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Mississippi Books and Writers
1997
Note: Prices listed below reflect the publisher's suggested list price. They are subject to change without notice.
Poems by James Seay
Louisiana State University Press (Hardcover: $22.95, ISBN: 0807121290; Paperback: $15.95, ISBN: 0807121304)
Publication date: January 1997
Description:
This superb collection of new and older work shows James Seay’s sure progress from the reflection of first influences to the strongly individual voice of his later pieces. As always, Seay evokes a profound sense of history and place — the landscape, colors, scents, and musical vocal cadences of his native South and the world at large.
The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words
By Oprah Winfrey, Edited by Bill Adler
Birch Lane Press (Hardcover, $14.95, ISBN: 1559724196)
Publication date: January 1997
Description:
In an intriguing biography, Oprah talks about losing
weight, her experimentation with drugs, her childhood, her illegitimate child,
her relationship to her family, and her uneasiness with the public’s continued
fascination with her.
A Goyen Companion: Appreciations of a Writer’s Writer
By William Goyen; Edited by Brooke Horvath, Irving Malin, and Paul Ruffin
University of Texas Press (Hardcover, $37.50, ISBN: 0292731167)
Publication date: January 1997
Description:
William Goyen was known as a “writer’s
writer,” one of those whose skill endeared him to a small but appreciative
audience. He was a Texan who wrote short stories and novels, perhaps most notably
The House of Breath. In this collection of more than 20 essays, such
fans as Madison Smartt Bell, James Merrill, Ned Rorem, and Joyce Carol Oates
offer critical essays about Goyen’s work and personal tributes to him
as a man. The testimonials are often moving, and do much to encourage serious
readers to investigate Goyen’s body of work.
Juvenile Fiction by Margaree King Mitchell; Illustrated by Larry Johnson
Bridgewater Books (ISBN: 0816740100)
Publication date: February 1997
Mortal Fear
A Novel by Greg Iles
E.P. Dutton ($24.95, ISBN: 0525937927)
Publication date: February 1997
Description:
Harper Cole’s a hacker at heart, and indulges a number of vices at once by running an erotic electronic bulletin board from his country home on the Mississippi Delta. Unfortunately, a serial killer is also indulging himself—and using Harper’s service to find his victims. When Harper discovers that a woman who stopped logging on to his board has been brutally murdered in New Orleans, he goes to the police, only to find that several other former users have also died violently. Under suspicion himself, Harper must use all the online wizardry at his disposal to trick and capture a brilliant, kinky killer.
The Partner
A Novel by John Grisham
Doubleday ($26.95, ISBN: 0385472951)
Publication date: February 1997
Description:
Literary slugger John Grisham returns with a story about—surprise!—a lawyer in trouble. Patrick Lanigan had been a young partner in a prominent Southern law firm. He had a beautiful wife, a new baby girl, and a bright future. Then one winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car; the casket they buried held nothing but ashes.
A short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial then fled. A fortune was stolen from his ex-firm’s offshore account. And Patrick ran, covering his tracks the whole way.
But, now, they’ve found him.
Watching Our Crops Come In
Nonfiction by Clifton L. Taulbert
Viking ($15.95, ISBN: 0670859524)
Publication date: February 1997
Description:
The author of The Last Train North and the acclaimed memoir and film When We Were Colored now recalls the emerging civil rights era and the ordinary people who changed the South.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Puffin (Paperback, $5.99, ISBN: 0140384510)
Publication date: February 1997 (reprint edition)
Description from Midwest Book Review:
Cassie’s family faces a real challenge: to
hold on to land in the South during the Depression. Her father works away from
home and her mother works and runs the family farm. Lynne Thigpen dramatizes
this excellent classic story of a black family’s struggles to remain independent
and proud against all obstacles.
Endangered Species
A Novel by Nevada Barr
Putnam (Hardcover; $22.95, ISBN: 0399142460)
Publication date: March 1997
Description:
Park ranger Anna Pigeon investigates the crash
of the drug-interdiction plane on an isolated Georgia island in Nevada Barr’s
spectacular new mystery. Was it an accident or sabotage that downed the plane,
killing both the pilot and his passenger? Pressed into service, it’s up to
Anna and her crew to solve the mystery.
