Teresa Toulouse and Barbara C. Ewell look for elusive intersections between particular spaces, stories and cultural performances in the Crescent City in “Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans,” published by the University of Mississippi Press. The book contains a dozen essays from a range of disciplines contributed by Carrie Bernhard, Scott Bernhard, Marilyn R. Brown, Richard Campanella, John P. Clark, Joel Dinerstein, Pableaux Johnson, John P. Klingman, Angel Adams Parham, Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Ruth Salvaggio, Christopher Schaberg and Beth Willinger. Toulouse is professor of English at University of Colorado, Boulder, and she previously served as professor of English and director of the American studies program at Tulane University in New Orleans. She and Ewell will discuss and sign their book at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 17, at Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans.
Caleb Johnson of Alabama discusses his new book “Treeborne” with Katy Simpson Smith while serving up a Treeborne-inspired menu by Nate Barfield from Turkey and the Wolf beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 19, at Turkey and the Wolf, 739 Jackson Ave. in New Orleans. Daniel Wallace, bestselling author of “Extraordinary Adventures” and “Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions” said this about “Treeborne,” published by Picador: "I can’t remember the last time I read a book I wish so much I’d written. ‘Treeborne’ is beautiful, and mythic in ways I would never have been able to imagine...I can’t say enough about this book.” Johnson’s novel has been named one of Southern Living's “Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018.”
Alex Cohen, a 26-year-old Jewish Bostonian, is living in southern China where his father runs their family-owned shoe factory in Spencer Wise’s novel, “The Emperor of Shoes,” published by Hanover Square Press. Alex reluctantly assumes the helm of the company, but as he explores the plant he realizes his employees are exploited, regulatory systems are corrupt and his father is engaging in bribes. When Alex meets a seamstress named Ivy, his sympathies begin to shift. Wise will be in conversation with Kent Wascom discussing “The Emperor of Shoes” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 20, at Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans. Spencer will sign books after the discussion.
In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men in “Southernmost” by Silas House, published by Algonquin Books. In doing so, Sharp starts to see his life anew—and risks losing everything: his wife, locked into her religious prejudices; his congregation, which shuns Asher after he delivers a passionate sermon in defense of tolerance; and his young son, Justin, caught in the middle of what turns into a bitter custody battle. Publishers Weekly called “Southernmost” “[A] suspenseful narrative about a father and son navigating personal and spiritual upheaval . . . [that] will leave readers floored. House’s fine moral drama pleasingly mixes spiritual reflection and a story of personal healing.”
House is the author of five novels, including “A Parchment of Leaves.” He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and a former commentator for NPR's All Things Considered. House is the winner of the E. B. White Award, the Nautilus Award and other honors. He will discuss and sign copies of the book at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 21, at Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans.
On a humid summer day, Chateau de Sully, a Boeing 707 chartered to bring home more than 100 of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens, crashes in Paris shortly after takeoff in Hannah Pittard’s new novel, “Visible Empire” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). It is the second-deadliest disaster in the history of aviation and overnight the city of Atlanta changes as those left behind are faced with renegotiating their lives. The Los Angeles Times said this about the book: "Captivating...[Pittard] brings her kaleidoscopic perspective to a catastrophe on an epic scale...With her keen eye for social markers and a deft weave of intersecting storylines, Pittard exposes social fissures and tensions over race and class, and how power and privilege play out in the shadows of grief.”
Pittard is the author of four novels, including “Listen to Me,” a New York Times Editors' Choice. She is winner of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a consulting editor for Narrative Magazine, and an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing. She will discuss and sign copies of “Visible Empire” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 26, at Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans.
Matthew Griffin and Nick White will be in conversation with Katherine Fausset discussing their books, “Hide,” and “Sweet and Low,” respectively at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 27, at Garden District Book Shop. “Hide” concerns falling in love in the aftermath of World War II, when a gay taxidermist and a veteran are forced to cut all ties with their discriminating North Carolina textile town and share a life of quiet self-sufficiency for decades until one of them falls terminally ill, forcing the other to reckon with the consequences of their isolation.
Melissa Daggett looks at the American Spiritualism Movement in New Orleans with a new book published by the University Press of Mississippi. In “Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans,” she delves into the many neighborhoods of the city that were fertile ground for the movement’s development — the Creole Faubourgs of Treme and Marigny, among others. Daggett will discuss and sign the book at 6 p.m. Thurtsday, June 28, at Octavia Books of New Orleans.
Robert Fieseler will sign “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation,” published by Liveright Publishing Corp., at 6 p.m. Friday, June 29, at Octavia Books. Kirkus Reviews said this of the book: “Fieseler's work is an essential piece of historical restitution that takes us from 1973 to 2003, when homosexuality was finally decriminalized in Louisiana. Powerfully written and consistently engaging, the book will hopefully shed more light on the gay community's incredible and tragic journey to equality. A momentous work of sociological and civil rights history.”
O’Neil de Noux of New Orleans is a writing machine. He’s working on his seventh novel at press time but here’s one to grab now. “Dame Money” takes readers back to 1951 New Orleans where private eye Lucien Cave gets four cases at once. There’s a serial burglar hitting French Quarter hotels, two murder cases and criminal vandalizing a nearby neighborhood. Of course, there’s plenty of threats, gunplay, police corruption, sex and violence – New Orleans style.
Lana Laws Downing has just published Jon Teel, a story of an abused biracial mystery child and a wealthy widow who happen to intersect in a small town in South Louisiana. Downing is the author of “Heaven and High Water: Fictional stories based on the early life of Alfreda Felterman Laws, 18 stories of fiction and fact woven together to recreate life as her mother remembered it in a remote logging camp on the shores of Lake Verett in the Louisiana cypress swamp in the 1920s. She will be signing books from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 19, at Shadowlawn in Franklin, the house that was used as the model for her book cover.
In other news
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced that E. Annie Proulx, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Shipping News” and the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” will receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction during the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival on Sept. 1. Hayden selected Proulx as this year’s winner based on the recommendation of a jury of previous winners, distinguished authors and prominent literary critics from around the world. The prize ceremony will take place during the National Book Festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.
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