Fiction | Chapter 16

Hope is a Jagged Thing

Welcome Home, a collection of short stories by celebrated YA authors, focuses on adoption

By Tina Chambers | September 27, 2017

The stories in Welcome Home: An Anthology on Love and Adoption depict a wide range of themes, but most revolve around a common axis: being torn between two decisions, two families, two versions of oneself. Editor Eric Smith and Tennessee contributors Dave Connis, Helen Dunbar, C.J. Redwine, Courtney C. Stevens, and Jeff Zentner will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 7 at 2 p.m.

To Dream the Improbable Dream

With Frankenstein Dreams, editor Michael Sims presents twenty vintage works of science fiction

By Chris Scott | September 26, 2017

In his new anthology, Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction, Michael Sims explores early science fiction, a genre born during the rapid scientific and technological advances of the nineteenth century. Sims will discuss the book at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

Some of Them Burn

Planned community and contested motherhood collide in Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere

By Steve Haruch | September 25, 2017

Set against the backdrop of a planned community, Celeste Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, explores motherhood, teenage angst, cultural representation, and the life of the artist. Along with Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy, Ng will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 28 at 6:30 p.m.

Two Nations in Thy Womb

The arrival of mixed-race twins stirs local violence in Eleanor Henderson’s The Twelve-Mile Straight

By Emily Choate | September 22, 2017

The surprising appearance of twin newborns—one dark-skinned, the other pale and freckled—creates upheaval in a Depression-era South Georgia community. Eleanor Henderson will discuss The Twelve-Mile Straight at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.

The Stench of Slavery

Ben H. Winters creates an alternate history in which the Civil War never took place

By Hamilton Cain | September 21, 2017

In the alternative history Ben H. Winters creates in Underground Airlines, slavery has flourished in the Hard Four—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and a unified Carolina—because it is essential to the economic prosperity of the plantations. Winters will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15. Festival events are free and open to the public.

Burn Me Anew

A man confronts a legacy of abusive therapy in Nick White’s How to Survive a Summer

By Emily Choate | September 19, 2017

At the center of Nick White’s striking debut novel, How to Survive a Summer, is the burden of an unconfronted trauma at a long-defunct “gay conversion therapy” camp. White will discuss How to Survive a Summer at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly