Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Coming of Age on Public-Access TV

Jeff Zentner’s latest YA novel is a B-movie-themed delight

Jeff Zentner’s new YA novel, Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, is a coming-of-age story about two best friends and their monster-movie show in Jackson, Tennessee. Zentner will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 26.

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Armed and Dangerous

An American assassin hunts terrorists in Mark Greaney’s Mission Critical

Court Gentry, the hero of Mark Greaney’s Mission Critical, pursues bad guys all over the world in a bare-knuckled, uniquely American style. Greaney will discuss Mission Critical at Novel in Memphis on February 23, and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 28.

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Strikes and Gutters

Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway is a genealogy set in a bowling alley

Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway is an epic tale of love, grief, and candlepin bowling. McCracken will discuss her third novel with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 22.

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Marsh Girl

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens’s first foray into fiction, is a bestseller

In Where the Crawdads Sing, the debut novel by veteran nature writer Delia Owens, a young girl is abandoned in the coastal marshlands of North Carolina. Owens will discuss the novel, a 2018 selection of Reese Witherspoon’s book club, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 18.

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How the Other Half Lived

Cecelia Tichi’s What Would Mrs. Astor Do? peeks into the lives of the Gilded Age rich

Vanderbilt professor Cecelia Tichi considers high society, nineteenth-century style, in What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age. Tichi will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 10.

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How We Got Into This Mess

In Fault Lines, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer explain the origins of political polarization

In Fault Lines, Princeton University historian Kevin M. Kruse, a Nashville native—along with his co-author and Princeton colleague, Julian E. Zelizer—has written a lively and insightful look at American history since 1974, with a particular emphasis on explaining our current partisan political culture.

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