dishes–and share their unique stories. . .
Two wonderful new chapters are unfolding for Maura Beth Mayhew, Cherico’s librarian. Thanks to her persistence, a new, cutting-edge library is being built on the shores of beautiful Lake Cherico. And come September, Maura Beth will marry Jeremy McShay at his aunt and uncle’s stunning home. Yet in life, as in fiction, happy endings are hard-won. . .
A local politician is trying to divert library funds, while Maura Beth’s socialite parents insist on a lavish New Orleans wedding. Maura Beth invites them to Cherico to experience the town’s laidback appeal–and the book club’s delicious potluck fare. Sadly, not even Voncille Nettle’s famous biscuits can placate Mrs. Mayhew once the discussion turns from Eudora Welty’s The Robber Bridegroom to real-life marriage. To get the wedding and the library of her dreams, Maura Beth will have to harness the indomitable spirit of her favorite Southern heroines–and the sage advice of the Cherry Cola Book Club. . .
Monday April 13, 2015
Signing: 5:00
A Rented World $19.95
USA: Southern Literature Publishing (2014)
Merle Temple, author of A Ghostly Shade of Pale, signed books for the cast of Criminal Minds, Ravi Zacharias, Morgan Freeman, fellow Ole Miss graduates and for readers across America who still love books written as keepers in a throwaway culture. His character, Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Captain Michael Parker, dodged death in A Ghostly Shade of Pale only to find that the organized crime figures who tried to kill him were amateurs compared to the political criminals he encounters in A Rented World. Parker confronts an unholy trinity of politics, crime, and business, all humming the same secular hymn–“Everyone and everything is for sale.” Parker exposes corruption in the corporate and political worlds and wrestles with the question of how far is too far to go to defeat them. Temple weaves a cautionary tale of how quickly all can be lost, but how threads of purpose can be found in blankets of crushing pain. Join Michael Parker for midnight meetings between governors and godfathers, conspiracies hatched in the smoke-filled nightclubs of the Dixie Mafia, the selling of souls in the shadows of corporate boardrooms, and for a trip on a winding road that leads him all the way to Congress and the White House.
Saturday April 11, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Wide-Open World $26.00
New York, NY: Ballantine (2015) As new dust jacket.
An award-winning writer, producer and director shares his experiences volunteering around the world for six months with his family, during which they had many life-changing adventures that forever changed them and reconnected them in ways they never thought possible.
Saturday April 11, 2015
Signing: 1:00
Mississippi Moonshine Politics $19.99
Charleston, SC: History Press (2015)
For most states, the repeal of prohibition meant a return to a state of legally drunken normalcy, but not so in Mississippi. The Magnolia State went dry over a decade before the nation, leaving bootleggers to establish political and financial holds they were unwilling to lose. For nearly sixty years, bootlegging flourished, and Mississippi became known as the “wettest dry state in the country.” Law enforcement tried in vain to control crime that followed each empty bottle. Until statewide prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, illegal booze fueled a corrupt political machine that intimidated journalists who dared to speak against it and fixed juries that threatened its interests. Author and native Mississippian Janice Branch Tracy delivers an intimate look at the story of Mississippi’s moonshine empire.
Wednesday April 8, 2015
Signing: 4:30
The Thickety: The Whispering Trees $16.99
New York, NY: Katherine Tegen Books (2015) As new in dust jacket.
The Thickety is no place to be alone.
The branches closed behind Kara and Taff when they rode Shadowdancer into the dark forest. But there is no returning to the village, and Sordyr chases close behind. The forest demon has a terrible plan—one that requires Kara’s magic to succeed.
The dangers of the Thickety are many. Its plants are often deadly, strange animals whisper among the trees, and unknown magic lurks behind every twist and shadow of the path. But more dangerous still are the other inhabitants of the Thickety: Sordyr and his snapping branchwolves; the shadowy residents of an abandoned village; and Imogen, a creature with an unspeakable hunger.
They would do anything she asked.
All she had to do was use her magic.
And then there’s Mary Kettle, a strange witch seeking redemption from a horrifying past. She offers to lead them out of the Thickety while teaching Kara how to cast spells without a grimoire. The children are hesitant to trust her . . . but this could be their only chance to escape.
Or the first step down a dark and wicked path.
Tuesday April 7, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
The Teeth of the Souls $32.95
Springfield, MO: Moon City Press (2015) As new case binding.
As the sequel to Morkan’s Quarry, The Teeth of the Souls tells the story of a marriage betrayed, a lifelong and secret love, and an Ozarks city riven by an Easter lynching.
The story begins just after the Civil War when Leighton Shea Morkan, son of Irish immigrants, marries Patricia Grünhaagen Weitzer, daughter of a German banking family. Yet he can’t let go of his childhood love and wartime confidante, the house hand and former slave, Judith. Both unions produce children, one a shrouded secret, and one the heir to the Morkan legacy: the limestone quarries of Springfield, Missouri, and the bloody past, what Judith calls “The Teeth of the Souls.”
