Mississippi Authors

Memorial Drive

“This is one of those "I'm changed forever" books and having the author, poet Natasha Trethewey read it makes it reverberate in the soul even more. The writing of this memoir is exquisite and the construction of the prose is perfect. The heartbreak and honesty of the author will stay with me. I can't wait to hear back from those I've recommended it to, they're in for a special experience.”

Jen, Beagle and Wolf Books & Bindery

Heavy

“"I wanted to write a lie," Kiese Laymon says in the opening pages of his brutal, beautiful memoir, Heavy. The book is written in the second person, addressed to his mother, with whom Laymon shares a turbulent, intimate relationship. She feeds his mind with books, but critiques the way Laymon feeds his body as he struggles with his weight. She is his best friend, yet demands excellence through regular beatings. And yet, Laymon's complicated love for his mother is absolute. It is palpable in his voice as he reads the words he wrote for his mother, as he tells you his story of being a black boy, a black man, in Mississippi and America. This is a book that will knock you flat on your back. This is a book that will make you sob in the grocery store. Laymon had me captivated from the very first word he spoke. It was a privilege to listen.”

Maggie, Square Books

In this brilliant novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donna Tartt gives us a richly textured and hypnotic story of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance.

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life --...

Always Happy Hour weaves tales of young women who are deeply flawed, intensely real, and who struggle to get out of their own way. These women love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who love them too much or too little; they haunt gas stations, public pools, and dive bars, seeking understanding in the most unlikely of...

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The... Read more »

A blistering novel of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta.

The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to... Read more »

Murder breaks through the racial divide that separates two teenage girls, forging an unlikely friendship in this Southern debut that’s perfect for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don’t Rise.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her unbearable life on the swamp, and to her harsh father in Mississippi. But...

From one of America's most beloved sportswriters, a collection of true stories about the dream of greatness and its cost in the world of sports. "Wright Thompson's stories are so full of rich characters, bad actors, heroes, drama, suffering, courage, conflict, and vivid detail that I sometimes thinks he's working my side of the street - the... Read more »

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year
A finalist of the for the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing.

By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black...

Sheriff Quinn Colson and his former deputy Lillie Virgil find themselves on opposite sides of a case for the first time after a woman is found dead and three delinquent teens go on the run.

Before he was an Army Ranger who came home to become Tibbehah County Sheriff and take down a corrupt system, Quinn Colson was a kid who got into trouble--a... Read more »

Stephen Luckie isn't so lucky in love. He's completely inexperienced when it comes to girls and wonders if his tics—caused by Tourette's Syndrome—are the reason. Then a game at a party reveals that his body goes still while kissing. Using the scientific method drilled into him by his scientist father, Steven begins the best experiment ever—one... Read more »

“The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling….A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind.”— David Wroblewski

“A new Tom Franklin novel is always a reason to get excited, but Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is more—a cause for celebration. What...

The Hate U Give

“This bestselling, powerful young adult novel about social justice and one teen girl's effort to fight for what is right, will leave you breathless. The narration by Bahni Turpin is hands down the best I've ever heard. This is such an important book it should be required reading for life in general. Or listening. Definitely listening.”

Kristen, Tattered Cover

"Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso."—Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno

From a supremely talented...

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s timeless lectures that became a New York Times bestselling classic regarded as a “profound and priceless as guidance for anyone who aspires to write” (Los Angeles Times).

Born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty shares details of her upbringing that show us how her family and her... Read more »

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... Read more »

This darkly comedic novel centers around a day in the life of an exhausted middle-aged hackie who’s about to lose his job to Uber, his girlfriend to lethargy, and his ability to stand upright to chronic back spasms. Lou—a lapsed novelist and UFO enthusiast who has returned to his home state of Mississippi after decades away—drives for a...

Bestselling travel writer Richard Grant “sensitively probes the complex and troubled history of the oldest city on the Mississippi River through the eyes of a cast of eccentric and unexpected characters” (Newsweek).

Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and... Read more »

Sing, Unburied, Sing

“Sing, Unburied, Sing is a dark and gorgeous song of love and heartbreak, haunting and tragic and disorienting in its timelessness. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill anchors Ward's tale to Mississippi today, which is almost indistinguishable from its notorious yesterday, a present and past (ironically) made more alive in the novel by ghosts and where everyone suffers from the cancers of buried sins. On Jojo's 13th birthday, while Mam is dying and Pop struggles to keep everyone safe, Leonie plans a road trip to the prison to pick up Michael, Jojo and baby Kayla's father. It's The Odyssey meets the Delta blues meets William Faulkner and Toni Morrison and some ineffable something that is Jesmyn Ward's own magic.”

Sara Hinckley, Hudson Booksellers

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Investigator Lacy Stoltz follows the trail of a serial killer, and closes in on a shocking suspect—a sitting judge—in “one of the best crime reads of the year.... Bristling with high-tech detail and shivering with suspense.... Worth staying up all night to finish” (Wall Street Journal).
    
In The Whistler, Lacy... Read more »