The Runaway Jury
A Novel by John Grisham
Dell (Paperback Reprint Edition; $7.99, ISBN: 0440221471)
Publication date: March 1997
Description:
Millions of dollars are at stake in a huge tobacco-company
case in Biloxi, and the jury’s packed with people who have dirty little secrets.
A mysterious young man takes subtle control of the jury as the defense watches
helplessly, but they soon realize that he in turn is controlled by an even
more mysterious young woman. Lives careen off course as they bend everyone
in the case to their will.
We Aint What We Was: Civil Rights in the New South
Nonfiction by Frederick M. Wirt
Duke University Press (Hardcover: $49.94, ISBN: 0822319012; Paperback: $16.95, ISBN: 0822318938)
Publication date: March 1997
Coming of Age in Mississippi
Autobiography by Anne Moody
Reprint Edition
Laureleaf (Mass Market Paperback; $6.99, ISBN: 0440314887)
Publication date: March 1997
Description:
Written without a trace of sentimentality or apology, this is an unforgettable personal story — the truth as a remarkable young woman named Anne Moody lived it. To read her book is to know what it is to have grown up black in Mississippi in the forties an fifties — and to have survived with pride and courage intact.
In this now classic autobiography, she details
the sights, smells, and suffering of growing up in a racist society and candidily
reveals the soul of a black girl who had the courage to challenge it. The
result is a touchstone work: an accurate, authoritative portrait of black
family life in the rural South and a moving account of a woman’s indomitable
heart.
Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis
Nonfiction by Charles Reagan Wilson
University of Georgia Press (Paperback: $14.95,
ISBN: 0820319074)
Publication date: March 1997 (Reprint edition)
Description:
In the essays collected in Judgment and Grace in Dixie, Charles Reagan Wilson makes a lively appraisal of religion’s influence on such expressions of regional life as literature, music, and folk art, as well as on such public spectacles as football games and beauty pageants. Wilson’s focus is on popular religion — evangelical Protestantism as embraced at the grassroots level, where distinctions between the sacred and secular are blurred and belief in the supernatural remains strong. As he traces the development and meaning of popular religion, Wilson ranges widely across a spiritual landscape rich in accumulations of people, places, events, and artifacts: church fans and Elvis Presley memorabilia, an African-American graveyard in the Mississippi Delta and a 27,000 member Baptist congregation in Dallas, the paintings of Howard Finster and the songs of Hank Williams, the Scopes trial and the death of Bear Bryant.
Great Quotes from Zig Ziglar
By Zig Ziglar
Great Quotes Series
Career Press (Paperback; $7.99, ISBN: 1564142892)
Publication date: March 1997
Description:
Zig Ziglar, the master of motivation and inspiration,
has helped millions of people achieve their goals. His advice on rising to
the top, overcoming barriers, attaining success, and developing an optimistic,
healthy attitude, plus much more, is revealed in this invaluable book.
By Caroline Burnes (Carolyn Haines)
Harlequin (Paperback, ISBN: 0373224095)
Publication date: March 1997
Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War
By Howard Bahr
Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America (Hardcover, ISBN: 187785350X)
Publication date: April 1997
Description from Kirkus Reviews (1 February 1997)
Bahr makes an impressive debut with a haunting tale of a brief but bloody encounter on the road to Nashville, which helped put paid to the Confederate cause in the latter stages of America’s Civil War. Although a university graduate, Bushrod Carter is a private soldier in the 21st Mississippi, a storied regiment in the battered Southern army commanded by General John Bell Hood. Scattered by Sherman’s march to the sea, Bushrod and his fellow veterans (wearied by three years of unremitting combat) find themselves facing fresh Union forces outside Franklin, Tenn., in late November of 1864. Ordered to attack, they advance across an open field to meet their entrenched foe on a fine autumn afternoon. After a fierce battle (seen only through the eyes of women and children in the farmstead Rebel officers have requisitioned as a hospital), the real horrors begin. Bandsmen bearing wounded from the battlefield by the light of guttering torches find Bushrod (who’s sustained a concussion and lost a finger) almost by chance beneath a pile of corpses, but his two best friends did not survive the engagement.
