Chapter 16 - Part 3

A Pretty Place to Die

Chris Offutt’s The Killing Hills delivers a taut, gripping Kentucky-noir thriller

By Ed Tarkington | June 14, 2021

Few writers today can boast of a body of work as wide-ranging and virtuosic as Chris Offutt’s. His novels and short stories bend genre and upend expectations. The Killing Hills is no exception: A taut, gripping thriller, it also draws us deep into the lives of its troubled characters with wit and compassion. Chris Offutt will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on June 17.

Reconstructing a Western Myth

In his debut novel, Dennis McCarthy imagines an alternate fate for history’s most notorious gunslinger

By Ed Tarkington | March 29, 2021

“So here’s the gospel story. Gospel as I know it anyway. Memory’s a funny thing. It’ll fool you.” Thus begins Dennis McCarthy’s reimagining of the legend of Henry McCarty, aka William H. Bonney, aka William Roberts, aka Billy the Kid. The Gospel According to Billy the Kid is at once an unromantic account of the violence and lawlessness of the late 19th-century West and a rollicking good yarn.

The Singing Wire Between Joy and Grief

You Want More spans the career of one of the South’s most beloved storytellers

By Ed Tarkington | September 16, 2020

With You Want More: Selected Stories, Hub City Press delivers a career retrospective of the writer The New York Times called “among the great pillars of Southern literature.” George Singleton will discuss the book with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips at a virtual event hosted by Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 28 and will appear at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

Don’t You Dare Say Nothin’

In Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, secrets, lies, and myths collide across generations

By Ed Tarkington | August 3, 2020

Complex strands of cultural and personal history intersect in Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, an ambitious debut novel exploring the relationship between private trauma and public strife. Lindsey will discuss Some Go Home in virtual events hosted by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association on August 6 and the Southern Festival of Books, October 1-11.

A Mystery in Red Hook

James McBride returns with a tale about a shooting gone wrong in late-60s Brooklyn

By Ed Tarkington | March 11, 2020

In James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, a hard-drinking, hallucinating Baptist deacon known as Sportcoat shoots the ear off a notorious drug dealer in broad daylight, and an aging cop and an Italian mobster try to save Sportcoat from meeting his end in the housing projects of Red Hook Brooklyn.

Pitching for a Level Field

In The Resisters, Gish Jen depicts an eerily plausible near-future dystopia

By Ed Tarkington | February 3, 2020

Gish Jen’s fifth novel, The Resisters, imagines a world where the poor struggle to survive on houseboats buffeted by swollen seas, the rich live comfortably on high ground, and a young woman’s talent for baseball can lead to revolution. Gish Jen will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett to discuss The Resisters at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 12.

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