Erik Morse's vertiginous novella follows West Coast graduate student Everly Loennrot as he lands at the city's luxurious Peabody Hotel for a mysterious research assignment. Guided by the invisible hand of Dr. Red McGill, professor of Southern history, Loennrot wanders through a postmodern Memphis of plasticine landmarks and leopard-skin tourist traps. There he encounters a troop of eccentric characters -- an Elvis conspiracist, a rock musician cum alchemist and a rockabilly femme fatale who may be a prostitute, hired gun or ghost. When a midnight rendezvous at a highway motel turns deadly, Everly enters a vortex of double crosses, double meanings and murder, all of which point to a centuries' old secret society known only as the Memphi. With 9 chapter illustrations, and a full-colour cover shot by well-known Memphis photographer William Eggleston. BLUFFe ^CITYe ^UNDERGROUND is Volume Two of MONDOe ^MEMPHIS, a dual encyclopedic history of Memphis written by Erik Morse and musician Tav Falco, of Panther Burns. Volume One is Falco's sprawling study GHOSTSe ^BEHINDe ^THEe ^SUN, published in 2011 to great acclaim.

The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured—and influenced—a critical moment in American history. Ernest Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and ’60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till’s uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at his nephew’s killer; scores of African-American protestors carrying a forest of signs reading “i am a man.” But at the same time, Withers was working as an FBI informant. In this gripping narrative history, Preston Lauterbach examines the complicated political and economic forces that informed Withers’s seeming betrayal of the people he photographed, and “does a masterful job of telling the story of civil rights in Memphis in the 1960s” (Ed Ward, Financial Times), including the events surrounding Dr. King’s tumultuous final march in Memphis.

Forensic pathologist Elliott Sumner learns the connection between himself and a prolific serial killer holds a secret to life. One that people will kill for. The BLUFF CITY BUTCHER steps from the fog ofMemphis urban legend to throw a Midsouth community into unbridled terror that captivates the country and introduces unimaginable consequences for the world. A billionaire family patriarch, a premier biotechnology entrepreneur, and a world renowned forensic pathologist discover they are inextricably linked to a real monster. Their lives of great privilege and rare gifts are defined by weaknesses of the heart until paths converge and each finds what has been missing.

"Ghost Behind The Sun", Tav Falco's sprawling study of Memphis, begins with the Civil War massacre at Fort Pillow, the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 and the grisly murders of the Harp Brothers. Falco traces these legends of Reconstruction-era Memphis to an equally brutal twentieth century underworld – Beale Street kingpin Jim Canaan, Edward Crump's political machine, the Dixie Mafia, and others. Also included are revelatory dialogues concerning the city’s many music legends, from rockabilly icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Feathers to more underground figures such as Jim Dickinson and country blues wailer Jessie Mae Hemphill. Interwoven with these accounts is an autobiographical history of Falco’s own time in Memphis, including his involvement with performance art ensemble Insect Trust, working with pop/rock maverick Alex Chilton, and the formation of his seminal rock and roll band, Panther Burns. Illustrated throughout.