Winner of the 2021 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction A searing debut novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi. An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby’s community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act. As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare’s guilt—and of the townsfolks’ potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss. Some Go Home twists together personal and collective history, binding north Mississippi to northside Chicago, in a richly textured, explosive depiction of both the American South and our larger cultural legacy.

Gordon Korman’s uproarious, outrageous, and all-too-familiar summer camp adventure is BACK! Rudy Miller really isn’t into the whole camping thing. So when his parents send him to Camp Algonkian “for his own good” all he wants to do is go home. Rudy teams up with his cabin-mate Mike for a series of carefully planned — yet hilariously bungled — escape attempts. Unfortunately, their counsellor (and nemesis) Chip is as determined to keep them there as they are to get away. Rudy and Mike spend their days plotting, playing chess, and working off punishments for their failed escapes. Hmmm, maybe it isn’t such a bad way to spend the summer after all . . .

This "thrilling" novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi "has the grit, power, and soul of Janis Joplin and the hardscrabble depth of Johnny Cash." (Randall Kenan) An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby’s community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act. As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare’s guilt—and of the townsfolks’ potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss. Some Go Home twists together personal and collective history, binding north Mississippi to northside Chicago, in a richly textured, explosive depiction of both the American South and our larger cultural legacy.

A homeless cat spends several seasons trying to survive the elements until at last a suburban family adopts him.

A gay man returns to his conservative hometown in a tale of memory and murder inspired by true events: “An emotionally resonant, page-turning story.”—Booklist Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author’s own experiences working in his family’s provincial Indiana restaurant, and wrestling with his sexual orientation, in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s. Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels’ Family Buffet for his ailing father. Understanding that knowledge of his sexuality may reap disastrous results on his family's half-century-old restaurant legacy—a popular Sunday dinner spot for the after-church crowd—Grey struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life. But he is truly put to the test when his former high school lover—and fellow classmate of the murdered student—returns to town as the youth pastor and choir director of the local fundamentalist Christian church. Some Go Hungry is the story of a man forced to choose between the happiness of others and his own joy, all the while realizing that compromising oneself—sacrificing your soul for the sake of others—is not living, but death. “This literary mystery follows Grey Daniels on a return trip to his hometown of Fort Sackville, Indiana where, decades earlier, one of his gay classmates was brutally murdered. While visiting, Grey must confront a painful past riddled in homophobia, secrets, religious hypocrisy and fear.”—Queerty “Some Go Hungry is at its best when confronting religious prejudice, and is even pulse-quickening when the narrator sits through one of his friend's sermons aimed directly at him....Only someone who has grown up in rural America could write so convincingly of the pressures there. It's also refreshing to find a book that relates the experience of being gay somewhere other than in a large city.”—Gay & Lesbian Review “Tells an important tale that in some ways is timeless, and in other ways could have been ripped from today's headlines.”—Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama

“Do you remember Savannah?” How could she forget? Two decades ago, Trinity Calhoun's best friend—18-year-old Savannah Stuart—went missing. Just weeks later, Savannah’s body was found brutally slain outside the mountain town. With no suspects or leads, the local authorities dismissed the murder as a tragic one-off, likely perpetrated by a tourist. But Trinity wasn’t convinced. Determined to do better for other victims, she left town and settled in Vancouver, rising through the ranks to become a detective. She’s never looked back. But now, an unexpected phone call from her former lover has her barreling down the highway to face the past. Another young woman has disappeared under eerily similar circumstances. Allegedly. But the local police are disinterested. Trinity’s ex has a tenuous—at best—hold on his mental and physical health. And Savannah’s secretive and handsome brother is in town, asking an awful lot of questions. Trinity’s focus is clouded. Maybe her judgment, too. As she wades through her past, she needs to answer a potentially life-threatening question: is there a dangerous, repeat criminal on the loose, or is she just desperate for closure?

Osborne joined the Confederate Army in the spring of 1861. He had no idea what he was getting into. Before he was captured in April 1865, he had been in numerous battles. In his diaries, he constantly complained about the miles and miles of marching through the countryside. He and his fellow soldiers seldom had enough food or supplies. He helped scour battlefields after the fighting, searching for food, weapons, ammunition, and supplies. Letter writing was an everyday ocurrence. Often his poor health required him to help guard the ammunition train or aid with the sick and wounded in various hospitals. Some of his writings about fighting, especially at Antietam and Gettysburg, make us wonder how any of the soldiers survived the war.

Brett’s most recent manic episode has derailed him from life as the director of operations at a prominent software start-up in Texas. He is now at home, fully dependent on his mother, and officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Brett is terrified. He has no guarantees on his long-term health, no understanding of how his medication works and is still dealing with hell-like anxiety, restlessness, mania, and depression. Crossing Back Over: The Practice of Owning and Accepting Bipolar Disorder details Brett’s battle with taming the beast that is bipolar. Written in the same style as part 1 of his story, Crossover: A Look inside a Manic Mind, Crossing Back Over sheds light on what true recovery looks and feels like from a firsthand account. No matter the environment, recovering from a serious event takes hard work, discipline, patience, and acceptance. Crossing Back Over allows the reader to peek behind the curtain of an individual determined to find a happy life, even with his chronic brain disorder. This book is valuable for anyone who is facing a deeply personal challenge.

Do we belong to the Earth or does the Earth belong to us? The question raised by Chief Seathl almost two centuries ago continues to be the defining quandary of the wet, wild rainforests along the shores of the Pacific Northwest. It seethes below the tides of the fictional town of Good River Harbor, a little village pressed against the mountains—homeland to bears, whales, and a few weather–worn families. In Piano Tide, the debut novel by award–winning naturalist, philosopher, activist and author Kathleen Dean Moore, we are introduced to town father Axel Hagerman, who has made a killing in this remote Alaskan harbor by selling off the spruce, the cedar, the herring and halibut. But when he decides to export the water from a salmon stream, he runs head–long into young Nora Montgomery, just arrived on the ferry with her piano and her dog. Nora has burned her bridges in the lower 48, and she aims to disappear into this new homeland, with her piano as her anchor. But when Axel's next business proposition, a bear pit, turns lethal, Nora has to act. The clash, when it comes, is a spectacular and transformative act of resistance.