Katherine Neville Author of The Fire

What do the Ottoman Empire, a chess set, Charlemagne and computers have in common? You’ll have to read Katherine Neville’s just released novel The Fire to find out. The long-awaited sequel to her 1988 debut novel The Eight, The Fire blends romance, the supernatural, history and mystery. In The Eight, Neville introduced us to a computer expert caught up in the search for a magical chess set once owned by Charlemagne. The Fire picks the story up 30 years later and stars the computer expert’s grown-up daughter, a former chess prodigy, who finds that her mother is missing. The story also weaves in the tale of her historical counterpart from the 1820s, an Albanian girl caught up in Europe’s political spasms.

Before she was a writer, Neville worked as a computer executive, photographer, portrait painter, waiter and model, and she draws from all these experiences in her writing, so her wide-ranging plot elements come to her naturally. 7 p.m. Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-523-0701 or visit www.brazosbookstore.com. Free.
Wed., Nov. 19, 7 p.m., 2008