Peggy Burch

Stopping by the roadside on an autumn day in the Shenandoah Valley, the writer Robert Morgan talked by phone about his new venture into American history, "Lions of the West."

In an interview posted on the Psychology Today website last week, Diana Abu-Jaber, author of "Birds of Paradise," says her inspiration for the story of a 13-year-old girl who drops out of her family and disappears was her memory of ...

The Shelby Farms Greenline has created a new dining public on two wheels in Memphis, and several spots along the path are catering to The Hungry Biker. Cheffie's opened in March, and Republic Coffee was already in place. Now add ...

The prolific Memphis poet, short-story writer, novelist and reader Corey Mesler will introduce two new volumes at an event Thursday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Burke's Book Store, which he co-owns with his wife, Cheryl.

The segregated South of the 1960s was a tough place to negotiate -- confusing at best, life-threatening at worst -- as the Jim Crow laws that had made a virtual prison of daily public life began fading. Clyde Edgerton's 10th ...

The narrow space on South Main that Circa restaurant once occupied -- squeezed between the entrances to the Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art and Art Under a Hot Tin Roof -- is now occupied by Bar None Chef's ...

The author of "The Family Fang," a novel about performance artists who use their young children in their work, grew up in a family he describes as "strange in the ways that have helped me in being a writer."

An ecological land-use consultant who lives in Scotland might seem miscast as biographer for the bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.

The economy and gasoline prices being what they are, you're probably less likely to drive 20 miles from Memphis to get pizza or a sandwich than you were even just last year. But Buon Cibo, a local-food-movement oasis in Hernando ...

Public libraries are filling a vacant spot created by the disappearing independent bookstore. In Nashville, where Davis-Kidd Booksellers closed its doors last year, the public library was the setting last month for an appearance by local resident and national literary ...

People of a certain age remember the 1983 death of the pop star Karen Carpenter at the age of 32 as their first notice that anorexia nervosa was a lethal disorder. It was a time when you still might hear ...

Sometimes service at a restaurant is so fluid and unintrusive, you forget about it. At the new Circa restaurant in Regalia on a Saturday night in June, we had the feeling that the ordering and arrival of food and drinks ...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos will appear on the Central Library's Book Talk program Tuesday to discuss his memoir "Thoughts Without Cigarettes" (Gotham Books, $27.50).

The High Point Terrace neighborhood south of Summer between Graham and Highland is anchored by a 1940s-era shopping center with a mauve fieldstone facade. It's a backdrop from another time, the image of post-war middle-class contentment. This illusion is immediately ...

Ronnie Grisanti, in his perennial white chef's jacket and practical tennis shoes, is once again working the dining room of a restaurant that bears his name. After poring over family recipes that were 50 and 60 years old to recharge ...

If you’re a poet who has yet to find a national audience — as is the case with Memphis writer Corey Mesler — seeing one of your poems in a hardback book between the works of Emily Dickinson and William ...

Carrie Bradshaw sprang into our collective consciousness in the late 1990s, as a sly but sincere writer whose newspaper column -- like the book, television series and movies that chronicled her fictional exploits -- was called "Sex and the City."

In the foreword to his 16th published work of fiction, Madison Smartt Bell writes: "Surely it is the most vicious and appalling story ever to pass through my hand to the page, so inevitably some people will hate it."

Canadian writer Yann Martel, whose "Life of Pi" won the Man Booker Prize in 2002, will be at the Central Library at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, to talk about his new novel “Beatrice and Virgil” (Spiegel & Grau, $24, paperback $14). ...

The Great Migration of African-Americans in the 20th century is still a painful memory for many living, but it's steadily making the transition into history.

The spirited little girl introduced in the classic 1939 children's book "Madeline" has been given new life on the page by John Bemelmans Marciano, grandson of the character's original creator, Ludwig Bemelmans.

Admirers of Allan Gurganus’ first novel, “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” will be happy to learn that it was the beginning of a trilogy: The author is at work now on the second in the series, provocatively titled “The ...

It's hardly necessary to introduce Michael Oher to football fans, moviegoers or the average Memphian. His story drove Michael Lewis' 2006 book "The Blind Side," a narrative that was embellished in the 2009 movie of the same name.

One-time Memphis newspaper reporter Wendell Potter switched to public relations early in his career, earning a salary "deep into six figures" by the time he left his job at Philadelphia-based health insurer Cigna in 2008.

Lunchbox Eats, a block south of FedExForum on Fourth Street, is not the place for careful counters of calories. It is a great spot for diners who can abandon their cares as they devour bread, cheese, eggs, waffles, gravy and ...

