Safe from the Neighbors by Steve Yarbrough (finalist for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award)
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 — 7:30–9:00 pm

Luke May teaches local history at his old high school in Loring, Mississippi. But when a long-lost friend suddenly returns to Loring, where years ago her family had been shattered by an act of spectacular violence, Luke begins to realize that his connection with her runs deeper, both personally and politically, than he ever imagined. Just children in 1962, they had no sense of what was happening when James Meredith's enrollment at Ole Miss provoked a bloody new battle in the old Civil War, much less its impact on their fathers' ambiguous friendship. Luke's investigation of this decades-old trauma soon spills over into his own life and he is entirely consumed by an obscure past he can neither explain nor control.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa (winner, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011— 7:30–9:00 pm

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is Mario Vargas Llosa's autobiographical novel about a forbidden love affair, a manic radio scriptwriter and the hilarious trials of an aspiring fiction writer. The multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His life is disrupted by two arrivals. The first is his aunt Julia, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy soap operas hold the city's listeners in thrall. Camacho chooses young Marito as his only confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (2010 National Book Award Winner)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 — 7:30–9:00 pm

Horseman Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing stable: He’ll ship four unknown horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claiming races at long odds, and then get out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront racetrack in the Northern Panhandle, everybody notices, but no one bothers to factor in Tommy Hansel’s girlfriend, Maggie Koderer. Like the beautiful, used-up, tragic horses she comes to love, Maggie has just enough heart to wire everyone’s flagging hopes back to the source of all luck.