Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

I Would Have Said It Was Mystical

In Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Wanting Radiance, a daughter searches for her own buried origins

Fortune telling — through tarot cards, palm readings, or other means of divination — was a way of life for Miracelle and her mother, whose bond forms the heart of Karen Salyer McElmurray’s novel, Wanting Radiance. After years on her own, Miracelle sets her sights on the past, including her mother’s unsolved murder.

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The Resurrection Racket

W.M. Akers returns to his mythical Jazz Age New York City, where time is out of joint

In W.M. Akers’ Westside Saints, set in an alternative version of 1920s New York, detective Gilda Carr must solve mysteries surrounding the appearance of the dead, including her late mother.

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Intrigue in Spain

Mike Maden hits another bullseye with Tom Clancy Firing Point

Trouble has a way of finding President Jack Ryan and his son, Jack Jr., the legendary heroes of the late Tom Clancy’s clandestine spy thrillers who are back for another go in Tom Clancy Firing Point by Knoxville’s Mike Maden. The author will hold a virtual discussion about the book with Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 14.

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Love and Death at Sea

Lisa Alther’s Swan Song sends its grief-stricken 60-something heroine on a cruise

Swan Song: An Odyssey, the eighth novel by Kingsport native Lisa Alther, is a witty meditation on loss and longing in late-middle age.

 

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An Anguished Quest

Jessica Pearce Rotondi explores her family’s grief in What We Inherit

The journalist Jessica Pearce Rotondi was 8 years old before she heard her mother speak the name of her uncle, Jack Pearce, who vanished when his plane was shot down over Laos in March 1972. In her propulsive memoir, What We Inherit, Rotondi probes her family’s agonized search for truth across three generations.

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Here Be Dragons

Wayétu Moore flees from Liberia’s civil war and fights to be seen in race-obsessed America

In Wayétu Moore’s memoir, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, Moore details her flight from Liberia’s civil war, her disorientation in an America obsessed with skin color, and her search for the warrior-woman who helped her family escape.

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