Reviews of new biographies about two important figures in Memphis history are featured on the Sunday Books page in the Viewpoints section of The Commercial Appeal July 5.

Wendi Thomas, The Commercial Appeal's columnist, writes about Mia Bay's new book "To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells."

And arts writer Fredric Koeppel reviews David Robertson's "W.C.Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues."

The reviews, plus news about author events, are on Page V6 of the newspaper July 5. 

In case you missed it, check out Karen Ott's story on Memphis' own Mark Greaney, whose first novel, The Gray Man, will be in stores in September.

From the story:

Born in Memphis, Greaney, 41, graduated from White Station High School in 1985 and earned a degree in international relations and political science from then-Memphis State University in 1992. He worked as a bartender at Paulette's for 10 years, sold computers and worked at Wang's International and Medtronic.

His book, an international thriller published by the Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Group USA Inc., reflects in some ways Greaney's lifestyle and interests. The main character, Court Gentry, a killer for hire, crisscrosses Europe in an attempt to save a family and in turn save himself.

Might be a title to add to the potential book chat lists, no?

Ann Fisher-Wirth is a beloved and inspired professor of English at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where she's taught since 1988.  (I read "Anna Karenina" and "Madame Bovary" in a class she taught; people who read those novels without her just haven't had the complete experience.)

Fisher-Wirth is also a gifted poet, who will be at Burke's Book Store in Cooper-Young at 5:30 p.m. Thursday to read from her latest book, "Carta Marina: A Poem in Three Parts" (Wings Press, $16 paperback).

The author provides an intriguing back story to the writing of "Carta Marina"  on her publisher's Web site, wingspress.com. She says she had already begun writing poetry about  a 16th-century map she was drawn to at a museum in Uppsala, Sweden, when a "reconnection" shook up her life and became part of her work.

"During the past few years, I have heard of many people who have reconnected with long-lost friends or lovers through the phenomenon of e-mail," she writes. "In part, 'Carta Marina' is about such a reconnection and the ways in which it can or cannot coexist with a happy marriage, a reconnection made especially powerful by the fact that it reawakens grief for a long-ago stillborn child."

Patricia Monaghan describes "Carta Marina" on Booklist as, "A breakthrough book from a significant poet."

Fisher-Wirth has received  the Rita Dove Poetry Award, six Pushcart nominations and a 2007 Pushcart Special Mention. Her previous poetry books include "Five Terraces" and "Blue Window."

For a preview of the event, go to poetryvlog.com/afwirth for a video of Fisher-Wirth reading three of her poems: "What Is There To Do in Mississippi?" "Blue Window" and "Sudden Music."

Burke's Book Store is at 936 S. Cooper. Call (901) 278-7484, or go to burkesbooks.com.

I carry a half-dozen books with me on the rare occasions that I go to the beach, but more often than not, only one or two get read. The one I bring every time I go is a classic called "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Pantheon Books, $9.95). The wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh uses the shells that wash up on the shore to reflect on her life, her priorities, her need for simplicity, grace and clarity. It's a must read for anyone who is listening and watching waves for a week. I never find maybe more than one or two of the shells she talks about but I take her lessons to heart, take deep breaths and vow to not let the little things make me crazy. I leave with an appreciation of how living simply and uncluttered in the moment without always wanting more can create peace at little cost.

"The beach is not the place to work; to read to write to think. I should have remembered that from other years. Too warm, too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit"....."At first the tired body takes over completely. As on shipboard, one descends into a deck chair apathy. One is forced against one's mind, against all tiny resolutions, back into primeval rhythms of the sea shore."

I finished one other book and I was left feeling like I shouldn't have bothered. Those book jackets' synopses can bewitch you the way a movie trailer can but it's so disappointing when the jacket or the trailer is the best part. That was the case for "The Year That Follows" by Scott Lasser (Knopf, $23.95). The book jacket shows an 8 or 9-year-old boy running away.

As with many post Sept. 11, 2001 books, the backdrop is the death of Cat's brother Kyle at the World Trade Center. Since anyone with a television watched that day and the subsequent grief unfold that sets the emotional stage for us.

The day before he died, Kyle told Cat he believed he was the father of a child of a woman he used to date named Siobhan. Kyle promises to call the woman the next day to find out if he is indeed the father of the recently born boy.

He dies before he makes the phone call, which sets off the story of the book, Cat, who already has a son, trying to find her dead brother's child. This seemed interesting enough for me to pick up the book and take it to the beach, but while I hoped for drama and intrigue as she searched for clues, the reader becomes tangled up with Cat's rekindling of a college relationship with Mr.-More-Than-Right who is apparently a gorgeous, single, wealthy doctor who never got over Cat. As for playing detective, Cat is no Nancy Drew. Mostly her search for the mother is a look everyday at The New York Times, Portraits of Grief series, hoping to see this woman's profile appear since Siobhan worked in the other tower that collapsed.

