February 7, 2013 Margaret Wrinkle has some very ambitious aims in her debut novel, Wash: to explore and reconcile the contradictions and conflicts of the relationship between owner and owned in the antebellum South, a feat she manages by opening a window onto the infamous practice of slave breeding. Margaret Wrinkle will discuss and sign Wash at Parnassus Books on February 16 at 2 p.m.
February 5, 2013 Thanks to slow and unreliable communications between the admiralty and ships at sea, naval officers such as fictional hero Captain Alan Lewrie could often exercise considerable independence once out of port. In Hostile Shores, Dewey Lambin’s nineteenth Alan Lewrie adventure, however, Lewrie’s frigate, Reliant, is under the close command of a half-baked commodore with dreams of grandeur. Lewrie nevertheless finds ways to maneuver, sometimes stepping on toes or taking considerable risks. His adventures here, as always, are rollicking good yarns, with authentic details and characters, a hero, his ship, and lots of excitement.
February 1, 2013 Chapter 16 is delighted to announce that Stephen Usery is joining the site as a regular podcast contributor. Usery is the legendary host of WYPL’s, Book Talk”, an author-interview program sponsored by the Memphis Public Library, and Mysterypod, his own weekly podcast featuring interviews with authors of mysteries, thrillers, and crime fiction. In today’s podcast, Usery talks with George Saunders about his new book, Tenth of December, which The New York Times called “the best book you’ll read this year.”
January 29, 2013 Oak Ridge native Sara J. Henry won the Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark Awards with her first novel, Learning to Swim. In her second Troy Chance mystery, A Cold and Lonely Place, she returns to the Lake Placid, New York, area with a story of family secrets, emotional and physical isolation, and sudden death. Henry will appear at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on February 5 at 7 p.m.
January 23, 2013 The Oxford American’s new editor-in-chief, Roger D. Hodge, talks with Chapter 16 about his view of editing as a “conversational” process. The point of the conversation, he says, is to serve the stories themselves: “When everything comes together in just the right way, so that the stories are winking and glancing across the issue at one another, something magical happens. You have a self-contained whole, a world within the world.”
January 22, 2013 “We get what we’re given. Nothing more, nothing less,” writes Marjorie Celona in her debut novel, Y. This terse, stoic observation captures Celona’s ethos as a storyteller. Y limns the lives of Shannon, an infant abandoned on the steps of the YMCA, and Yula, the abused and traumatized teenage mother who leaves her there. Moving back and forth in time, the novel follows the events leading up to the birth and Shannon’s frequently harrowing journey through the foster-care system. Through it all, Shannon waits for the chance to find her birth parents and ask the titular question, “Why?” Celona will discuss and sign copies of Y at Parnassus Books on January 24 at 6:30 p.m.
