Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Rook

Rook

Rook

Sharon Cameron
Scholastic Press
464 pages
$17.99

“Centuries after a shifting of the Earth’s poles, the Sunken City that was once Paris is in the grips of a revolution. All who oppose the new regime are put to the blade, except for those who disappear from their prison cells, a red-tipped rook feather left in their place. Is the mysterious Red Rook a savior of the innocent or a criminal?”

–From the publisher

Finley Flowers: Nature Calls

Finley Flowers: Nature Calls

Finley Flowers: Nature Calls

Jessica Young
Picture Window Books
128 pages
$8.95

“When nature calls and the girls get lost on the way to the restrooms, Finley’s spooky ghost story comes back to haunt them. As they work together to find a creative way home, Finley discovers that there’s more than one way to be tough.”

–From the publisher

One Night

One Night

One Night

Eric Jerome Dickey
Dutton
368 pages
$26.95

“For one night, a couple checks in to an upscale hotel. The pair seem unlikely companions, from opposing strata of society, but their attraction is palpable to all who observe them—or overhear their cries of passion. In the course of twelve hours, con games, erotic interludes, jealousy, violence, and murder swirl around them. Will they part ways in bliss, in sorrow, or in death?”

–From the publisher

Hidden Treasure, a Haunted House, and an Unlikely Trio of Detectives

In this debut novel, a boy braves bullies and worse to try to save his family home

April 13, 2015 In Matthew Baker’s debut middle-grade novel, If You Find This, eleven-year-old Nicholas breaks his grandfather out of a nursing home and enlists the aid of two unlikely allies to find the family heirlooms his grandfather insists he hid years earlier—all to keep his parents from having to sell their family home. Baker will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.; and again in Furman Hall, Room 114, at Vanderbilt University on April 20, 2015, at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

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L.A. Dark

In Sweet Nothing, mystery writer Richard Lange draws terse poetry from the lives of downtrodden Angelinos

April 10, 2015 Recovering drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, teenage mothers of teenage mothers, alcoholic philanderers—these are Richard Lange’s people. In his new collection, Sweet Nothing, Lange improbably draws elegant poetry and tragic, lingering beauty out of the thwarted, misbegotten denizens of twenty-first century Los Angeles. He will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis at 6:30 p.m. on April 17, 2015.

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A Finely Drawn Character

Robert Gipe’s illustrated debut novel, Trampoline, introduces a troubled teen coming of age during an Appalachian coal war

April 7, 2015 It’s been a while since anyone produced a great American coming-of-age-novel, but Kingsport native Robert Gipe hits the mark with Trampoline, an inventive debut set in the coal country of Eastern Kentucky. Narrator Dawn Jewell, fifteen, is as smart as Scout Finch, more profane than Holden Caulfield, and as tough in a fight as Mattie Ross. Gipe tells her story not only in flawless prose but also with 220 comics-style drawings that keep the book grounded in the world of an Appalachian teenager.

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