WYPL Book Talk

Greg Iles is one of the biggest, best-selling thriller writers in America. He recently wrapped up his Natchez Burning trilogy starring Mayor Penn Cage. Today, we're going to talk about his latest book, Cemetery Road, set in a fictional town fifty miles north of Natchez. Award-winning journalist Marshall McEwan returns home to run his estranged father's newspaper, while a local business development promises to revitalize the area economy but at the price of how many lives?

Tim Johnston's 2009 short story collection Irish Girl won the Katharine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, and several of the stories won individual prizes, as well. His novels are Never So Green, Descent, which we spoke about on Book Talk back in 2013, and today we'll be talking about The Current, new for 2019, the story of two college students attacked near the Iowa-Minnesota state border that recalled the death of a young woman 10 years earlier, which was never solved and destroyed the bonds connecting several local families.

Snowden Wright has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and The New York Daily News. His first novel, Play Pretty Blues, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim, and today we'll be talking about his new novel, American Pop, which is published by William Morrow.

Dani Shapiro is a respected writer of fiction and memoir. Her novels include Black and White and Playing with Fire as well as memoirs including Devotion and Slow Motion. Today we'll be talking about her latest memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love which is published by Knopf.

Nick Petrie earned his MFA from the University of Washington and is known for his series of thrillers starring veteran Peter Ash. The first three were The Drifter, Burning Bright, and Light It Up, and today we'll be talking about the fourth installment, Tear It Down, which is published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Preston Lauterbach  is an author of non-fiction who has concentrated on the African-American experience of the American South, and Memphis in particular. Hi First book was The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll, about musical venues and musicians in the south and neighboring states serving a black clientele with good times and better music. His second book was Beale Street Dynasty, which looked at the early and prime days of the capital of black America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today we're talking about his latest book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers, the man responsible for many of the greatest photos of the civil rights era and how his legacy has come into question since it was revealed that he was an informant for the FBI.

Lyndsay Faye is a novelist known for her Timothy Wilde Series, a couple of critically acclaimed Sherlock Holmes pastiches, as well as the stand alone novel, Jane Steele. Today we'll be talking about her latest novel, The Paragon Hotel, a tale of a white New York gun moll who hides out in a hotel for African Americans in a very racist Portland, Oregon in the early 1920s.

Mark Greaney co-wrote several Jack Ryan books with Tom Clancy, and several of them solo after Mr. Clancy passed away. But Mark started out his writing career with The Gray Man, the story of a burned CIA operative being hunted down by his former employer. We've talked about every entry into the series so far, and today we talk about the latest one, Mission Critical, which is published by Berkley. 

For listeners in the Memphis area, Mark Greaney will be at the bookstore novel located at 387 Perkins Extended on Saturday, February 23 at 2:00 p.m. to sign Mission Critical. More information is available at novelmemphis.com/event.

Marjorie Herrera Lewis was the first woman originally hired as a sports reporter at the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, she later became the Dallas Cowboys beat reporter and moved to the Dallas Morning News. She's currently teaching media ethics at the University of North Texas, but today we're going to talk about about her debut novel, When the Men Were Gone, based on the true story of a woman who became a football coach in Texas during World War II.

Kiese Laymon back to the program today. Kiese is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. When last on the show we talked about his novel, Long Division, and his book of essays, How to Kill Yourself an Others in America. Today we'll be talking his latest, Heavy: An American Memoir, which was named to many major best books of the year lists for 2018, and he won the best Audiobook of the Year award from Audible.