Vroman’s Bookstore: Local Author Day Introducing Jerell Hill, Elliot Blake & Travis Johns

Jerell Hill presents Developing Conscious Gratitude in Schools: A Blueprint for Shifting from Burdens to Brilliance Developing Conscious Gratitude in Schools transforms how educators address systemic inequality in American education. Jerell Hill presents a comprehensive blueprint for creating inclusive, empowering learning environments that shift students from burdens to brilliance, particularly those from low-income and marginalized backgrounds. This book explores how neighborhood conditions, public health, housing policy, and segregation profoundly impact educational opportunities. Through compelling research, case studies, and practical strategies, Hill provides concrete approaches educators and administrators can implement immediately. Unlike theoretical works that merely describe problems, this offers actionable transformation. Conscious gratitude is not about avoiding hardship, but transforming it into purpose, resilience, and meaningful connection while honoring the sacred practice of teaching. Elliot Blake presents Into the Great Sparks fly when Lilah, a thief from a colony outside the borders of the Federated Solar Republic, meets Bax, an FSR security officer at a colony within those borders, during a time of heightened tensions for humanity as the silent, staring, seemingly invulnerable aliens dubbed The Aureum begin to meddle in human affairs. Travis Johns presents The Used Parts of Jimbo Winslow James “Jimbo” Winslow is the football golden boy of a forgotten Tennessee town in the Appalachian Mountains. But growing up in an abusive home leaves a mark, and his mother’s twisted love drives him to a violent act that nearly destroys his future. A last-minute scholarship pulls him from his hometown just as it threatens to swallow him whole. Leaving comes at a cost, though, as he abandons his high school sweetheart, and when a brutal injury ends his NFL dreams, Jimbo is left untethered. With his mother’s violent warning to never return home, Jimbo drifts to Hollywood, where ambition turns corrosive. Chewed up by the city’s underbelly, reduced to selling his body to survive, and ultimately landing in jail, Jimbo loses every illusion he once believed about success, love, and himself. Spit back out and broken, he finally returns to Tennessee, where his mother’s sudden tenderness feels like another cage, and her new husband dredges up memories of his absent father. Jimbo, faced with the demons he’s run from his entire life, must decide if he’s ready to face the woman he abandoned and the small town that both raised and ruined him. The Used Parts of Jimbo Winslow is a raw, darkly funny, and devastating coming-of-age novel about what dies in the cracks where love should’ve grown and the fierce, perilous grace of offering your heart anyway-even when loving someone means cutting loose a piece of yourself and laying it in their hands. For readers of Demon Copperhead, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, The Prince of Tides, and Jesus’ Son.