Meantime, under cover of darkness, scavengers roam the killing ground stripping the dead of their valuables, and a former teacher crazed by the carnage prays that God will forgive the South. Apparently little the worse for wear, Bushrod eventually manages to locate and bury his dead mates. Assisting him in this sad business is Anna Hereford, a relative visiting the family that owns the farm. While nearly dehumanized by what he’s been through, the young — and doomed — rifleman feels attracted to Anna, who warily returns his interest. He soon follows his fallen comrades, however, leaving Anna to grieve for what might have been. A bleakly effective and economical account of men and women caught up in a bestial conflict. Copyright © 1997 Kirkus Associates, LP.
The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth
Nonfiction by Peter Cozzens
Civil War America Series
University of North Carolina Press (Hardcover, $39.95, ISBN: 0807823201)
Publication date: April 1997
A Novel by Ellen Douglas
Louisiana State Univ Press (Paperback, $14.95, ISBN: 0807121630)
Publication date: April 1997 (Reprint edition, originally published in 1961)
Painted Desert
A Novel by Frederick Barthelme
Reprint Edition
Penguin (Paperback, $11.95, ISBN: 0140242147)
Publication date: April 1997
Description:
Barthelme launches two characters from his acclaimed
novel The Brothers on a wild and haunting road trip into the interactive
heart of contemporary American culture. Net novitiate Jen and her channel-surfing
boyfriend, Del, decide they need step out of cyberspace and take a look at
the real world—from an online encounter with a psychopath to an epiphany
in the Arizona desert.
A Children’s Book by Sterling Plumpp; illustrated by Adjoa J. Burrowes
Third World Press (Paperback, $5.95, ISBN: 0883780658)
Publication date: April 1997 (Reprint edition, originally published in 1961)
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
Nonfiction by John M. Barry
Simon & Schuster (Hardcover, $27.50, ISBN: 0684810468)
Publication date: April 1997
Description:
The author of The Ambition and the Power
now dissects the story behind the great Mississippi River flood of 1927—an
untold American epic of money, race, culture, and empire in New Orleans and
the Delta, and of one family—the Longs—whose members ruled a state,
hunted with presidents, and defeated the Ku Klux Klan.
By Penelope J. Stokes
Tynedale House (Paperback, $10.99, ISBN: 0842308520)
Publication date: April 1997 (Reprint edition, originally published in 1961)
Description:
The continuing story of love and faith during WWII.
The opportunity to write these novels was such a gift to me — as one friend joked, “It’s not every day that a person gets the chance to rewrite her family.” These books contain everything that is important to me in my own life — love, faith, humor, and the ability to experience the divine presence in the most difficult of circumstances. My characters are quite real to me, and I trust they will become real to my readers as well.
Richard Wright Reader
Edited by Ellen Wright and Michel Fabre
Reprint Edition
Da Capo Press (Paperback, $22.50, ISBN: 0306807742)
Publication date: April 1997
Description:
Although it includes excerpts of only some of Richard
Wright’s most famous works, such as his memoir Black Boy and
his seminal novel, Native Son, this is a fine introduction to the man
and his work. Edited by Wright’s wife, Ellen, and by Wright biographer Michel
Fabre, the reader shows the depth and breadth of Wright’s literary legacy.
Included are short stories, excerpts from novels, poetry, memoirs, journalism,
and a small sampling of correspondence. Fabre provides an introduction that
glosses Wright’s work and sets him in the context of his times.
The Waterborn
Ballantine (Mass Mark Paperback, $5.99, ISBN: 0345396707)
Publication date: April 1997
Description:
It’s that story again: unsophisticated adolescent boy, spunky, curious princess, large landscape for them to tour, troublesome deities, a magic sword. J. Gregory Keyes’s knowledge of epics, myths, and human cultures is a solid foundation for his series, making it far better than the average product: a story that might have happened sometime between the Ice Ages when numinous deities still dwelled in every tree, rock, and pool. The detailed social structures and customs feel more authentic, though they’re also familiar—the urban monotheists, the shamanistic horseback nomads, and so on. The writing is workmanlike, but the anthropological soundness and echoes of ancient stories give life and dimension to the old archetypes.
