Fiction | Chapter 16

Legal Literature

In an interview with Chapter 16, Scott Turow discusses Jeff Bezos, Monica Lewinsky, Warren Zevon, and his latest legal thriller, Identical

By Michael Ray Taylor | November 3, 2014

November 3, 2014 With nine bestselling novels and two books of nonfiction, Scott Turow, recipient of the 2014 Nashville Public Library Literary Award, has proven himself a master of the legal thriller. His latest novel, Identical, explores questions of betrayal, family, and identity set against the sweeping political backdrop for which his books are famous. In connection with his acceptance of the NPL award, Turow will appear at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on November 8, 2014, at 10 a.m. The event is free and open to the public.

A Stubborn, Gentle-Hearted Survivor

Robert Bausch talks with Chapter 16 about his novel of the old West, Far As the Eye Can See

By Maria Browning | October 31, 2014

October 31, 2014 Bobby Hale, the protagonist of Robert Bausch’s Far As the Eye Can See, is a stubborn survivor and a bit of a con man but essentially a gentle soul. Caught up in the movement westward after the Civil War, Hale struggles to find some sort of human connection in a violent, unforgiving environment. Robert Bausch will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on November 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.

Breathing Another Country’s Air

Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the inaugural selection for Memphis Reads, reveals the complexity of the immigrant experience

By Maria Browning | October 30, 2014

October 30, 2014 Sepha Stephanos, the immigrant protagonist of Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, is not the archetypal ambitious newcomer, striving for American success. He’s a sensitive, troubled man bewildered by life in a culture not his own. The novel is the inaugural selection for Memphis’s first city-wide read. On November 4, 2014, Mengestu will visit Memphis to discuss the book at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and Christian Brothers University. Both events are free and open to the public.

A Surveyor in the Back of Beyond

Ron Rash’s Something Rich and Strange reveals a master storyteller charting his terrain

By Emily Choate | October 28, 2014

October 28, 2014 Ron Rash has achieved wide recognition as a masterful craftsperson, and Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories will seal that reputation. This collection, drawn from more than twenty years of stories set in the Southern Appalachians, confirms Rash as that landscape’s foremost literary mapmaker and guide. Ron Rash will discuss Something Rich and Strange at The Skillery in Nashville on November 4, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Mother Love

In her latest novel, The Midwife, Jolina Petersheim ponders what it means to be a mother

By Faye Jones | October 23, 2014

October 23, 2014 In Dry Hollow, Tennessee, Hopen Haus takes in unwed pregnant women, and head midwife Rhoda Mummau struggles to provide the best care for them even as she keeps the whole Mennonite community at arm’s length to protect a secret from her own past. For her new novel, The Midwife, Jolina Petersheim taps her Mennonite heritage to consider the question of what exactly makes a woman a mother.

My (Fictional) Home

I learned to be a serious novelist when I moved to Tennessee

By Tasha Alexander | October 20, 2014

October 20, 2014 After college, I moved a dozen times—from Indiana to New Jersey, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee—before settling in Chicago. Each of these places etched themselves on my psyche, but Nashville, with its fruit tea, tangy barbeque, and hot chicken, was the place where I learned to be a writer.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning