Chapter 16 - Part 364

Memphis, Key to the Mississippi

Edward B. McCaul Jr. examines the Civil War struggle for control of the Mississippi River

By Ralph Bowden | January 22, 2015

January 22, 2015 To Retain Command of the Mississippi is Edward McCaul’s thorough look at everything—strategy, politics, personnel, boats, technology, and battles—connected with the campaign to establish control of the Mississippi during the first two years of the Civil War. McCaul argues that the river battle at Memphis could have gone the other way, with consequences that might have led to Confederate independence.

Distance from Distraction

Rivendell Writers’ Colony in Sewanee offers writers—and readers—a beautiful respite from the day-to-day world

By Susannah Felts | January 21, 2015

January 21, 2015 Writers’ retreats can be powerful incubators for novels, stories, and poems, allowing writers to immerse themselves in their work, free from the distractions of daily life. Rivendell Writers’ Colony, in Sewanee, is the first of its kind in Tennessee, and word of its particular magic is beginning to travel.

The Secret Fusion

Novelist Jonathan Miles talks with Chapter 16 about comedy and philosophy in fiction

By Sean Kinch | January 20, 2015

January 20, 2015 Jonathan Miles has a gift for transforming life’s base materials into literary gold. His novels, Dear American Airlines (2008) and Want Not (2013), address dark, potentially dispiriting themes with a deft, comedic touch. Miles will give a free public reading at the University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library in Knoxville on January 26, 2015, at 7 p.m.

What Is Not Missing Is Light

By Bridgette Bates | January 16, 2015

January 16, 2015 Bridgette Bates’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, jubilat, VERSE, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a “Discovery” Prize, she is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from Nashville, she lives in Los Angeles where she writes for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and is a features contributor to Kirkus Reviews. She will read from her new collection, What Is Not Missing is Light, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 22, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

Girl at a Crossroads

Sharon M. Draper crafts a tale of community, family, and courage in the Jim Crow South

By Tracy Barrett | January 15, 2015

January 15, 2015 Eleven-year-old Stella Mills has always felt safe in the embrace of her family and community. But Stella feels helpless during a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan—until she finds a way to help. Sharon Draper, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, will discuss her new middle-grade novel, Stella by Starlight, at the Nashville Public Library on January 22, 2015, at 6 p.m. and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on January 23, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

How They Live On

In The Secret of Magic, Deborah Johnson tackles the difficult truths of segregation-era Mississippi

By Emily Choate | January 13, 2015

January 13, 2015 Regina Mary Robichard, the determined young NAACP lawyer at the center of Deborah Johnson’s The Secret of Magic, finds herself deeply drawn to the case of a brutal murder in segregation-era Mississippi. Investigating, she enters a world of both racial conflict and magical surprise. Deborah Johnson will discuss The Secret of Magic at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 17, 2015, at 2 p.m.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher