Tina Chambers

October 9, 2014 Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, The Hundred-Year House, reveals its secrets slowly, layer by layer, as the reader travels back in time from 1999 to 1900. At the center of the story is a house that becomes a character in its own right as Makkai combines straightforward narrative with snippets of poetry, telegrams, and letters to create a mood that is both modern and mysterious, historical and haunting. Makkai will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 11, 2014 In The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories, seasoned anthology editor Michael Sims has compiled a book sure to send a shiver down the spine of even the most skeptical reader. Included are all the standard tropes of the genre: haunted houses, the walking dead, cursed objects, and eerie landscapes, as well as the expected Victorian flourishes of fainting females and their brave but clueless male champions. Sims will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

August 15, 2014 The locals call it “Spite House,” the structure at the center of Courtney Miller Santo’s new novel, Three Story House. Lizzie Linwood, granddaughter of the man who built the Memphis home to “spite” his brother, joins forces with her two cousins to renovate the dilapidated structure, exposing old wounds and revealing buried truths along the way. Courtney Miller Santo will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on August 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.

March 26, 2013 Hilarious and heartbreaking, poignant and absurd, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the Nashville Reads book selection for 2014. The novel asks readers to consider the ways in which all creatures are connected and responsible to one another. Fowler answered questions from Chapter 16 in advance of her appearance at the Nashville Public Library on April 1, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.