Whether Ann Patchett discourses about the merits of opera or recounts her adventures in a rented RV, her compelling new book, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Harper, 320 pps.), hums with the pitch-perfect prose evident in her best-selling novels Bel Canto and the recent State of Wonder. This 2013 compilation of previously…
The Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta Book Festival in Dunwoody is 21 years old, and to judge from its programs, it has matured into a vibrant celebration of the written word. Typically attracting more than 10,000 people, the event comprises author talks, book signings, family programming, a community read and panel discussions. This year’s festival, which…
Lee Smith‘s new novel, Guests on Earth (Shannon Ravenel, 352 pages), explores mental illness through the lives of patients, both actual and fictional, at the real-life Highland Hospital in North Carolina in the 1930s and ’40s. The mental institution, which closed in the 1980s, specialized in controversial shock treatments. Evalina Toussaint, the narrator, is 13 when…
Readers may not readily associate Edgar Allan Poe with a tempestuous love triangle, but Lynn Cullen’s Mrs. Poe (Gallery Books, 336 pages) could change that. The Atlanta author is famous for bringing half-forgotten historical figures, such as Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissoula in Creation of Eve, into the limelight through her fiction. Her latest novel follows Frances Osgood, a real-life 19th-century…
Charles McNair’s Pickett’s Charge (Livingston Press, 350 pages), his first novel in 19 years, is a rollicking tall tale through a century of Southern history. It follows Threadgill Pickett, the often forlorn protagonist, who has been spurred by the ghost of his twin brother to kill the last surviving Yankee soldier. At 114 years old…
Children’s author-illustrators Tomie dePaola and Jerry Pinkney have unique, instantly recognizable styles. Pinkney’s lush watercolors evoke the wonder and beauty of the legends and fairy tales he adapts for his stories. DePaola’s bold, enchanting style, immortalized most famously in his Strega Nona series, pulls young readers into captivating worlds. Both have spent around 50 years creating…
Jennifer Haigh, author of four novels and a collection of short stories, is perhaps best known for her 2005 best-selling novel Baker Towers (Harper Perennial). A penetrating portrait of a Pennsylvania coal-mining town, it is also the story of the Novaks, an intelligent, passionate family that wrestles a better life from the few opportunities available to it….
Curtis Sittenfeld brings us a tale of family, loyalty and extrasensory perception in her fourth novel, Sisterland (Random House, 416 pages). The best-selling author, who will appear at the Decatur Library on July 1 in an event hosted by the Georgia Center of the Book, is known for her intimate character portraits, and this novel is…
Native Atlantan Susan Rebecca White brings us a tale of isolation and transformation in her third novel, A Place at the Table. Spanning decades and regions, it explores the lives of Alice, Bobby and Amelia, three captivating characters each seeking the place where he or she most belongs. White’s strength lies in her ability to…
Jeffrey Small’s The Jericho Deception (West Hills, 424 pages) is a gripping thriller with a provocative premise. The Atlanta author, who will appear Monday, May 20, at the Decatur Library in a Georgia Center for the Book presentation, has written a novel centered on a piquant question: is it possible to control the power to see…
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