Great Reads from Local Authors

4Memphis has partnered with Novel in Laurelwood Shopping Center for a list of new releases. Shop local + read local. It’s always a good time to curl up with a book!

Hello, Numbers! What Can You Do? An Adventure Beyond Counting by Edmund Harriss and Houston Hughes Illustrated by Brian Rea Learning meets wonder when you invite numbers to come play in your imagination! Hello Numbers! What Can You Do? is not like any other counting book. As each "new One" appears on the scene, the numbers' antics hint at ever-deeper math. Young readers ages 3 to 6 will not only count along, but begin to wonder about symmetry, angles, shapes, and more. Written by the mathematician-and-poet team Edmund Harriss and Houston Hughes, and illustrated by long standing New York Times artist Brian Rea, this rollicking, rhyming book will take you to a whole new world of numbers.

In a Colorful Place by Dan Conaway & Otis Sanford Colorful Perspectives in Black and White. Dan Conaway and Otis Sanford share a city and an abiding interest in what makes it and all of us tick. Both are columnists for The Daily Memphian since its founding in 2018. A completely digital publication, the baby has already grown into the largest news organization in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Mid-South, and increasingly a model for the nation in meeting the evolving challenges of journalism. A lifelong Memphian, Conaway has had a decades-long career heading advertising agencies and creative boutiques, winning awards at every level, and keeping his insight into people and places – and his sense of humor – throughout. He's been writing columns for more than ten years that delight and enrage his readers but never bore them. This collaboration is his second book of collected columns. Sanford's distinguished career in journalism began at the high school paper in Panola County, Mississippi, traveled through newsrooms including Oxford, Jackson, Memphis, and Detroit as a reporter, feature writer, columnist and editor, in front of microphones and cameras as a regular commentator and political analyst, onto the pages of his books, and into the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis. His columns enlighten, entertain and stir his readers in a way that only honesty and informed opinion can. Both of them draw from a lifetime of experience, a practiced eye, a talent for storytelling, and the deep well of a city and a region brimming with those stories. Mr. Conaway and Mr. Sanford – do tell. Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York by Elizabeth Passarella Elizabeth Passarella is content with being complicated. She grew up in Memphis in a conservative, Republican family with a Christian mom and a Jewish dad. Then she moved to New York, fell in love with the city--and, eventually, her husband--and changed. Sort of. While her politics have tilted to the left, she still puts her faith first-and argues that the two can go hand in hand, for what it's worth. In this sharp and slyly profound memoir, Elizabeth shares stories about everything from conceiving a baby in an unair-conditioned garage in Florida to finding a rat in her bedroom. She upends stereotypes about Southerners, New Yorkers, and Christians, making a case that we are all flawed humans simply doing our best. Good Apple is a hilarious, welcome celebration of the absurdity, chaos, and strange sacredness of life that brings us all together, whether we have city lights or starry skies in our eyes. More importantly, it's about the God who pursues each of us, no matter our own inconsistencies or failures, and shows us the way back home.

Relentless (Gray Man #10) by Mark Greaney The Gray Man's search for missing intelligence agents plunges him deep into a maelstrom of trouble in the latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. The first agent disappearance was a puzzle. The second was a mystery. The third was a conspiracy. Intelligence operatives around the world are disappearing. When a missing American agent re-appears in Venezuela, Court Gentry, the Gray Man, is dispatched to bring him in, but a team of assassins has other ideas. Court escapes with his life and a vital piece of intelligence. Meanwhile, CIA agent Zoya Zakharova is in Berlin. Her mission: to infiltrate a private intelligence firm with some alarming connections. The closer she gets to answers, the less likely she is to get out alive. Court and Zoya are just two pieces on this international chessboard, and they're about to discover one undeniable truth-sometimes capturing a king requires sacrificing some pawns.