Fiction | Chapter 16

Out of the Valley

Josh Weil, author of the Sue Kauffman Prize-winning The New Valley, talks with Chapter 16 about the art of the novella

By Ed Tarkington | February 24, 2012

February 24, 2012 Josh Weil’s fearless introspection and his gift for creating layers of complexity in his characters permeate the pages of his award-winning first collection of novellas, The New Valley. Set in the rural environs of the New River Valley between Virginia and West Virginia, Weil’s stories are written in graceful, haunting prose that masterfully evokes the beautiful but isolated and unforgiving nature of rural AppalachiaOn February 27 at 7 p.m., Weil will give a reading in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. Click here for more details.

The Royal Navy Confronts the Privateer Problem

In Dewey Lambdin’s latest installment of the Alan Lewrie series, it’s 1805, and Captain Lewrie prowls the coastline of the American Southeast in search of French and Spanish privateers

By Ralph Bowden | February 13, 2012

February 13, 2012 In Reefs and Shoals, Dewey Lambdin’s eighteenth Alan Lewrie adventure, Great Britain is at war again with France and Spain. With privateers attacking British shipping in the Caribbean and Florida Straits, the Admiralty orders Captain Lewrie to take his frigate southwest, via Bermuda, to the Bahamas. Once there he is to assemble a squadron and put a stop to the depredations, whatever it takes. In telling his tale, Lambdin recreates the context, the technology, and the swashbucklers of that time and place.

The River Rose

In Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell introduces a fearless young heroine whose escape on the water brings her close to both danger and desperation, but also to courage

By Susannah Felts | February 8, 2012

February 8, 2012 At age fourteen, Margo Crane, a quiet and beautiful girl, learns to shoot a rifle. A natural with the weapon, she feels “the guidance of the gun itself,” writes Bonnie Jo Campbell in Once Upon a River. “It held her steady, and then sadness perfected her aim.” Absorbing, exotic, and relentlessly heartbreaking, this second novel from the National Book Award finalist is a transcendent example of a journey narrative, centered on a singular, complex protagonist who refuses to be contained or forgotten. Campbell will read from her work February 9 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.

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.

Ecstasy and Perversion

Tales of the New World, the new short-story collection by PEN-Faulkner Award winner Sabina Murray, finds the sublime and the beautiful in the legendary ventures of history’s great explorers

By Ed Tarkington | February 1, 2012

February 1, 2012 In her new collection, Tales of the New World, Sabina Murray imagines the minds and hearts of a broad variety of legendary explorers and adventurers, investigating the complex and problematic nature of the urge “to go where no man has gone before.” In prose that is at once fearlessly blunt and stylishly ethereal, Murray recreates the triumphs and tragedies of a cast ranging from Ferdinand Magellan to cult leader Jim Jones. Murray will read from and discuss her work on February 6 at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. The event is free and open to the public.

A Complex Creation

In his new novel, Alan Lightman takes on the beginning of everything

By Maria Browning | January 30, 2012

January 30, 2012 Science and faith seem to be continually at war in American culture, with both sides claiming exclusive hold on the truth. In Mr g: A Novel About the Creation, Memphis native Alan Lightman seeks to reconcile the two, respecting both reasoned inquiry and spiritual mystery.

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