Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Quoth the Raven

Jim Minick’s novel of faith healing begins with a disastrous fire

In Fire Is Your Water, Jim Minick’s debut novel, a young couple faces disasters and struggles with their relationships to each other and to God. Minick will appear at The Arts Building in Chattanooga on August 27; and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15; and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 15.

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Book publicist Caitlin Hamilton Summie steps to the other side of the literary desk

Caitlin Hamilton Summie’s debut story collection, To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts, explores complex familial relationships against the backdrop of the snow-covered Midwest. The author will appear at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Knoxville on August 26 and at the Southern Festival of Books, which will be held in Nashville October 13-15.

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Dreams of Happiness

Two generations struggle for love and success in Stephanie Powell Watts’s No One Is Coming to Save Us

In No One Is Coming to Save Us, Stephanie Powell Watts takes up themes from The Great Gatsby—wealth, social position, the search for love—and explores them through a twenty-first-century African-American family in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Watts will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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Before Extinction

Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal gives words to a human ancestor who used very few

The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron’s third novel, toggles between the life of a fierce Neanderthal woman struggling alone to survive and give birth, and the life of an equally determined scientist struggling to defend her work as she too anticipates the birth of a child. Cameron will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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A Bit of a Renaissance

Mrs. Fletcher is Tom Perrotta’s timely—and timeless—tale of a mother and a son and an empty nest

Whether he’s dissecting student-teacher power games, riffing on overinvolved parenting, or taking inspiration from an actual doomsday cult, Tom Perrotta writes books that are slick, delightful explorations of classic suburban mores garnished with contemporary concerns. Perrotta will discuss his new novel, Mrs. Fletcher, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 9 at 6:30 p.m.

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Prep School Noir

In Christopher Swann’s Shadow of the Lions, a novelist confronts an old mystery

In Christopher Swann’s debut novel, Shadow of the Lions, Matthias Glass returns to teach at his former boarding school—and to investigate the unsolved disappearance of his best friend a decade earlier. Swann will discuss Shadow of the Lions at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 3 at 6:30 p.m., and at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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