The Blackgod
Del Rey (Hardcover, $24.00, ISBN: 0345403940)
Publication date: April 1997
Description:
This sequel to The Waterborn doesn’t stand alone. Together these two books make a complete adventure; they’re exciting, absorbing reading. Hezhi and Perkar cannot easily resolve their respective personal, magical, and supernatural problems, and the Blackgod, Karak, has his own plans for them as well. Their battle with the Rivergod is not over and the resulting conflict on every level wracks the princess and her hero, straining their friendship and alliances with everyone. They learn to make decisions, not on impulse, but knowing the costs of their choices and accepting them.
Nonfiction by Rick Bass, Illustrated by Elizabeth Hughes
Norton (Paperback, $12.00, ISBN: 0393314871)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
On long weekends, Rick Bass drives away from Jackson, Mississippi, and the job that confines him. His excursions take him to southern rivers, southern swamps, and sometimes to conservation meetings. Through thirteen essays written in a style compared to Thoreau, Muir, and Annie Dillard, Bass records his meanderings in a lyrical exploration of wildness and freedomin nature and in ourselves.
The Band Played Dixie: Race and the Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss
Nonfiction by Nadine Cohodas
Free Press (Hardcover, $27.50, ISBN: 0684827212)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
Cohodas returns to the University of Mississippi 35 years after federal troops were sent there to enforce the enrollment of black student James Meredith. Using the violent struggles of the 1960s as a focal point of its history, this penetrating portrait of “Ole Miss” provides a frank and startling glimpse into a seemingly unbridgeable chasm in American culture, between the fantasies of the liberal conscience and the reality of deeply rooted racial tension.
Extinct
A Novel by Charles Wilson
St. Martin’s Press (Paperback, $6.50, ISBN: 0312962126)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
From the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow waters to the deepest parts of the Pacific, terror comes to the surface when six-year-old Paul Haines sees two older boys disappear under the surf. His mother, Carolyn, a charter boat captain on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, finds herself embroiled in the tragedy to an extent she could never have imagined. Soon to be an NBC miniseries.
Margaret Cape
A Novel by Wylene Dunbar
Harcourt Brace (Hardcover, $23.00, ISBN: 0151002487)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
Margaret Finley is an outsider when she comes to Mississippi, to marry Big John Cape, a Southern plantation owner many years her senior. When Big John dies, she is childless and alone, leaving the town agog a few years later when she marries Big John’s son. Redolent with the sights and smells of the Mississippi Delta and heavy with the atmosphere of its society, Margaret Cape knits together the South’s evolution with Margaret’s determination to remain whole and independent.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Buccaneer Books (Hardcover, $27.95, ISBN: 1568493606)
Publication date: May 1997
Biography by Patrick Samway
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (Hardcover, $35.00, ISBN: 0374187355)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
When he won the National Book Award in 1962 for his first novel, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy quickly established a wide and devoted following. This biography, written with Percy’s assistance, tracks the unexpected twists and complexities of his career.
A Novel by Cynthia Shearer
Vintage (Paperback, $12.00, ISBN: 0679758364)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
In electrifying prose and with a rare generosity of feeling, this dramatic and piercing debut novel tells the story of the fractured lives of three generations of one Southern family. “Magnificent ... brims with characters who seem truer than life.” —Kaye Gibbons.
Reaching the Top: Secrets of Closing the Sale, Top Performance: Using the Art of Persuasion to Develop Excellence in Yourself and Others
By Zig Ziglar
Budget Book Service (Paperback, $12.99, ISBN: 0883659883)
Publication date: May 1997
Description:
Zig Ziglar, an internationally renowned speaker and authority on high-level performance, offers easy-to-apply methods, techniques, exercises, and tips for reaching the top in any career or endeavor. Rich with amusing anecdotes and vivid illustrations, this anthology is a resourceful guide to maximizing one’s powers of persuasion and ability to bring out the best in everyone. 58 line drawings.
