Through intimate reporting and effortless storytelling, Bluff City captures both the tragic ironies of FBI espionage and the fertile contradictions of Memphis, Tennessee. The photographs of Ernest Withers—spy, artist, race man, and cagey black conservative—have never looked more meaningful.” — William J. Maxwell, author of F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature

Please join us when award-winning author Preston Lauterbach returns to Octavia Book to present and sign his new book, BLUFF CITY: The Secret Life of Photographer Earnest Withers.

Ernest Withers was a crucial witness to the cultural upheavals of the 1950s and ‘60s. A gifted photographer, he combined a storyteller’s eye and an uncanny ability to bond with his subjects, resulting in a powerful visual record of the Civil Rights Era. But he had a secret: while creating key images of the Civil Rights Movement, Ernest Withers was acting as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In BLUFF CITY, Preston Lauterbach examines this conflicted life and complicated legacy, grappling with the question of how a single artist could lionize and immortalize a movement he genuinely supported and simultaneously conspire with the very forces determined to crush it.

Join us for a special visit  from the New York Times bestselling author of the Big Nate series Lincoln Peirce when he presents and signs his new medieval graphic novel, MAX AND THE MIDNIGHTS! A laugh-out-loud adventure perfect for middle-grade readers, this is a story about following your dreams, believing in yourself, and the lesson that appearances can be deceiving.

Max is epic fun!”
—JEFF KINNEY, New York Times bestselling author of the DIARY OF A WIMPY KID series

“Fantastic! I loved it!”
—DAV PILKEY, New York Times bestselling author of the DOG MAN series

Please join us for a special evening with Marian Moore presenting LOUISIANA MIDRASH, her debut book of poetry.

In LOUISIANA MIDRASH the poet engages the Jewish literary tradition of midrash by entering into it whole body, bringing her life both outer and inner right up against the ancient text, and breathing life, her life into every word. Just as the Bible cherishes genealogy, so does Marian Moore inscribe her own genealogy into the text, as an African American woman born in Shreveport who has found her life as a serious Jew in New Orleans. There are no contradictions because this is poetry; she makes all of her angels sing." – Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Lowercase Jew