Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Ed Tarkington

Of Love and Terror

Tim Johnston brings depth and lyricism to the thriller genre with Descent

July 29, 2015 How does one survive the unthinkable? How does a parent live without knowing what’s become of a missing child? How long can a person go on without abandoning hope? These are the questions that frame Descent, the new literary thriller by Memphis novelist Tim Johnston. He will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015. All festival events are free and open to the public.

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Stand By for a Fighter Pilot

With The Death of Santini, Pat Conroy delivers an emotional farewell to his titanic father

July 23, 2015 “In the odd, bewildered world of children, we knew we were in the presence of a fabulous, overwhelming personality, but we had no idea we were being raised by a genius of his own mythmaking,” write Pat Conroy in his new memoir. With The Death of Santini, the beloved author of runaway bestsellers like The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and, of course, The Great Santini, lays bare the origin of his storytelling impulse. Conroy will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015. All festival events are free and open to the public.

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The Right to Be

With The Book of Aron, Jim Shepard adds another essential volume to the canon of Holocaust fiction

June 24, 2015 “My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done,” writes Jim Shepard at the outset of The Book of Aron. Eight year-old Aron’s precocity and daring prove useful when he joins forces with other Warsaw street urchins to smuggle food and supplies to their families after the Nazis overtake Poland. Shepard will appear in conversation with Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon to discuss The Book of Aron at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 26, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Lawyers in Love

With The Jezebel Remedy, Martin Clark delivers another taut, comic thriller

June 10, 2015 According to The New York Times Magazine, Martin Clark is “not only the thinking man’s John Grisham, but, maybe better, the drinking man’s John Grisham.” In The Jezebel Remedy, Clark introduces Joe and Lisa Stone, small-town Virginia lawyers who are partners in business and in life. When a client turns up dead, the Stones’ investigation pits them against a Big Pharma billionaire whose ruthlessness threatens to destroy both their careers and their marriage. Martin Clark will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 15, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Scattered Sparks

With The Pinch, Steve Stern continues his dazzling fictional exploration of the intersection of reality, spirituality, and mysticism

May 28, 2015 High-wire acts performed by an acrobatic enchantress; a young couple making love in a giant tree in the midst of an earthquake; a drug-dealing bookstore clerk who finds a decades-old history of his neighborhood and discovers that he himself appears as a character in its pages—these are some of the elements of The Pinch, Steve Stern’s latest novel. Stern will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis at 6 p.m. on June 4, 2015.

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L.A. Dark

In Sweet Nothing, mystery writer Richard Lange draws terse poetry from the lives of downtrodden Angelinos

April 10, 2015 Recovering drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, teenage mothers of teenage mothers, alcoholic philanderers—these are Richard Lange’s people. In his new collection, Sweet Nothing, Lange improbably draws elegant poetry and tragic, lingering beauty out of the thwarted, misbegotten denizens of twenty-first century Los Angeles. He will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis at 6:30 p.m. on April 17, 2015.

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