Joshilyn Jackson:
Backseat Saints
Tuesday, June 8
7 pm at the Margaret Mitchell House

Backseat Saints will dazzle readers with its original and heart wrenching portrayal of the lengths to which a mother will go to right the wrongs she’s created as well as the distance a daughter must travel to escape the demands of forgiveness.  Taking a minor character from her beloved bestseller Gods in Alabama and turning everything we know about her on its ear, Joshilyn Jackson builds a story rich with her trademark sly wit, endearingly off-kilter characters, and riveting plot twists.
Ro Grandee is the perfect Texas housewife. She's determined to be nothing like her long-missing mother, the one who left her with only a heap of old novels and her father's fists for company, so Ro keeps quiet and takes her husband's punches like a lady. But Ro wasn't always this way. Underneath her pastel skirts and hidden bruises lies Rose Mae Lolley, teenaged spitfire, Alabama heartbreaker, and a crack shot with a pistol. Rose Mae is resurrected when a gypsy's tarot cards foretell doom for dutiful Ro: her handsome husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first.
Armed with only her wit, her pawpy's ancient 45, and her dog Fat Gretel, Rose Mae hightails it out of Texas. In a journey that is by turns harrowing and exhilarating, she uncovers long buried truths about her family and herself, running from the man who will never let her go, on a mission to find the mother who did.

Dr. William Jelani Cobb:
The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress
Thursday, June 10
7 pm at the Carter Presidential Library & Museum Theater

For acclaimed historian William Jelani Cobb, the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency is not the most remarkable development of the 2008 election; even more so is the fact that Obama won some 90 percent of the black vote in the primaries across America despite the fact that the established black leadership since the civil rights era--Men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Andrew Young, who paved the way for his candidacy--All openly supported Hillary Clinton. Clearly a sea of change has occurred among black voters, ironically pushing the architects of the civil rights movement toward the periphery at the moment when their political dreams were most fully realized.
How this has happened, and the powerful implications it holds for America's politics and social landscape, is the focus of The Substance of Hope, a deeply insightful, paradigm-shifting examination of a new generation of voters that has not been shaped by the raw memory of Jim Crow and has a different range of imperatives. Cobb sees Obama's ascendancy as "a reality that has been taking shape in tiny increments for the past four decades", and examines thorny issues such as the paradox and contradictions embodied in race and patriotism, identity and citizenship; how the civil rights leadership became a political machine; why the term "postracial" is as iniquitous as it is inaccurate; and whether our society has really changed with Obama's election. This event is sponsored by A Cappella books.

Jeffery Deaver:
The Burning Wire: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel
Monday, June 14
1 pm at the Atlanta-Fulton Central Public Library

The Burning Wire finds Rhyme and Sachs in a breathless two‑day race to stop a twisted killer whose horrific weapon of choice is the very energy that powers our lives.  At the same time, quadriplegic criminologist Rhyme finally decides to undergo risky experimental treatment that may restore his ability to walk. But it is a decision that threatens to derail his most important case to date – and could have even more dire consequences.
Called "a master gamesman" (The New York Times) and “the cleverest puzzle maker in the business” (Booklist), Deaver has been nominated for every major mystery and thriller award available, from the Edgar to the Macavity to the Anthony to the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Steel Dagger – and he only continues to rack up accolades.  Both novels he published in 2008 (The Broken Window and The Bodies Left Behind) were nominated for the International Thriller Writers Association’s Best Novel; Bodies won.  With 22 thrillers under his belt, including The Bone Collector, which was made into a film with Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme and Angelina Jolie as Amelia Sachs, and Maiden’s Grave, which became an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, Deaver has proven once again to be the reigning king of thriller writing.