Grounded in broad historical research and spanning Missouri’s reconstruction, vigilantism, and fall from grace,The Teeth of the Souls chronicles the violent melding of immigrant strains—Irish, German, Scots-Irish, and African American—into the fabric of the Ozarks.
Tuesday April 7, 2015
Signing: 3:30
Seeds of Freedom: The Peaceful Integration of Huntsville, Alabama $16.99
Somerville, MA, Candlewick Press (2015) As new in dust jacket.
Explore a little-known story of the Civil Rights movement, in which black and white citizens in one Alabama city worked together nonviolently to end segregation.
Mention the Civil Rights era in Alabama, and most people recall images of terrible violence. But something different was happening in Huntsville. For the citizens of that city, creativity, courage, and cooperation were the keys to working together to integrate their city and schools in peace. In an engaging celebration of this lesser-known chapter in American and African-American history, author Hester Bass and illustrator E. B. Lewis show children how racial discrimination, bullying, and unfairness can be faced successfully with perseverance and ingenuity.
Thursday April 2, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Pasture Art $16.95
Spartanburg, SC; Hub City Press (2015)
These stories, all set in nearby towns in the Alabama Black Belt a swath of dark soil that runs west to east through the central part of the state explore the history, culture, and human spirit of the people who live there, and those that came before them and were shaped by the same rich and corrupted geography. In the title story, a teenage girl wants desperately to escape her self-destructive mother and comes to realize the hay-bale art she can see from their house may hold a key to her future, if she can divine it. The novella “Playing War” tells the story of a wife who’s just learned the hunting accident her husband was involved in years earlier was not exactly an accident. “Haints at Noon,” written in the form of a 1930s slave narrative, tells the story of a couple trying to endure that “peculiar institution.” Another story, “Into Silence,” which was included in Best American Short Stories 2010, gives voice to a woman who is deaf and mute as she tries to break the bonds of her domineering mother when a traveling photographer, working for the WPA, rents a room in their home. The past and present are joined here in stories that demonstrate the never-ending struggle for understanding and connection.
Wednesday April 1, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Into the Savage Country $24.95
New York, NY: Pantheon Books (2015) As new in dust jacket.
While on a perilous expedition into Crow territory in the 1820s, William Wyeth discovers the depth of loyalty among men and the lengths people will go in order to survive when he becomes trapped in the center of a deadly boundary dispute between Native American tribes, the British government and American trapping brigades.
Tuesday March 31, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Everything That Makes You $17.99
New York, NY: Tegen Books (2015) As new in dust jacket.
Ever wonder “What if?” Everything That Makes You is a romantic, epic story about one girl—and her two possible lives after an accident changes her fate.
Fiona Doyle’s face was horribly scarred as a child. She writes about her frustrations and dreams in notebooks, penning song lyrics. But she’d never be brave enough to sing those songs in public. Fi Doyle never had an accident. She’s the best lacrosse player in the state and can’t be distracted by her friend who wants to be more than that. But then her luck on the field goes south.
Alternating chapters between Fiona and Fi tell two stories about the same girl—hopes and dreams and crushes, fears and failures and loss. This beautifully written realistic contemporary novel with a twist is perfect for fans ofIf I Stay by Gayle Forman and Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.
Tuesday March 31, 2015
Signing: 5:00
A Thousand Pieces of You $17.99
New York, NY: Harperteen (2014) As new in dust jacket.
Cloud Atlas meets Orphan Black in this epic dimension-bending trilogy byNew York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray about a girl who must chase her father’s killer through multiple dimensions. Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their groundbreaking achievements. Their most astonishing invention, called the Firebird, allows users to jump into multiple universes—and promises to revolutionize science forever. But then Marguerite’s father is murdered, and the killer—her parent’s handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.
Marguerite refuses to let the man who destroyed her family go free. So she races after Paul through different universes, always leaping into another version of herself. But she also meets alternate versions of the people she knows—including Paul, whose life entangles with hers in increasingly familiar ways. Before long she begins to question Paul’s guilt—as well as her own heart. And soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is far more sinister than she expected.
A Thousand Pieces of You, the first book in the Firebird trilogy, explores an amazingly intricate multiverse where fate is unavoidable, the truth elusive, and love the greatest mystery of all.
Saturday March 28, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Other People’s Money $12.95
USA: Moonshine Cove Press (2014)
WHO KNEW PHILANTHROPY COULD BE SO DEADLY? Katie Nelson, a program officer at Atlanta’s largest charitable foundation, has the job everyone wants:, giving away other people’s money. But when her latest grant recommendation literally goes up in flames, killing an unknown Latina woman in the process, everyone becomes a suspect. Was it a hate crime, an inside job or something more insidious? Even her new romance with a foundation trustee leaves her questioning his potential involvement. Following her hunches, headstrong Katie unwittingly places herself in mortal danger. Who’s looking out for her and who’s trying to do her in?
