Chapter 16

He Would’ve Said Goodbye

A madcap murder investigation helps a family cope with a loved one’s death in Fowl Play

By Tina Chambers | June 26, 2024

“It’s kinda hard to hunt for a murderer,” declares young Chloe Alvarez, “when you don’t want to remember that a person is dead.” Chloe is the narrator and main character of Nashville writer Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s latest middle-grade novel, Fowl Play, and she is desperate to know what really happened to her Uncle Will. Fowl Play is scheduled for release on July 30, and a launch event will be held at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere on August 2.

Different Worlds

A high school couple tries to bridge the social divide between wealth and poverty

By Tina Chambers | May 22, 2024

Susan Beckham Zurenda’s new novel, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel, examines the challenges faced by high school lovers from opposite sides of the tracks in small-town South Carolina. Zurenda will be the keynote speaker for the 2024 Clarksville Writers Conference at Austin Peay State University on June 5-7.

The Best-Laid Plans

Jeff Zentner’s new novel signals a change in literary direction

By Tina Chambers | April 29, 2024

With Colton Gentry’s Third Act, award-winning YA author Jeff Zentner tries his hand at adult contemporary romance with a Southern flair. Zentner will appear in conversation with Silas House and David Arnold at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 30.

River of Loss

Anna Quindlen’s latest novel considers the impact one life can make

By Tina Chambers | March 4, 2024

In her 10th novel, After Annie, author Anna Quindlen starts things off with a bang: the shocking sudden death of the title character. Quindlen will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 14.

The Life They Were Supposed to Live

A young enslaved woman in New Orleans finds a way to fight back

By Tina Chambers | February 20, 2024

In his novel The American Daughters, Maurice Carlos Ruffin tells the story of Adebimpe, known as Ady, a young, enslaved woman living in New Orleans just before the Civil War, and the underground network of powerful women to whom she is introduced. Ruffin will appear at Novel in Memphis on March 1 and The Bookshop in Nashville on April 18.

Good Fortune

It was a weirdly specific message to get from a cookie

By Tina Chambers | February 9, 2024

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Divorce is an ugly business — at least it was for me. I felt as though everything in my life was broken: my home, my family, even my sanity. I didn’t know it then, but far from being over, my life was about to get interesting.

The Call to Serve: The Life of an American President, George Herbert Walker Bush: A Visual Biography

Jon Meacham
Random House
384
$45

“Lavishly illustrated, ‘The Call to Serve’ is an intimate, illuminating portrait of the forty-first president, a man who was so much more than just his politics. In words and images—many found in a lifetime of scrapbooks kept by Barbara Pierce Bush—Jon Meacham brings George H. W. Bush vividly to life.”

~the publisher