Books about Memphis from Amazon.com

An assistant curator of Munich's National Museum, Vicky Bliss is no expert on Egypt, but she does have a Ph.D. in solving crimes. So when an intelligence agency offers her a luxury Nile cruise if she'll help solve a murder and stop a heist of Egyptian antiquities, all 5'11" of her takes the plunge. Vicky suspects the authorities really want her to lead them to her missing lover, the art thief and master of disguises she knows only as "Sir John Smythe." And right in the shadow of the Sphinx she spots him. . . with his new flame. Vicky is so furious at this romantic stab-in-the-back, not to mention the sudden arrival of her meddling boss, Herr Dr. Schmidt, that she may overlook a danger as old as the pharaohs and as unchanging. . . a criminal who hides behind a mask of charm while moving in for the kill..
Price: $4.03 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this account, a journalist traces the course of yellow fever, stopping in 1878 Memphis to "vividly [evoke] the Faulkner-meets-'Dawn of the Dead' horrors,"*-and moving on to today's strain of the killer virus.

Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in Memphis alone, it cost more lives than the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Johnstown flood combined.

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country-and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism,"** it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease..
Price: $6.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Free the West Memphis Three."

Maybe you've heard the phrase.

But do you know why their story is so alarming?

Do you know the facts?

The guilty verdicts handed out to three Arkansas teens in a horrific capital murder case were popular in their home state -- even upheld on appeal. But after two HBO documentaries called attention to the witch-hunt atmosphere at the trials, artists and other supporters raised concerns about the accompanying lack of evidence. Now, award-winning journalist Mara Leveritt provides the most comprehensive look yet into this endlessly shocking case.

For weeks in 1993, after the murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas, seemed stymied. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers -- alleged members of a satanic cult -- with the killings. Despite stunning investigative blunders, a confession riddled with errors, and an absence of physical evidence linking any of the accused to the crime, the teenagers were tried and convicted. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison. They sentenced Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. Ten years later, all three remain in prison. Here, Leveritt unravels this seemingly medieval case and offers close-up views of its key participants, including one with an uncanny knack for evading the law.....
Price: $8.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Forty-year entertainment industry veteran Jerry Schilling offers an intimate memoir of his friendship with Elvis Presley, taking readers from the late-night parties at Graceland to the bright lights of Hollywood sets and glittering stages of Las Vegas..
Price: $6.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Almost Home is a message to you from a faraway place. It is a message from a 12-foot by 9-foot cell in a cinderblock building surrounded by coils of razor wire in the middle of a dirt field in Arkansas It was written by a young man named Damien Echols and it chronicles his life and his experiences in a way that clearly illuminates him, not as a monster, but as a human being. For over 10 years Damien has been an inmate on death row for a crime he did not commit. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley have become known as The West Memphis Three, and though the story of their arrest and conviction is widely known, most people don’t know the real people behind the sound bites and the TV news segment clips. Damien has spent much of his time behind bars diligently maintaining his integrity and his sanity by writing.

Almost Home is the product of that self-discipline, and in it you will meet someone who has survived an ordeal many of us would find impossible to live through. There are a few who still believe that Damien is a devil-worshipping child killer, but as time passes and more facts rise to the surface, it becomes even more clear that he is the victim of a peculiar species of hysteria. Read this book and know the truth about him. It is an urgent message from death row; the whole story of who Damien Echols really is.

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Price: $10.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

We are going to Hamburger-a-gogo land! We are going there so that I can follow the Luuurve God, Masimo. He has gone to visit his olds, leaving me, his new (and lurker-free) nearly girlfriend, in Billy Shakespeare land. So he thinks! Imagine how thrilled he will be when I pop up where he is and say “Howdy!” Or whatever it is they say over there.

Let the overseas snog fest begin!!!

Georgia can't wait to visit Hamburger-a-gogo land with Jas in tow so she can finally track down Masimo, the Italian-American dreamboat. But after a long week in America, Georgia only succeeds in learning importantish things -- like how to ride a bucking bronco -- before she's dragged back to England by Mutti and Vati. Will Georgia be able to reel in the Italian dreamboat, or is she destined to live forever all aloney on her owney?

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Price: $4.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee.

During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father's impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behing his sisters' concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this troubled past.

Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Walty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption, and gave us a classic work of American literature..
Price: $5.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $9.17 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The definitive appreciation of the Memphis garbage strike, one of the pivotal human-rights moments in late twentieth-century America."—David Levering Lewis

Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a months-long public-employee strike that would shake the nation. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, this "first-rate chronicle" (Seattle Times) relates the riveting story of the 1968 strike that shook Memphis—and claimed Martin Luther King's life. 16 pages of illustrations..
Price: $11.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had  his choice of the best in America. He made a deadly  mistake. When Mitch McDeere signed on with  Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he  and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way.  The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school  loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a  decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his  brother Ray -- doing fifteen years in a Tennessee  jail -- already knew. You never get nothing for  nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's  firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a  rock and a hard place, with no choice -- if he  wants to live..
Price: $1.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]