Thursday March 26, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Shoulder Bones $17.95
East Setauket, NY: Blooming Twigs Books (2015)
These stories are worth an all-nighter and a steaming cup of tea. Shoulder Bones is a collection of short stories that dive into and out of the conscious and unconscious, into and out of reality. A girl jumps on a trampoline and gets stuck in midair. Debut author Sellers has a voice that is a touch of Faulkner and a dash Austen, deeply rooted in the sounds, spirit, and heart of a southern childhood. This is a collection of stories that have the fantastical dimension of the original Peter Pan or Harry Potter, but the adult thematic depth of Augusten Burroughs. Sellers writes with the freshness of youth, but out of the fear of childhood. She spills her inky blood onto the pages of this debut collection with a not-quite-sweet prose that is at once feminist and normal, vivid and average, wild-eyed and honeysuckle sweet. This collection of stories represents the best and the worst in each of us, and the fanciful, fantastic escape that the squeeze of reality can bring.
Wednesday March 25, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
The Other Joseph $25.99
New York, NY: Ecco Press (2015) As new in dust jacket.
A masterful depiction of a life driven off the rails by tragedy and sin—a man now summoned by the legacy of a beloved, lost brother to embark on a journey in search toward understanding, happiness, and redemption.
Haunted by the disappearance of his older brother Tommy in the first Gulf War, the tragic deaths of his parents, and the felony conviction that has branded him for a decade, Roy Joseph has labored in lonesome exile—and under the ever-watchful eyes of the law—moving between oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana and an Airstream trailer he shares with his dog.
Then, on the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Roy is contacted by a teenage girl from California claiming to be his lost brother’s biological daughter. Yearning for connection and the prospect of family, Roy embarks on a journey across America, visiting childhood haunts in the South to confront his troubled memories and history, and making a stop in Nevada to call on a retired Navy SEAL who may hold the answer to Tommy’s fate. The ultimate destination is San Francisco, where a potential Russian bride and his long-lost niece await, and Roy may finally recover the Joseph line.
With The Other Joseph, Skip Horack delivers a powerful, spellbinding tale of a man nearly defeated by life who is given one last chance at redemption—one last shot to find meaning and alter the course of his solitary existence
Tuesday March 24, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Doing the Devil’s Work $26.00
New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books (2015) As new in dust jacket.
A gripping third chapter for one of the most unforgettable and compelling heroines in crime fiction
“You have a temper, Officer Coughlin, and a propensity for violence . . . You’re a bit of a hazard. To others. To yourself.”
Maureen Coughlin is a bona fide New Orleans cop now, and, with her training days behind her, she likes to think she’s getting the lay of the land. Then a mysterious corpse leads to more questions than answers, and a late-night traffic stop goes very wrong. The fallout leaves Maureen contending with troubled friends, fraying loyalties, cop-hating enemies old and new, and an elusive, spectral, and murderous new nemesis—and all the while navigating the twists and turns of a city and a police department infected with dysfunction and corruption.
Bill Loehfelm is a rising star in crime fiction. And his Maureen Coughlin is the perfect protagonist: complicated, strong-willed, sympathetic (except when she’s not), and as fully realized in Loehfelm’s extraordinary portrayal as the New Orleans she patrols. The first two installments in this series won Loehfelm accolades as well as fans, andDoing the Devil’s Work only ups the ante. It’s even faster, sharper, and more thrilling than its predecessors. Taut and fiery, vibrant and gritty, and peopled with unforgettable characters, this is the sinuous, provocative story of a good cop struggling painfully into her own.
Monday March 23, 2015
Signing: 5:00
Reading: 5:30
Of Irish Blood $25.99
New York, NY: Forge (2015) As new in dust jacket.
It’s 1903. Nora Kelly, twenty-four, is talented, outspoken, progressive, and climbing the ladder of opportunity, until she falls for an attractive but dangerous man who sends her running back to the Old World her family had fled. Nora takes on Paris, mixing with couturiers, artists, and “les femmes Americaines” of the Left Bank such as Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach. But when she stumbles into the centuries-old Collège des Irlandais, a good-looking scholar, an unconventional priest, and Ireland’s revolutionary women challenge Nora to honor her Irish blood and join the struggle to free Ireland.
Author Mary Pat Kelly weaves historical characters such as Maud Gonne, William Butler Yeats, Countess Markievicz, Michael Collins, and Eamon de Valera, as well as Gabrielle Chanel, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Nora Barnicle, intoOf Irish Blood, a vivid and compelling story inspired by the life of her great-aunt.