Odd Leaves from the Life of a Louisiana Swamp Doctor
Sketches by Henry Clay Lewis, Introduction by by Edwin T. Arnold
Louisiana State University Press (Hardcover, $24.95, ISBN: 0807121851; Paperback, $12.95, ISBN: 0807121673)
Publication date: May 1997
A Place Called Mississippi: Mississippi Narratives
Nonfiction edited by Marion Barnwell
University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $47.50, ISBN: 0878059636)
Publication date: June 1997
Nonfiction edited by James Dickerson
Turner Publishing (1st Edition, Hardcover, $22.95, ISBN: 1570363641)
Publication date: June 1997
Lightning Song
A Novel by Lewis Nordan
Algonquin Books (Hardcover, $18.95, ISBN: 1565120841)
Publication date: June 1997
Description:
Every time lightning strikes in Lewis Nordan’s novel, strange things happen. Lightning strikes, and an old man dies; lightning strikes again and he comes back to life; love affairs begin and end amid the perilous crackle of electrical storms. Young Leroy Dearman inhabits a flat, Mississippi landscape punctuated by singing llamas, wild dogs, and his own eccentric family members: a grandfather who drinks poison, a mother obsessed with the kidnapped Italian politician Aldo Moro, an uncle who seduces his mother, and a father infatuated with an Indian maiden. Leroy himself is tortured by erotic fantasies involving a buxom high school baton twirler. His torment is hardly eased when he discovers his uncle’s cache of skin magazines. When the baton-twirling Circe finally makes Leroy’s dreams come true lightning strikes.
All of this could become a cartoon version of rural Southern life in the hands of a less accomplished writer. But Lewis Nordan hits all the right notes in Lightning Song, delving beneath surface eccentricity to expose the loneliness, the confusion, and the longing for love that dwell in the heart of every character. Funny and sad, its atmosphere as emotionally charged as the air just before a thunderstorm, Lightning Song is a rare and wonderful read.
Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text
A Novel by William Faulkner
Large Print Edition
G.K. Hall (Hardcover, $24.95, ISBN: 078388138X)
Publication date: June 1997
Brief Review:
One of Faulkner’s greatest novels, Absalom, Absalom! recounts the story of Thomas Sutpen, born into a poor farm family in western Virginia in the early 1800s who runs away with plans to create a vast “design” of wealth and power. When he appears in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi (Faulkner’s apocryphal setting for most of his novels), he carves out of the wilderness a vast plantation, marries a local shopkeeper’s daughter, and settles into the life of a planter when his wife bears him two children, Henry and Judith. But when Henry brings home Charles Bon, a classmate from the University of Mississippi, who becomes romantically engaged with Judith, Sutpen’s design begins to unravel. On the eve of the Civil War, Henry spurns his birthright, and together he and Bon leave. It is only after the war, after Henry and Bon have served together in the same regiment throughout the war, that one of the central mysteries of the novel emerges: why did Henry shoot Charles Bon at the gate of Sutpen’s mansion?
The present-day of the novel is 1909-10 and is told primarily by contemporaries, including Rosa Coldfield, the fiercely proud sister of Sutpen’s wife, a spinster who after her sister’s death spurns Sutpen’s rude sexual advances; Jason Compson, a confirmed cynic and nihilist who did not witness the key events befalling the Sutpen family but heard most of them from his father; Quentin Compson, Jason’s son, a romantic young man who is drawn into the Sutpen saga against his will by Rosa Coldfield, but once he is involved he must follow it to its logical end; and Quentin’s roommate at Harvard, the Canadian Shreve McCannon, who along with Quentin feels compelled to complete the saga by any means necessary. These memorable characters not only recount historically factual information about Sutpen’s story; they also freely add to it and change it in order for it to make sense. The novel, then, which is a compelling exploration of Southern history, race, and gender, is likewise a powerful statement about how we interpret the past and impart meaning to it. —John B. Padgett
A Children’s Biography by Sterling Plumpp, illustrated by Adjoa J. Burrowes
Third World Press (Paperback, $5.95, ISBN: 9992881941)
Publication date: June 1997
By Sherwood Bonner, introduction by Jane Turner Censer
Southern Classics Series, Reprint Edition
University of South Carolina Press (Paperback, $14.95, ISBN: 1570031843)
Publication date: June 1997
Description from the publisher:
Originally published in 1878 after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recommended it to Harper and Brothers, Like unto Like marks the emergence of a feminist critique of southern society a full generation before Ellen Glasgow and Kate Chopin published their well-known works. The novel follows a romance between a free-spirited, intellectual southerner, Blythe Herndon, and a former abolitionist and Union soldier, Roger Ellis. Blythe initially sees marriage to an outsider as an escape from the strictures of southern society but soon realizes that even Roger will expect a certain deference from his wife. Over the course of the novel she also comes to acknowledge her inability, despite a desire to be free from convention, to accept Roger’s egalitarian views on race relations, his notions of free love, and his past affair with a married woman.
