NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Family drama and the legacy of slavery haunt this epic tale of an enigmatic stranger in Jefferson, Mississippi—from one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century. 

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works...

Caroline Dawson grieves over the death of her husband, who was thirty years her senior, but when his son, Rink, returns to settle the estate, Caroline can only remember how Rink broke her heart when they were teenagers.

Ward (Salvage the Bones) tells the story of three generations of a struggling Mississippi family in this astonishing novel. "We don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once." This is the explanation 13-year-old Jojo is provided by his grandmother, the family matriarch, on her deathbed. "I'll be on the other side of the door," she reassures him, "With everybody else that's gone before." Jojo and his little...

"Mississippi librarian Charlie Harris and his Maine Coon cat, Diesel, are on their guard. Oscar Reilly, the new director at the Athena College library, is on a mission to cut costs and has set his sights on the archive and rare book collection. Reilly's also out to replace Charlie's fiery friend Melba with someone younger, but his biggest offense is declaring all four-legged creatures banned from the stacks. With enemies aplenty, the suspect list...

Ain't She Sweet? Not exactly . . . The girl everybody loves to hate has returned to the town she'd sworn to leave behind forever. As the rich, spoiled princess of Parrish, Mississippi, Sugar Beth Carey had broken hearts, ruined friendships, and destroyed reputations. But fifteen years have passed, and life has taught Sugar Beth its toughest lessons. Now she's come home-broke, desperate, and too proud to show it. The people of Parrish don't believe...

"In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood palls in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day.... But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie, and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed... and was never charged. More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable....

Warned by the local Dixie underworld to keep silent after witnessing a murder, daredevil diver Dennis Lenahan is recruited by Detroit gangster Robert Taylor for a showdown that takes place during a Civil War reenactment.

"Set in 1923, Delta Wedding tells the story of the Fairchilds, a big and clamorous family, who live on a plantation in the Mississippi delta. They are in the midst of planning their daughter's wedding when a nine-year-old relative, Laura McRaven, whose mother has just died, comes to visit. Drama leads to drama, revelation to revelation, in a novel that is "nothing short of wonderful" (The New Yorker). The result is a sometimes-riotous view of a Southern...

In post-World War II Mississippi, two families, one white and one black, struggle to survive in the Jim Crow south. "In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm--a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land....

"In the charming small town of Cherico, Mississippi, the Cherry Cola Book Club meets to discuss classic Southern literature, sample favorite dishes--and share their unique stories. Two wonderful new chapters are unfolding for Maura Beth Mayhew, Cherico's librarian. Thanks to her persistence, a new, cutting-edge library is being built on the shores of beautiful Lake Cherico. And come September, Maura Beth will marry Jeremy McShay at his aunt and uncle's...