Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

A Plague of Troubles

Brad Thor conjures a host of perils in his fifteenth Scot Harvath thriller

July 7, 2015 With Code of Conduct, bestselling Nashville novelist Brad Thor turns up the heat on his superspy, Scot Harvath. Plagues and terrorism, secret cabals and patriots, make for a worthy summer thriller. Thor will discuss Code of Conduct at the Nashville Public Library on July 13, 2015, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

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A Dark Little Flame

Set in Sewanee, Leah Stewart’s new novel is a study of small-town secrets and hidden judgments

July 6, 2015 In her fifth novel, The New Neighbor, Leah Stewart brings together two isolated women with secrets in their pasts. With elements of a mystery, the novel is also a thoughtful study of the masks we wear and the complex fictions we present to others. Stewart will discuss the book in conversation with Kevin Wilson, bestselling author of The Family Fang, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 9, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Life Imitating Art

Killing Monica by Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell is an autobiographical comic novel

June 25, 2015 Anyone who lived in a cave between 1998 and 2004, when HBO aired Sex and the City—a series based on Candace Bushnell’s novel of the same name—might read Killing Monica with virgin eyes. Everyone else will find the sexcapades in Bushnell’s new book exactly what they bargained for. Bushnell will discuss Killing Monica at the Nashville Public Library on June 30, 2015, at 6:15 p.m.

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The Right to Be

With The Book of Aron, Jim Shepard adds another essential volume to the canon of Holocaust fiction

June 24, 2015 “My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done,” writes Jim Shepard at the outset of The Book of Aron. Eight year-old Aron’s precocity and daring prove useful when he joins forces with other Warsaw street urchins to smuggle food and supplies to their families after the Nazis overtake Poland. Shepard will appear in conversation with Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon to discuss The Book of Aron at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 26, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Small-Town Secrets

Annie Barrows takes readers to Depression-era West Virginia, where one family’s unresolved history finally unravels

June 19, 2015 Though Annie Barrows is also a successful children’s book writer, she is best known for being the co-author of the 2008 bestseller The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Now Barrows is back with The Truth According to Us, a Southern novel about the Depression-era town of Macedonia, West Virginia. Barrows will discuss her new novel at the Nashville Public Library on June 25, 2015, at 6:15 p.m.

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All the World’s a Stage-Six Pandemic

Emily St. John Mandel talks with Chapter 16 about the role of art in what makes us human

June 18, 2015 While most contemporary writers of post-apocalyptic fiction trace their literary lineage to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Emily St. John Mandel reached back to Shakespeare’s King Lear in writing her own bestselling novel, Station Eleven. Mandel will read from the novel’s paperback release at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 24, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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