A coming-of-age story set in the Reconstruction South, Like Unto Like challenges the limitations placed on nineteenth-century women. In addition to warning female readers of the potential dangers of marriage, Bonner depicts the trials of womanhood in the postwar South, recognizes theimportance of race in southern attitudes, and breaks new ground in creating a range of African American characters, some of whom transcend stereotype. Jane Turner Censer’s sensitive introduction to this edition of the novel accords Bonner the long-delayed literary recognition she deserves.
Women With Men: Three Stories
By Richard Ford
Knopf (Hardcover, $23.00, ISBN: 0679454691)
Publication date: June 1997
Description:
From the Pulitzer and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning
author of Independence Day comes a stunning new book of three long
stories: “Jealousy,” originally published in The New Yorker;
“The Womanizer,” published previously in Granta, and an
original story, “The Predicament.”
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the
American West
Nonfiction by Stephen E. Ambrose
Touchstone (Paperback, $17.00, ISBN: 0684826976)
Publication date: June 1997
Description:
See the entry for the hardcover
edition for a brief review from Booklist.
American Political History: Essays on the State of the Discipline
Edited by John F. Marszalek and Wilson D. Miscamble
University of Notre Dame Press (Paperback, $15.00, ISBN: 0268006520)
Publication date: June 1997
Description from the publisher:
The contributors to this volume, all first-rank historians, consider the criticisms that have been levied against political history in the past several decades. They discuss what insights the discipline still produces, what methodologies it uses, and what its future direction should be. Their essays demonstrate how vibrant the field of political history is and how different are current approaches from past emphases on campaigns, elections, and terms of office.
The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado
Nonfiction by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin (Paperback, $13.00, ISBN: 0395857007)
Publication date: July 1997
Description:
Featuring the exhilarating insight which his readers have come to expect, Rick Bass’s account of a relentless search for a species of bear rumored to be extinct is as much a book about humans as it is about bears. Bass is the acclaimed author of Winter and The Ninemile Wolves.
Mercer Univ Press (Paperback, $8.95, ISBN: 0865542139 )
Publication date: July 1997
On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992
Edited by Maryemma Graham
University of Tennessee Press (Hardcover: ISBN: 0870499807; Paperback: ISBN: 0870499815)
Publication date: July 1997
A Place Called Mississippi: Mississippi Narratives
Nonfiction edited by Marion Barnwell
University Press of Mississippi (Paperback, $18.00, ISBN: 0878059644)
Publication date: July 1997
A Legacy of Vengeance
Fiction by John Armistead
Dell (Paperback, $5.50, ISBN: 0440223849)
Publication date: July 1997
Description:
In an explosion of madness, the years of peace between the black and white communities of the Mississippi hill country are shattered. Four men — a preacher, a lawyer, an auto mechanic, and an insurance salesman — have been killed by someone who drives a 1960s white Pontiac. In his search for the killer, Sheriff Bramlett is hurled back to the tumultuous era of high-riders, church burnings and Klansmen. (Previously published by Carroll & Graf.)
A Novel by Jim Fraiser
Black Belt Press (Hardcover, $24.00, ISBN: 1881320693)
Publication date: July 1997
A Handmade Wilderness
Nonfiction by Don Schueler
Houghton-Mifflin (Paperback Reprint Edition, $12.00, ISBN: 0395860229)
Publication date: July 1997
Description:
In 1968, two gay young men—one white, one black—quixotically decided to buy 80 backwoods acres in southern Mississippi, little realizing that they were embarking on the greatest adventure of their lives. Don Schueler’s account of the 25 years that followed, during which he and Willie Brown transformed their “least worst land” into a wild Eden, is a modern saga by turns suspenseful, funny, and deeply moving.
