FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: For a child in small-town Alabama, books provided solace in summers without friends and activities.
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Summer Reading
Once upon a time, Donna Parker and Trixie Belden saved a lonely little girl
Faye Jones
Emily’s Way
Poetry still has a place in our lives
“I can certainly use these for Poetry Month,” I’ll say to no one in particular, as if strangers might look askance at a person buying five books of poetry but not at a woman talking to herself.
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Where’s Bitsy?
Campbell Hale investigates the case of the missing socialite
In Gone Missin’, the second installment in Peggy O’Neal Peden’s Nashville mystery series, travel agent Campbell Hale is not surprised when her friend Bitsy Carter decides to escape a dreary winter in Nashville for sunny Mexico. Trouble is, no one has seen Bitsy since the day she checked in at the resort. Peden will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 24.
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Falling Back in Love with October
On losing the joy of autumn and finding it again
In Alabama, October was the first month that you could trust cooler weather was coming to stay. Occasionally, I could even wear a sweater in the morning, and although it was wrapped around my waist by afternoon, the heat was not overbearing. Finally, at night, I could snuggle under a sheet and fall asleep. To make a good thing even better, the month began with my father’s birthday and ended with Halloween. There was nothing bad about October in my eyes.
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A Place Where Nobody Knows Your Name
In V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, a god grants a young woman her wish
A young woman, desperate to escape marriage in 18th-century France, makes a deal with one of the old gods in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. The results are frightening, heartbreaking, and inspiring.
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Pictures of a Life
In Richard Alley’s Amelia Thorn, a woman of her time becomes a woman ahead of her time
Memphis author Richard Alley looks at 20th-century Mississippi and Memphis through a photographer’s eyes. Amelia Thorn is a tale of love, loss, and luck.
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