Chapter 16 - Part 16

Brat Out of Hell

With Doomed, cult hero Chuck Palahniuk brings Madison Spencer up from the depths of Perdition into Purgatory—AKA Los Angeles

By Ed Tarkington | October 7, 2013

October 7, 2013 With Doomed—the sequel to 2011’s Damned—Chuck Palahniuk brings Madison Spencer back from hell to roam the earth as a specter, haunting the ex-schoolmates who once tormented her and the insufferable parents who ignored her, ultimately finding herself at the center of yet another diabolical plot by the Evil One. Chuck Palahniuk will discuss Doomed at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Fatherly Advice

Beloved novelist Clyde Edgerton talks with Chapter 16 about the arts of parenting and writing

By Ed Tarkington | August 29, 2013

August 29, 2013 Since the publication of his first novel, Raney, in 1985, Clyde Edgerton has been among the South’s most admired comic novelists. With Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers, Edgerton turns his dry wit toward the art of fatherhood, with unsurprisingly sidesplitting results. Clyde Edgerton will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

He Weren’t Going to Go Down Quiet

James McBride, bestselling author of The Color of Water, returns with The Good Lord Bird

By Ed Tarkington | August 19, 2013

August 19, 2013 James McBride earned universal praise and worldwide recognition for The Color of Water, his classic memoir of growing up black with a white mother in 1960s New York. His subsequent books—including Miracle at St. Anna, a novel adapted into the 2008 film by Spike Lee—have grappled with the problem of race and the legacy of slavery. In The Good Lord Bird, McBride returns to these themes but with a starkly different approach. He will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.

All the Fugitives’ Men

In a new ebook single, Gerald Duff delivers personal recollections of the Agrarian poets

By Ed Tarkington | August 14, 2013

August 14, 2013 As a young English professor in the late 1960s, author and literary critic Gerald Duff held appointments at both Vanderbilt and Kenyon, where he came into frequent close contact with the major poets and critics of the Fugitive/Agrarian movement. In Fugitive Days, Duff shares both comic and poignant tales of his encounters with Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson. He also examines the impact of the Fugitives’ poetry, the New Criticism, and the controversial Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, on the American literary landscape.

Sullen Comfort

Steve Yarbrough masterfully chronicles an unlikely love triangle cast against the bleak landscape of academic politics

By Ed Tarkington | August 1, 2013

August 1, 2013 Steve Yarbrough has earned a devoted readership for evocative, emotionally searing stories and novels about his native Mississippi. With The Realm of Last Chances, he turns to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, delivering a strikingly sensitive portrait of Kristin and Cal, an unlikely couple forced by the recession to move cross-country, and Matt, a young interloper whose own thwarted circumstances kindle a spiritual kinship with Kristin that becomes to each of them as necessary as it is doomed. Yarbrough will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. August 6, 2013.

Regaining Altitude

Bobbie Ann Mason returns with a remarkable World War II novel about a downed aviator in Nazi-occupied France

By Ed Tarkington | July 18, 2013

July 18, 2013 Bobbie Ann Mason’s most recent novel is simultaneously a tale of adapting to old age, a charming romance, a food-and-wine tour of Paris and Provence, and a spellbinding World War II suspense thriller. The Girl in the Blue Beret is a richly satisfying page turner and an artful literary novel worthy of a wide audience and a prominent place in its acclaimed author’s award-winning body of work. Mason will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Driving the Tide (The After Dunkirk Series, Book 6)

By Lee Jackson
Severn River Publishing
444 pages
$19.99

“Driving the Tide is the riveting sixth installment in the After Dunkirk family saga, bringing to life the darkest pages of World War II―and the unflinching bravery of regular people who rose to the challenges of their times.”

~ the publisher