Fiction | Chapter 16

Christmas with the Nitwitts

Robert Dalby brings yuletide cheer to his latest Piggly Wiggly installment

By Faye Jones | December 14, 2010

December 14, 2010 After a day of fighting mall crowds in search of this year’s must-have gizmo, there may be no better holiday treat than settling down with a cup of coffee and a Santa cookie and spending a few hours in Second Creek, Mississippi, with Robert Dalby’s A Piggly Wiggly Christmas. Dalby will read from and sign copies of the book this week at public libraries in Crossville, Murfreesboro, Collierville, and Clarksville. Check Chapter 16’s events section for details.

About the Naughty Bits

Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut makes a surprising British shortlist

By Margaret Renkl | November 29, 2010

November 29, 2010 In Great Britain, people take their writers seriously: across the country, bookies lay odds on shortlist favorites for both the Booker Prize and the Nobel with the kind of fervor reserved in the U.S. for March Madness or the Super Bowl. But even in England, the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award inspires a different kind of excitement. Mr. Peanut, by Nashville’s own Adam Ross, is a nominee for the 2010 award, which will be announced tonight in London, and Ross has a few words for Chapter 16 on the subject.

Even Beauty Queens Get the Blues

Birmingham sets the stage for Fannie Flagg’s latest comic novel

By Faye Jones | November 15, 2010

November 15, 2010 if you’re a former Miss Alabama, and you’re determined to do away with yourself with as little attention and mess as possible, you have quite a bit of planning to do. And though a suicide attempt might not seem like the best foundation for a comic novel, in Fannie Flagg’s newest, the ever-present humor is neither mocking nor unsympathetic. Flagg will discuss and sign I Still Dream about You at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on November 16 at 7 p.m.

Screwball Bestiary

David Sedaris talks with Chapter 16 about undecided voters, Loretta Lynn, life on book tour, and his new collection of unconventional animal fables

By Margaret Renkl | November 12, 2010

November 12, 2010 Sedaris’s trademark brand of humor is marked by equal doses of caustic wit and the sweet wistfulness of the true romantic. Sedaris never misses a chance to point out the absolute idiocy of human beings—including, invariably hilariously, his own mistakes and misadventures—but it’s impossible to read his essays and stories without concluding that he secretly enjoys the parade of human foolishness he’s treated to every day. He recently spoke with Chapter 16 prior to his signing of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on November 13 at 3 p.m.

Digging Montana

Homer Hickam’s first mystery uncovers murder—and dinosaurs—in Big Sky Country

By Chris Scott | November 8, 2010

November 8, 2010 Homer Hickam, of Rocket Boys fame, has changed literary course. In his new novel, The Dinosaur Hunter, he presents a mystery set in remote east-central Montana, a land full of cattle, cowboys, ranchers, and paleontologists. It’s a mix sure to cause trouble. On the Square C Ranch, a season of bone digging, romantic entanglements, and dreams of fame and fortune is followed closely by murder and mayhem, putting an ex-cop turned cowboy back into the business of gunfights and catching bad guys. Homer Hickam signs The Dinosaur Hunter at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville November 11 at 7 p.m.

Beyond Halloween

With The Immortals J.T. Ellison takes her detective on a thrill ride into the world of teenage witchcraft

By Lyda Phillips | November 3, 2010

November 3, 2010 J.T. Ellison delivers her trademark blend of police procedural doused in the macabre with The Immortals, the fifth in her Nashville-based Taylor Jackson series. When the ritualistic murder of eight teenagers on Halloween shocks an upper-middle-class neighborhood that prides itself on its normality, homicide lieutenant Jackson and her team are plunged into a dark world of teenage Goths and black magic. Ellison will discuss The Immortals at Sherlock’s Books in Nashville on November 6 at 7 p.m.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher