Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

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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Quick Wit

Novelist Matthew Quick talks with Chapter 16 about teachers, humor, Hollywood, and his new book, Love May Fail

June 16, 2015 In Matthew Quick’s Love May Fail, the sixth novel from the author of The Silver Linings Playbook, a woman leaves a failed marriage in Florida to return to her South Jersey roots, where she discovers how a high school teacher played a profound role in shaping her life. Quick will discuss Love May Fail at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 19, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Observations from the Field

Euphoria author Lily King discusses the risks involved in translating real-life anthropologists into fictional characters

June 15, 2015 In her acclaimed novel, Euphoria, Lily King draws from the life of Margaret Mead to create a story of three fictional anthropologists propelled into a passionate and dangerous love triangle. Lily King will discuss Euphoria at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 17, at 6:30 p.m.

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Lawyers in Love

With The Jezebel Remedy, Martin Clark delivers another taut, comic thriller

June 10, 2015 According to The New York Times Magazine, Martin Clark is “not only the thinking man’s John Grisham, but, maybe better, the drinking man’s John Grisham.” In The Jezebel Remedy, Clark introduces Joe and Lisa Stone, small-town Virginia lawyers who are partners in business and in life. When a client turns up dead, the Stones’ investigation pits them against a Big Pharma billionaire whose ruthlessness threatens to destroy both their careers and their marriage. Martin Clark will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 15, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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