Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Ed Tarkington

Blood and Gold

Power, desire, and survival collide in Ben Fountain’s Devil Makes Three

Ben Fountain’s Devil Makes Three is a pulse-quickening adventure and espionage thriller set against the political turmoil of early 1990s Haiti. Fountain will appear at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.

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On This Hill

A neighborhood unites to protect a child in James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a powerful tale of early 20th-century Jewish and African American communities bonding together to protect a disabled orphan. McBride will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 11.

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The Sublime and the Ridiculous

Frank Bascombe returns for a final road trip in Richard Ford’s Be Mine

Richard Ford’s latest Frank Bascombe novel, Be Mine, marks Frank’s fifth and purportedly final curtain call as whimsical Everyman, shrewdly dissecting the shifting landscape of American life and his uncertain place in it.

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Nothing More Autobiographical

Lorrie Moore’s See What Can Be Done is a window into a lively mind

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: “Pick a thing up, study it, shake it, skip it across a still surface to see how much felt and lively life got baked into it,” writes Lorrie Moore in her collection, See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary.

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Of Blood and Darkness

Cormac McCarthy returns with The Passenger and Stella Maris

A cult hero for the first half of his career, Cormac McCarthy is now a literary institution. As he approaches 90, he delivers two companion novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, which fuse dizzying intellectual exploration with his trademark gift for depicting outsiders drawn unwillingly into gripping intrigues with lethal consequences.

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A Factory of Dreams

Mesha Maren’s Perpetual West is a fearless exploration of borders

Perpetual West, Mesha Maren’s second novel, follows a troubled couple from Appalachia to the U.S.-Mexico border on a perilous journey of self-discovery.

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