There is an antidote to the combination of low temperatures and high humidity we confront in a Memphis winter. It's taken orally, and it's called macaroni and cheese. At the Downtown restaurant Automatic Slim's Tonga Club, the homely remedy is ...

The librarian's librarian, Nancy Pearl, is coming to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library -- where else? -- to counsel staffers about "reader's advisory," the art of guiding people to books that will suit their fancies.

The poet Gordon Osing is happy to reduce his everyday life in Eudora, Miss., to a few sentences:

In his homage to the literary life, the books Pat Conroy honors become characters as vivid and influential as the flesh-and-blood teacher, friends and family who introduced him to them.

Reviewers tend to imitate the uncomplicated writing of Susan Straight in their reviews of her work.

St. George's Independent School sophomore Ehi Ike was inspired to write her first novel by an eighth-grade history lesson on the Trail of Tears, the infamous forced relocation of Native Americans from what is now the Deep South to "Indian ...

California author Mona Simpson will talk about "My Hollywood" Sept. 17 when she appears on Central Library's Book Talk program.

An important new anthology of African-American sermons -- eloquent, impassioned, sometimes scorching messages delivered by preachers in this country over the past 250 years -- was co-edited by Dr. Frank A. Thomas, senior pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church.

"If you've ever been mildly frustrated, extremely irritated or driven just plain mad by automated customer service lines, rude telephone service representatives or agents who can't speak intelligible English, this book is for you."

The writer Audrey Niffenegger, author of "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "Her Fearful Symmetry," will be at Burke's Book Store from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to sign the paperback edition of her second book.

Critics have lavished exuberant praise on the work of Memphis-reared fiction writer Steve Stern. Still, his book sales have always been modest.

Full disclosure: The Commercial Appeal has a vested interest in one of the newest Elvis Presley books on the racks. Staff members Michael Lollar and Rosemary Nelms -- the former a gifted reporter and prose stylist, the latter a meticulous ...

It's August in Memphis, and that means Elvis Presley fans, family and friends will be gathering in the city to commemorate the King's death.

Rock anthem belter Pat Benatar is touring two ways this summer. She'll be at Memphis Botanic Garden Friday night with REO Speedwagon as part of the "Live at the Garden" concert series, and earlier that day, she'll appear at a ...

If you ask Shelby Tucker to explain the route his life took from Brownsville, Tenn., to Yale and Oxford universities, and then to India, London, Guatemala, Cuba, Portugal, Burma, Kenya, Croatia, New Zealand and Australia, among many other countries, he'll ...

These are heady times for Adam Ross, author of "Mr. Peanut" (Knopf, $25.95). The Nashville-based author, an editor and writer for the alternative weekly Nashville Scene for several years and an English teacher at the girls' school Harpeth Hall for ...

Magazine journalist Sebastian Junger arrives in Memphis this week to sign and talk about his on-the-ground account of combat in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, "War,"now No. 5 on the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list.

Her work as a volunteer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital inspired Memphis author Taylor Grey to write "A Wig for Ally" (Createspace, $15).

Austin, Texas-based writer Joah Spearman will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Tuesday to sign "Real Role Models: Successful African Americans Beyond Pop Culture" (University of Texas Press, $19.95), which he co-wrote with Louis Harrison Jr.

"The Last Stand," the new book by Nathaniel Philbrick about the fateful battle between George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull in 1876 at the Little Bighorn, begins by describing a riverboat trip up the Missouri River to Custer's headquarters in ...

"Hidden History of Memphis" (The History Press, $19.99) is an opportunity to get deep background on your city. Author Wayne Dowdy, archivist for the Memphis and Shelby County Room of the Memphis Public Library, will be discussing and signing his ...

Burke's Book Store owner Corey Mesler will host his own appearance at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Mesler will read from two newly published novels, "The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores" (Bronx River Press, $15.95) and "Following Richard Brautigan" (Livingston Press, ...

James Earl Ray, among the most universally despised criminals in 20th-century history, is the subject of Hampton Sides' book "Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin" (Random House, $29).

Fuel Cafe on Madison is the kind of place Midtown residents hope will flourish in their midst. The restaurant is located in what was once Hattley's garage, a 1920s-vintage building worthy of preservation. Now it has a patio where gasoline ...

The reading tours David Sedaris conducts aren't just to promote his books. He told the audience when I saw him at The Cannon Center for the Performing Arts in 2003 that his appearances are part of his writing process; he ...