Chapter 16 - Part 7

Inside the Nightmare

Novelist Sarah McCoy kneads together one family’s Third-Reich past and another’s Texas-border present

By Lyda Phillips | July 24, 2012

July 24, 2012 In The Baker’s Daughter Sarah McCoy delivers an intimate and nuanced view of people trapped in the nightmare culture of Aryan supremacy and draws an intriguing parallel to the current debate over immigration. McCoy will discuss The Baker’s Daughter at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

Bidding Artemis Farewell

After eleven years, hitting the bestseller lists with nearly every volume, Eoin Colfer brings the Artemis Fowl saga to a close

By Lyda Phillips | July 10, 2012

July 10, 2012 Eoin Colfer burst onto the middle-grade fantasy scene in 2001 with Artemis Fowl, a high-energy thriller starring a young criminal mastermind from an aristocratic Irish family, who kidnaps a ferocious fairy cop and holds her for ransom. Now the series comes to an end with its eighth installment, The Last Guardian. Colfer will discuss the culmination of his bestselling series on July 18 at 4 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library, as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.

Gone but Not Forgotten

Rheta Grimsley Johnson looks back on a life entwined with the music of Hank Williams

By Lyda Phillips | April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012 If any singer/songwriter nailed the deep pain and loneliness in the American heart, it’s Hank Williams. He also personified another American artistic tradition: live hard and die young. In Hank Hung the Moon … and Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts, former Memphis writer Rheta Grimsley Johnson pays tribute to the artist who wrote the soundtrack of her life.

Hero Complex

Jaden Terrell talks with Chapter 16 about her debut thriller, Racing the Devil, her protagonist—a sweetheart of a disgraced ex-cop—and her plans for a ten-book series

By Lyda Phillips | February 3, 2012

February 3, 2012 As a member of two writers’ groups—the venerable Quill and Dagger, and Sisters in Crime—and as an organizer of the Killer Nashville conference, Jaden Terrell is a major player in the crime-novelist scene in Nashville. Her debut novel, Racing the Devil, is the first in a planned series of ten novels featuring Jared McKean, an ex-cop turned private investigator. He is burdened by both a Galahad complex and a tendency toward violence, but still hasn’t lost his essential sweetness. Terrell answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to her reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 11 at 1 p.m.

Deadly Information

For Taylor Stevens, the inspiration for her debut thriller came from her own unusual past

By Lyda Phillips | October 4, 2011

October 4, 2011 Taylor Stevens grew up on four different continents as part of a religious cult, escaping only in her twenties. Now a novelist living in Texas, she used her unusual experience to create the fierce heroine of The Informationist, who flouts West Africa’s vicious power brokers to rescue a Texas oil heiress. Stevens will discuss The Informationist at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

Now in Print

D.B. Henson’s DIY publication yielded 100,000 ebook sales—and a traditional publishing contract

By Lyda Phillips | July 26, 2011

July 26, 2011 Published as an Amazon ebook in April 2010, D.B. Henson’s mystery, Deed to Death, proved phenomenally successful. By word of tweet, Facebook, blog, and online review, the debut novel sold 100,000 copies and made the Best of 2010 Kindle Customer Favorites list, which includes the likes of Stieg Larson and Laura Lippman. The Nashville author’s success got the attention of uber-agent Noah Lukeman, who offered to represent her. He sold Deed to Death to Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone Books, and the rest is … well, you know the rest. Henson will sign Deed to Death on July 30 at 2 p.m. at Mysteries & More in Nashville. She will also appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 14-16.

Distant Sons

Tim Johnston
Algonquin Books
400 pages
$29

“Tim Johnston has once again raised the bar for the literary thriller. Distant Sons is elegant and edgy, refined and complex. It excavates the truth from the darkest recesses of the past and shines a light towards the possibility of a redemptive future.”

~ Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women and Sing Her Down