Children & YA | Chapter 16

The Heart of the Matter

What Remains, the second YA novel by Helene Dunbar, is a tale of tragedy and revelation

By Sarah Norris | May 6, 2015

May 6, 2015 What Remains, the new novel by Nashville YA author Helene Dunbar, is the story of a teenager who’s had the same best friends since first grade. When a tragic car accident upends his life, he is forced to reckon with his grief, guilt, and a new existence he’s not convinced he even wants. Dunbar will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 11, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

The Stella Sisters Make a Splash

Lennon and Maisy Stella, stars of ABC’s drama Nashville, launch their debut picture book, In the Waves

By Julie Danielson | May 4, 2015

March 4, 2015 In the Waves, Lennon and Maisy Stella’s debut picture book, is an adaptation of their first original song. The sisters celebrated the book’s release on a sunny Nashville day in April, and Chapter 16 was there.

Something Curious to Write About

A revealing one-sided correspondence is at the heart of Dear Hank Williams by Kimberly Willis Holt

By Tracy Barrett | April 16, 2015

April 16, 2015 In Dear Hank Williams, National Book Award-winning children’s author Kimberly Willis Holt tells the story of an eleven-year-old in 1940s Louisiana through letters the girl writes to Hank Williams. Holt will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on April 22 at 6:30 p.m.

Finley Flowers: Nature Calls

April 14, 2015

“When nature calls and the girls get lost on the way to the restrooms, Finley’s spooky ghost story comes back to haunt them. As they work together to find a creative way home, Finley discovers that there’s more than one way to be tough.”

–From the publisher

Hidden Treasure, a Haunted House, and an Unlikely Trio of Detectives

In this debut novel, a boy braves bullies and worse to try to save his family home

By Tracy Barrett | April 13, 2015

April 13, 2015 In Matthew Baker’s debut middle-grade novel, If You Find This, eleven-year-old Nicholas breaks his grandfather out of a nursing home and enlists the aid of two unlikely allies to find the family heirlooms his grandfather insists he hid years earlier—all to keep his parents from having to sell their family home. Baker will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.; and again in Furman Hall, Room 114, at Vanderbilt University on April 20, 2015, at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

A Finely Drawn Character

Robert Gipe’s illustrated debut novel, Trampoline, introduces a troubled teen coming of age during an Appalachian coal war

By Michael Ray Taylor | April 7, 2015

April 7, 2015 It’s been a while since anyone produced a great American coming-of-age-novel, but Kingsport native Robert Gipe hits the mark with Trampoline, an inventive debut set in the coal country of Eastern Kentucky. Narrator Dawn Jewell, fifteen, is as smart as Scout Finch, more profane than Holden Caulfield, and as tough in a fight as Mattie Ross. Gipe tells her story not only in flawless prose but also with 220 comics-style drawings that keep the book grounded in the world of an Appalachian teenager.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning