Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Home is a Long Way From Here

Linda Leaming writes a fascinating memoir about finding herself, and a family, in Bhutan

By Liz Garrigan | April 1, 2011

April 1, 2011 Years ago, when Linda Leaming first saw photos of a friend’s trip to the Himalayan country of Bhutan, wanderlust trumped prudence, and she decided to see this overlooked dot on the map for herself. Once there, she stayed for more than a decade. Married to Bhutan: How One Woman Got Lost, Said “I Do” and Found Bliss is equal parts diary, travel guide, and history lesson—Leaming’s tribute to a culture arguably more evolved than our own. Linda Leaming will sign copies of the book from 5 to 8 p.m. on April 7 at Nashville’s Cumberland Gallery. Artwork by Leaming’s husband, Bhutanese artist Phurba Namgay, will be on display.

The Forgotten Holocaust

Ruta Sepetys’s YA debut chronicles Stalin’s murder of millions

By Fernanda Moore | March 21, 2011

March 21, 2011 In 1939, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were occupied by the Soviet Union. In the years that followed, Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of millions of Baltic civilians to forced labor camps. More than twenty million people perished in the gulags, but even those who managed to survive and return home were forbidden to reveal the atrocities they’d suffered in the camps. Nashville author Ruta Sepetys, whose stunning debut novel Between Shades of Gray aims, finally, to tell the long-suppressed truth about Stalin’s mass atrocities, grew up in the culture of silence imposed on camp survivors.

Victoria's Other Secret

Michael Sims peeks beneath the petticoats of nineteenth-century detective fiction

By Faye Jones | March 16, 2011

March 16, 2011 The Victorians were a resourceful group: once they realized how absolutely engrossing readers found crime stories, they invented lady detectives, though the actual gumshoes of the age were uniformly male. In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, Michael Sims has collected a fascinating group of Victorian stories featuring female detectives and offers an intriguing analysis of these ancestors of Miss Marple. Sims will discuss The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime on March 19 at 1 p.m. at BookMan/BookWoman in Nashville.

Digging Up Evil

Jefferson Bass’s sixth Body Farm novel excavates unpleasant truths

By Chris Scott | March 14, 2011

March 14, 2011 Jefferson Bass (a pseudonym for the writing team of Jon Jefferson and Bill Bass) has mined the unfortunately rich history of true crime to inspire another fictional adventure of Bill Brockton, the alter ego of Bill Bass himself, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist. This time the story is a fictional retelling of the very real, horrific history of a Florida reform school, and The Bone Yard is the darkest outing yet for Brockton and his fellow forensic experts. The Jefferson Bass team will discuss the book at locations in Oak Ridge, Knoxville, Farragut, Athens, and Maryville. Check Chapter 16’s events page, here, for details.

Dissecting Bluff City

A serial killer cuts a swath through Memphis in A. Scott Pearson’s second medical thriller

By Chris Scott | March 9, 2011

March 9, 2011 Nashville surgeon A. Scott Pearson has followed up his first medical thriller with a second outing for his alter ego, Dr. Eli Branch. In Public Anatomy, space-age surgical technology meets sixteenth-century medical art in a story of murder and mayhem in Memphis. Pearson will introduce and sign Public Anatomy at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on March 9, at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 19, and at Mysteries & More in Nashville on March 26.

Dating the Big Bang

David A. Weintraub explains the age of the universe—and the ways scientists have confirmed it

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 3, 2011

March 3, 2011 In How Old is the Universe?, David A. Weintraub, a professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt, gives a very readable history of astronomy, explaining how each milestone discovery—starting with those of the ancient Greeks—placed mankind closer to fixing the moment it all began. Weintraub will discuss How Old is the Universe? at the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory on March 8 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 each or $10 per family.

Camilla and the Caterpillars

By Frances Figart, illustrated by Matt Brass
Smokies Life
68 pages
$14.95

A young girl’s encounter with an extraordinary caterpillar in the Great Smoky Mountains leads her and her family on a quest to plant a national park right in their own backyard.

This environmentally themed chapter book for ages 6 through 11 introduces young readers to important ecological concepts including habitat loss and the interdependence of native species and offers a compelling grassroots solution through native-plant gardening that invites anyone to take part in addressing the growing biodiversity crisis.

~the publisher