And then, poof, it's a miracle, one day the name is in there with the woman's story. Cat makes contact with the woman's parents who have the boy. Don't even expect a bitter custody struggle. That seems to resolve itself as easily as Mr. Right walking back into her life. If you really want to read it, I won't spoil a couple of the twists that are suppose to startle the reader. The best thing I can say about the writing is that it's simple. The best thing about the book: nice jacket.

It's not great literature and it could have probably used another round or two of editing for typos and odd syntactical constructions, but Gordon Kerr's Goners: The Final Hours of the Notable and Notorious ($19, Abrams Image) is a salacious and fun little read to devour in bite-sized pieces.

Kerr dissects the death stories of fifty of the world's well-known people (how did he narrow it to these particular fifty? He never really says) and even shares conspiracy theories about those deaths. Questions are merely raised in Goners; no mysteries will be hammered out here.

Among the notorious names included in the book are John Belush, Harry Houdini, Cary Grant, Hunter S. Thompson, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Bruce and Brandon Lee, Buddy Holly, and -- of course -- Elvis.

Elvis' story in Goners goes thusly: Living nocturnally on a schedule of his own making, Elvis had a 10:30 p.m. dentist appointment where he had a couple of cavities filled. At 2:30 a.m. Elvis put in a call to Dr. Nick, his physician, for some painkillers to address some tooth pain. Someone was dispatched to the pharmacy to get six Dilaudid pills, and then at 4 a.m., Elvis called friends to play racquetball with him. The game petered out and, after playing a couple of songs on a nearby piano, Elvis swallowed the first of three packets of pills prescribed to him by Dr. Nick to get him to go to sleep.

A few hours later, unable to sleep, he took the second packet of pills.

A few hours later, he was ready for the third.

According to Kerr, at this point, still unable to sleep, Elvis went to the bathroom to read. At 1:30 p.m., Elvis's girlfriend Ginger knocked on the bathroom door and quickly realized that Elvis was in there, lying on the floor with gold pajamas around his ankles, his face in a pool of vomit.

It's a familiar story -- one that's a rampant pop-culture joke even today -- but one that's still so unsettling to read. Because, you know, it actually happened. That was a real man there lying in his own bile on the bathroom floor.

All the stories in Goners are all from real people's lives and demises, so they are appropriately macabre and bizarre and haunting and fascinating -- even the fairly mundane ones (Karen Carpenter, I'm looking at you).

Richard Alley's got a story in today's CA about Corey and Cheryl Mesler, owners of Burke's Books in Cooper-Young. Richard writes about his story at Urf!:

The Meslers were a joy to talk with, an interview that took over two hours because we kept getting sidetracked by books, movies, jazz and other such interests. It was a pleasure to meet them and to tell their story.

[snip]

... I'm very happy with the way the story turned out. And the way the Meslers' story is turning out should make us all happy at this time when marriages and small businesses fall apart on a daily basis.

Support your local booksellers!

There's a sale going on through Saturday at The English Major Bookstore on Madison, and it's all in celebration of the store's first year in business. Fiction is 50 percent off. (I need to scout a copy of Infinite Jest.)

Apparently, Simon Van Booy is a writer you're going to hear more about. Or from, at least.

The author's Web site, simonvanbooy.com, lists a series of projects to come: "Why We Need Love,
A" "Why We Fight" and "Why Our Decisions Don't Matter," nonfiction philosophy books Van Booy edited, which will be published in 2010 by Harper Perennial. An as-yet-untitled novel and a children's picture book called "Pobble's Way" also are scheduled for publication in 2010.

But Van Booy is currently on the road promoting love stories. The author, who grew up in Wales and Oxford, England, will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis at 6 p.m. June 16 with "Love Begins in Winter" (Harper Perennial, $13.99 paperback). "Couples find surprising, if not downright strange ways to come together in a second romance-centered collection by Van Booy," said Kirkus Reviews.

His first collection was "The Secret Lives of People in Love."

The "Netherland" live chat will have to be re-scheduled when power outages and vacations are behind us....   

Most of us grew up reading the beloved little book Pat the Bunny, a touch and feel book by Dorothy Kunhardt published in the United States in 1940. It was a book that let children touch a piece of fur for a rabbit belly and touch sandpaper for Daddy's face.

In a parody of the beloved children's book Cider Mill Press Book Publishers brings us "Pat the Husband," a tiny book your girlfriends will love for $9.95. It's a book filled with inside knowledge that we wives live with, evidenced by the cover that shows a man with his shirt raised scratching his belly.

Each page has a little interactive humor told about "Paul" and Judy. It starts with a cutout pair of pants that are stuck with Velcro to Judy's picture with Paul standing next to her in a pair of Velcro briefs. "Can you put the pants on Paul?" It continues to parody the little annoyances that most wives endure, such as losing the remote control, not being able to find something in plain sight.

It's a great little book, but it's not for your children. It's for all your friends who grew up with "Pat the Bunny" on their shelves.