By Sterling Plumpp
Third World Press (Hardcover, ISBN: 088378193X; Paperback, ISBN: 0883781980)
Publication date: July 1997
Nightwatcher
A Novel by Charles Wilson
Leisure Books (Mass Market Paperback, $4.99, ISBN: 0843942754)
Publication date: July 1997
Description:
The staff of the hospital for the criminally insane in Davis County, Mississippi, had seen a lot in their time—but nothing like the savage killing of Judith Salter, one of their nurses. And with three escaped inmates on the loose, there is no telling which of them the butcher is or who the next victim will be. Even worse, as the danger and terror grow apace, the only eyewitness to the nurse’s death is a psychopathic mass murderer who is beginning to reveal his own fearsome agenda.
Familiar HeartBy Caroline Burnes (Carolyn Haines)
Harlequin (Paperback, ISBN: 0373224265)
Publication date: July 1997
Touched
A novel by Carolyn Haines
Plume (Paperback, ISBN: 0452276705)
Reprint Edition
Publication date: July 1997
Description from Kirkus Reviews:
Haines (Summer of the Redeemers, 1994) ladles on the pluck and grit as she limns the life of Mattie, a strong woman who comes to live in a preternaturally mean Mississippi town, where she faces down the local bigots, survives a severe spousal beating, and exacts a deadly revenge. Jexville in 1926, as 16-year-old mail-order bride Mattie soon learns, is a town where intolerance is as unavoidable as the humidity. The people are devout, suspicious, narrow-minded.
They’re also hypocrites: The men drink bootleg liquor; the women are malicious; and both sexes support a husband’s right to beat his wife. To be in any way different is to invite trouble, which is exactly what Mattie’s new friend JoHanna McVay, married to handsome Will, a purveyor of moonshine to political bigwigs, often does.
Mattie, newly married to Elikah, the town’s barber, meets JoHanna and her nine-year-old daughter, Duncan, at a children’s party. Duncan, struck by lightning, soon acquires the ability to foretell the future. Then Mattie is violently beaten and sexually humiliated by Elikah. Pregnant, she decides not to have his child. JoHanna, accordingly, arranges for an illegal abortion and tries to convince Mattie to leave Elikah, but JoHanna soon has troubles of her own: Duncan’s accurate predictions of death and destruction convince the locals that she’s a child of Satan.
The McVays decide to go into hiding; Floyd, a friend of Mattie and Duncan’s, is brutally murdered; and Mattie kills a local bootlegger as she tries to escape murderous Elikah. In the long calm post-mayhem, Mattie remains married, but Elikah, no longer a wife-beater, plans a deadly revenge. As WW II begins, another frightening prediction from the now-adult Duncan finally impels Mattie to wreak her own vengeance. Action overload as Mattie and friends more than prove their credentials as cool, modern, and independent women able to cope with everything. —Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
A Long Ways from Where I’ve Been: An African-American’s Journey from the Jim Crow South to Chicago’s Gold Coast
Autobiography by Roosevelt Richards
Noble Press (Paperback, $10.95, ISBN: 1879360357)
Publication date: August 1997
Description:
Richards chronicles his life as a young, black boy, growing up in a large farm in rural Mississippi, where he and his family are subjected to the brutal injustice of Jim Crow. Despite the impoverished circumstances and harsh prejudices that dominated the life of Roosevelt and his family, his story is lovingly recounted.
Last Days of the Dog-Men
Stories by Brad Watson
Delta (Paperback, $9.95, ISBN: 0385318278)
Publication date: August 1997
Description:
An exquisite collection of short stories exploring the all-too-human need for dogs—as companions, as accomplices, as unwitting victims of their masters’ passions. “The stories in Last Days of the Dog-Men are weird and wise, sometimes gruesome and often brilliant.… Watson’s men, women, and dogs—those wonderful dogs—are superbly imagined.” —The New York Times Book Review.
On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992
By Margaret Walker, edited by Maryemma Graham
University Press of Tennessee (Paperback, $16.00, ISBN: 0870499815)
Publication date: August 1997
Description from Booklist (19 July 1997):
Distinguished poet and novelist Walker figures prominently in the chronicle of contemporary African American literary accomplishments. Collected here for the first time are 30 thought-provoking essays, culled by editor Graham from speeches and other writings spanning six decades of Walker’s fertile life. Graham’s admirably cohesive arrangement divides these pieces into four sections, dealing with Walker’s reflections on her own creative process as well as that of other black women writers; on black culture overall; and the arena of race and politics. A final section delves into educational issues and revolution on college campuses. This collection of essays, from an important voice in American letters, will make a significant addition to literature collections. —Copyright © 1997, American Library Association.
