I had a wonderful time at an author’s event hosted by The Book Exchange in Marietta Georgia on March 15th. I love meeting southern writers and learning about how they became writers and how the stories they tell are important to our American culture.

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The Book Exchange is a treasure trove and I could spend hours in there! The booksellers that work there are kind and helpful. I had discussed on my Facebook wall about reading stories where there were male protagonist a couple of months ago and Jennifer-the store owner of The Book Exchange told me she carried the Hornblower Saga-which I am highly interested in reading. When I went to the store for the author event-I mentioned above-and asked her about it, she remembered the titles of the books! I was thrilled!

The Vain Conversation: A Novel by Anthony Grooms

Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters—Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie’s inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world, and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront Jacks and his own demons, with the hopes that doing so will free him from the grip of the past.

In “The Vain Conversation”, Anthony Grooms seeks to advance the national dialogue on race relations. With complexity, satire, and sometimes levity, he explores what it means to redeem, as well as to be redeemed, on the issues of America’s race violence and speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere.

Out of the Blues (Detective Sarah Alt #1) by Trudy Nan Boyce

“A fresh, gritty debut. Boyce unveils one of the best new series characters in ages. . .  A book that combines fast-paced suspense with moving insights.”—#1 New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Gardner

From an author with more than thirty years’ experience in the Atlanta Police Department comes a riveting procedural debut introducing an unforgettable heroine.

On her first day as a newly minted homicide detective, Sarah “Salt” Alt is given the cold-case murder of a blues musician whose death was originally ruled an accidental drug overdose. Now new evidence has come to light that he may have been given a hot dose intentionally. And this evidence comes from a convicted felon hoping to trade his knowledge for shortened prison time . . . a man who Salt herself put behind bars.

In a search that will take her into the depths of Atlanta’s buried wounds—among the city’s homeless, its politically powerful churches, commerce and industry, and the police department itself—Salt probes her way toward the truth in a case that has more at stake than she ever could have imagined. At once a vivid procedural and a penetrating examination of what it means to be cop, Out of the Blues is a remarkable crime debut.

The Policeman’s Daughter (Detective Sarah Alt #3)

From author Trudy Nan Boyce, whose police procedural debut was hailed as “authentic” (New York Times Book Review) and “exceptional” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), returns with a stunning prequel to the Detective Salt series, the story behind the case that earned Salt her promotion to homicide.

At the beginning of her career, Sarah “Salt” Alt was a beat cop in Atlanta’s poorest, most violent housing project, The Homes. It is here that she meets the cast of misfits and criminals that will have a profound impact on her later cases: Man Man, the leader of the local gang on his way to better places; street dealer Lil D and his family; and Sister Connelly, old and observant, the matriarch of the neighborhood. A lone patrolwoman, Salt’s closest lifeline is her friend and colleague Pepper, on his own beat nearby. And when a murder in The Homes brings detectives to the scene, Salt draws closer to Detective Wills, initiating a romance complicated by their positions on the force.

When Salt is shot and sustains a head injury during a routine traffic stop, the resulting visions begin leading her toward answers in the case that makes her career. This is the tale of a woman who solves crimes through a combination of keen observation, grunt work, and pure gut instinct; this is the making of Detective Salt.

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