NEW BOOKS from Locals and About Locals!
The first week of February is sure to please Fulton County readers, as we have a New Book Newsletter full of stories with Atlanta area connections. Long time Newsletter readers know we have always denoted our local authors with a peach icon to better draw attention to their work. There are now so many excellent books that use both Fulton County and our state as a setting that we felt our readers would like a way to quickly recognize those as well. A Georgia icon will now let you know when an author has been smart enough to recognize that our state is the best place for their story to take place - even if they aren't lucky enough to live here themselves.

Rounding out this week's crop of stories with local connections is a recommendation that highlights the re-release of an Atlanta classic. Next week our promotional copy give away feature will return! Be sure let all your friends know they can sign up for the New Books Newsletter for a chance to win, as well as our weekly highlights of new titles you can be the first in line to read.
The Atlas of Reds and Blues                             
When a woman--known only as Mother--moves her family from Atlanta to its wealthy suburbs, she discovers that neither the times nor the people have changed since her childhood in a small Southern town. Despite the intervening decades, Mother is met with the same questions: Where are you from? No, where are you really from? The American-born daughter of Bengali immigrants, she finds that her answer-- Here --is never enough.

Mother's simmering anger breaks through one morning, when, during a violent and unfounded police raid on her home, she finally refuses to be complacent. As she lies bleeding from a gunshot wound, her thoughts race from childhood games with her sister and visits to cousins in India, to her time in the newsroom before having her three daughters, to the early days of her relationship with a husband who now spends more time flying business class than at home.

The Atlas of Reds and Blues grapples with the complexities of the second-generation American experience, what it means to be a woman of color in the workplace, and a sister, a wife, and a mother to daughters in today's America. Drawing inspiration from the author's own terrifying experience of a raid on her home, Devi S. Laskar's debut novel explores, in exquisite, lyrical prose, an alternate reality that might have been.

Local illustrator Jenn Lyons has worked in video games for over a decade, and The Ruin of Kings is her first novel - but far from her last, as her work has been optioned by the publisher as a new fantasy series!

The Ruin of Kings ' main character, Kihrin, grew up in slums, a thief and a minstrel's son raised on tales of long-lost princes and magnificent quests. When he is claimed against his will as the missing son of a treasonous prince, Kihrin finds himself at the mercy of his new family's ruthless power plays and political ambitions.

Practically a prisoner, Kihrin discovers that being a long-lost prince is nothing like what the storybooks promised. The storybooks have lied about a lot of other things, too: dragons, demons, gods, prophecies, and how the hero always wins.

Then again, maybe he isn't the hero after all. For Kihrin is not destined to save the world. He's destined to destroy it.

Jenn's previous work can be found in the EA game titles The Saboteur and Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Reserve a copy of this new work from a local author by clicking here.
This fictional saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty--the Forsters, founders of the world's first major soft-drink company--against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history.

The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more--from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days at his father's drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age.

An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction, the mundane and the mythical, and utilizes techniques of historical reportage to capture how, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's words, "families are always rising and falling in America," and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory--and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

Second only to Atlanta's soda production, our beloved city is known as home to the network that first produced the 24-hour news cycle.

In her new book, Jill Abramson delivers the definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the most recent decade. Following two old-school newspapers and two newcomers to the field as they plow through the most recent revolution in technology, economics, standards, commitment, and endurance that pits old vs. new media, Abramson makes the argument that while cable news was just one information revolution in our time, it was far from the last.

The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with an audience of millennials. We get to know the defenders of the legacy presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty Baron (The Washington Post) , Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet (The New York Times), Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), and Shane Smith (VICE) as well as their reporters and anxious readers. 

Merchants of Truth raises crucial questions that concern the well-being of our society, and gives an insider's look into recent media history. For those that wish to continue to see Atlanta as a player in the international media landscape, Abramson's book is a must-read. Reserve your copy in hardcover or downloadable e-book today .
In most of America in the 1980s', hip hop's reach was limited, with artists in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles hungry for a breakthrough.

But in 1986, the commercial music landscape was irrevocably changed when Run-DMC covered Aerosmith's hit 'Walk This Way' in the first formal rock-hip hop collaboration between headliner acts in both genres. This song came with around the clock play on MTV and mainstream radio across the nation. In this new book, Geoff Edgers sets the scene and tracks the paths of the main artists - Steven Tyler , Joe Perry , Joseph 'Run' Simmons , and Darryl 'DMC' McDaniels - illustrating the long road to this moment in music history. This title is loaded of notable connections to Atlanta's own musical legacy, as the author thoroughly researched the 80's hip hop scene.

Geoff Edgers is the national arts reporter for The Washington Post, hosts the Edge of Fame podcast, and his work has appeared in GQ, Spin, and The Boston Globe, among others.

Click here to reserve this book in hardcover today , or browse our excellent selection of classic hip hop available through Hoopla.
Staff Pick


Stephanie Galipeau, Central Library Branch
Stephanie Galipeau, a Librarian working in Collections Management and Technical Services for Fulton County Libraries, couldn't be more excited that the Atlanta Deathwatch series is back in print. In recent years she had become used to requests for this story that can be hard to find.

Coveted for years by collectors of the very best in hardboiled fiction, Ralph Dennis' work should be at the top of every Atlanta reader's list for works set locally!

Jim Hardman was a mediocre Atlanta cop until he was wrongly accused of corruption and thrown off the force. Now he works as an unlicensed PI, trouble-shooter and bodyguard...often partnered with his drinking buddy Hump Evans, a black, ex-NFL player who supports his playboy lifestyle by working as hired muscle. 

Hardman is hired by The Man, a black mobster, to investigate the murder of his white girlfriend, a college student. It's a case that plunges Hardman and Evans into the center of a violent street war that stretches from Atlanta's seedy back alleys to the marbled corridors of power.

This new edition includes an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale, the New York Times bestselling author of the Hap & Leonard crime novels.  Click here to be first in line to read this modern classic when it arrives in Fulton County Libraries. Be sure to revisit the newsletter next week, when our advance reader give away returns!
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