Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Confounding Brilliance

Scholars ponder Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on its seventy-fifth anniversary

In Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at 75, a transatlantic group of scholars reconsiders James Agee’s classic Depression-era account of three Alabama sharecropping families and the problem of representing them in words and images.

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Family Secrets Laid Bare

Ann Patchett talks with Chapter 16 about her bestselling novel Commonwealth

Ann Patchett talks about the paperback edition of her number-one New York Times-bestselling novel Commonwealth, her desire to study acting, how being a bookseller affects her reading list, the nonfiction book she’s writing about women’s suffrage, and the importance of voting in our current age.

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Cheering for the Underdog

Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s new middle-grade novel asks whether a pit bull with a past can become an American hero

Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s A Dog Like Daisy follows one dog’s struggle to overcome her own unhappy past and ease the pain of a veteran with PTSD. The launch party for A Dog Like Daisy will be held June 22 at 4 p.m. at the Kings’ Chapel Clubhouse in Arrington.

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And All the Devils Are Here

Victoria Schwab concludes her exploration of dark and light in Our Dark Duet

In Our Dark Duet Victoria Schwab brings her YA dystopian fantasy to a riveting conclusion as her characters struggle to conquer their demons and retain their humanity in a collapsing world. Schwab will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 17 at 4:30 p.m. Joining her will be YA novelists Madeleine Roux and Joelle Charbonneau.

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Of Sharks and Men

With The Shark Club, Ann Kidd Taylor delivers the quintessential beach read

As a teenager, Maeve Donnelly was bitten by a shark only moments after her first kiss. Fifteen years later, she returns to Florida to face two dangerous passions—sharks and first love. Ann Kidd Taylor will discuss her new novel, The Shark Club, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 14 at 6:30 p.m.

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Babies, Bought and Sold

Lisa Wingate has created a fictional tale of a family torn apart by Memphis’s notorious black-market baby dealer

In Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate imagines the murky family history of a clan ripped apart by Georgia Tann, the real-life director of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, which served as a front for a black-market adoption operation out of Memphis. Wingate will appear at the Arts Building in Chattanooga on June 14, and at the Blount County Library in Maryville on June 15.

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