WYPL Book Talk

 
Wylie Cash's first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, the story of a death of a small boy in a Holiness Pentecostal church in the hills of western North Carolina, won the Crime Writer's Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award as well as the SIBA Fiction Book of the Year Award. His new novel is This Dark Road to Mercy, and it is published by William Morrow.

 

Sheila Turnage's first novel for middle graders and up, Three Times Lucky, received a 2013 Newbery Honor and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Book. Kathy Dawson Books, an imprint of Penguin, has just released the second episode following the preteen Desperado Detective Agency, and it's entitled The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing.

Alan Lightman, a native of Memphis, is the first professor at MIT to receive appointments in both science and the humanities. He's best known in literary circles for his novels Einstein's Dreams and The Diagnosis. Pantheon has recently published a collection of his essays entitled The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew.

James Scott's debut novel, The Kept, has garnered praise from reviewers, having been named a Best Book of the Month by Amazon and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Set in upstate New York at the end of the 19th century, a woman and her 12 year-old son set out into the deep, winter snow for revenge, while harboring secrets from each other.

 

James Magnuson heads up the Michener Center for Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He draws upon that experience for his new novel, Famous Writers I Have Known. Small-time grifter Frankie Abandonato gets in over his head in in New York and heads out to Austin, Texas, where he gets sucked into the world of literature and MFA programs. Could this be the longest and biggest con in Frankie's career?

 

Aram Goudsouzian's previous two books looked at the lives of actor/director Sidney Poitier and basketball legend Bill Russell, who were major cultural icons during the 1960s in their fields, as well as in the push for Civil Rights. In his new book, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear, Goudsouzian (chair of the history department at the University of Memphis) looks at a compressed time period of the June 1966 march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, as well as the multitude of personalities and organizations on both sides of the racial divide.

Goudsouzian will give a lecture at Rhodes College on Thursday, February 13 at 6:00 p.m. (reception at 5:30 p.m.), and a reading and signing at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on Monday, February 24 at 6:00 p.m.

Laurie Halse Anderson is a bestselling and prize-winning author of children's books and young adult novels, including Speak, Fever 1793, and Wintergirls. She and Stephen Usery talk about her new novel  The Impossible Knife of Memory, which is published by Viking.

 
Guest host Ronda Cloud welcomes Susan Gregg Gilmore back to the program for Susan's third visit. We've talked to her about her two previous novels, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove.  Ronda talks to her about her most recent one, The Funeral Dress, which is available from Broadway Books.

 
Robert Talisse is a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University who often concentrates on political philosophy. His most recent solo book is Pluralism and Liberal Politics. He often works with Scott Aikin, who is an assistant professor of philosophy, also at Vanderbilt. His most recent solo book is Epistemology and the Regress Problem. They have collaborated on four books together, and in this episode, we will talk about the most recent one, Why We Argue (And How We  Should), which is published by Routledge.

Joshilyn Jackson returns to Book Talk to discuss her new novel, Someone Else's Love Story. It's the story of a young, single mother named Shandi who meets a geneticist name William, who is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. They meet during a robbery at a Circle K near Atlanta, and we learn what brought them to this place and how their lives will be changed by knowing each other.

 

Jonathan Miles garnered much critical acclaim for Dear American Airlines, his 2008 debut novel. In addition to fiction, he also writes a cooking column for Field and Stream magazine and has recently released a collection of his recipes called The Wild Chef. His second novel is Want Not, which has again received much critical acclaim, including being named to the 2013 Notable Books list by the New York Times.

 

Jonathan Miles garnered much critical acclaim for Dear American Airlines, his 2008 debut novel. In addition to fiction, he also writes a cooking column for Field and Stream magazine and has recently released a collection of his recipes called The Wild Chef. His second novel is Want Not, which has again received much critical acclaim, including being named to the 2013 Notable Books list by the New York Times.

Loren Long is best known for his series of picture books starring Otis the Tractor. In An Otis Christmas, Otis must brave the night and deep snow to help save a life on Christmas eve. We also talk about Long's illustration work for President Obama, as well as Long's appreciation of artists like Thomas Hart Benton and N.C. Wyeth.

Thomas Maltman's first novel, the Civil War-era set The Night Birds won an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. His new novel, Little Wolves is set in a small Minnesota town at the end of summer in 1987. A high school boy walks into town and kills a sheriff and then himself. His father and his English teacher both search for understanding in a town that has hidden many ills over the years.

Memphian Mark Greaney has just published the fourth installment on his Gray Man series. In Dead Eye, former CIA assassin Court Gentry finds himself in Eastern Europe being hunted by his fellow Americans. When he receives assistance from an unexpected source, Gentry must decide if it is worth the risk to take someone at their word. Greaney will be signing his novels at The Booksellers at Laurelwood (387 Perkins Road, Memphis) on Thursday, December 5 at 6:00 p.m.

 

Stephen Usery welcomes Cary Holladay back to the program to talk about her new, award-winning collection of short stories, The Deer in The Mirror. Set in many different eras ranging from the early 18th century to modern times, the stories are connected by characters who come from the same area of Virginia, and themes often revolve around the power dynamic of male-female relationships and our stewardship of nature.

Stephen Usery interviews Robert Gordon, a native Memphian and one of the foremost chroniclers of the Mid-South's musical history. He's a documentary film maker, as well as an author of books such as It Came from Memphis and Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters. His new book is Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion.

 

 

 

Stephen Usery interviews Edgar Award winner Tom Franklin and Pushcart Prize winner Beth Ann Fennelly.Beth Ann is a prize winning poet and essayist, and Tom's literary novels full of crime and violence have brought him much acclaim, including the CWA Golden Dagger for Crooked Letter Crooked Letter. They decided to team up for the new novel, The Tilted World, a story of orphans, moonshiners and revenuers set against the backdrop of America's greatest natural disaster, the Mississippi River flood of 1927.

 

Stephen Usery welcomes Kami Garcia back to the program. Kami is one half of the duo responsible for the NY Times best-selling YA supernatural series, Beautiful Creatures a.k.a. The Caster Chronicles. Just in time for Halloween, she makes her solo debut with Unbreakable, the first in The Legion series about a teenage girl named Kennedy who is forced into a secret world of those who fight malevolent spirits on Earth.

 

Stephen Usery interviews Julie Cantrell about her second novel, When Mountains Move, the follow-up to her best-selling and award-winning debut, Into the Free. Set in 1943, 17-year-old Millie Reynolds marries Bump Anderson,  and they move from Mississippi to Colorado to start a cattle ranch and leave her secret traumas behind.