Nonfiction by Noel Polk
University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover: $45.00, ISBN: 0878059792)
Publication date: August 1997
Father and Son
A Novel by Larry Brown
Henry Holt (Reprint Edition; Paperback, $13.00, ISBN: 0805053034)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
Larry Brown is the master of the raw and the sparse and of bringing Mississippi to the world in a language that is as stripped down and bare as Faulkner’s is dense. Brown is at his best when he writes of the tensions between one screwed-up man and another, in this case a father and son. One has just been let out of prison, and he shouldn’t have been. The other is drunk and disabled and intends on staying that way. To make things worse, there is a conflict with the sheriff, who is good and righteous but who tried to put the moves on the parolee’s woman while he was in prison. To tell more would be to violate Brown’s mastery of dialogue and of that which goes unspoken in this sly story of father, son, and misery.
Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner: Centenary Edition
Edited by Joseph Blotner
Vintage (Paperback; $19.00; ISBN: 0375701095)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
Despite the self-contradictory title, this collection first published in 1979 features both published stories, several of which Faulkner later revised and incorporated into his novels, and previously unpublished stories.
Edited by Clarice Swisher
The Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to American Authors
Greenhaven Press (Library Binding, ISBN: 1565106415; Paperback, ISBN: 1565106407)
Publication date: September 1997
The Book of Yaak
Nonfiction by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin (Paperback, $12.00, ISBN: 0395877466 )
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
Rick Bass, a prolific writer of considerable merit, has crafted an elegant plea to save the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana. Bass argues that the Yaak deserves to be saved, both for its beauty and for its role in a biological system that stretches through much of North America. To enamor readers with the Yaak he describes it with reverence, and in doing so makes us care. “We are all complicit,” he says.
Fiction by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin (Paperback, $12.00, ISBN: 0395877474 )
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
In this luminous collection, Rick Bass firmly establishes himself as a master of the short story, with tales that embrace vibrant images and ordinary human life and exuberant descriptions of the natural world. “Impelled by a profound love of the land, the ten stories of In the Loyal Mountains are a reminder that American literature draws its unique strength from a powerful sense of place.” —Los Angeles Times
Winter: Notes from Montana
Nonfiction by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin (Paperback, $12.00, ISBN: 0395611504)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
In a celebration of winter in the last valley of Montana without electricity, Bass describes the wildness and freedom of valley people, the slow-motion quality of life, and the physical dangers of wilderness life. He also describes the anguish and pitfalls of being a writer and the living and dead writers with whom he feels a kinship.
Stories by Ellen Gilchrist
Little, Brown (Paperback; $12.95; ISBN: 0316317713)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
This celebrated collection opens with “Nora Jane and Company,” featuring one of the most popular characters in the Gilchrist galaxy. The nine stories that follow explore the hazards of recapturing and reviving old affairs. Featuring both new and familiar Gilchrist characters, all of these stories shed brilliant new light on the oldest emotion.
Sarah Conley
A Novel by Ellen Gilchrist
Little, Brown (Hardcover; $23.95; ISBN: 0316314773)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
Long ago in Kentucky, Sarah Conley fell in love with a young man but wound up marrying his brother—a tangled melodrama of missteps and mistaken intentions that led to bad feelings and burned bridges. Sarah divorced and decamped to New York, became a celebrated novelist and magazine editor, and never looked back—until she got a call from the woman who used to be her best friend.
A Novel by Lewis Nordan
Algonquin (Paperback; $11.95; ISBN: 1565121821)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
This heartbreaking novel from award-winning Mississippi writer Lewis Nordan is a meditation upon guns and love. One fateful day in the Delta town of Arrow Catcher, the sweet, simple hero of the book, Hydro Raney, tries his hand with sharpshooting and reveals a deadeye aim. Later in the day, he blows away a brother and sister who are committing a robbery at a country store. “What Nordan alone brings to the page is the courage to use nothing less than black powder prose to blast some sense into us no matter where we’ve come to ground.” —The Miami Herald
Eight Habits of the Heart: The Timeless Values That Build Strong Communities
Viking (Hardcover; $16.95; ISBN: 0670875457)
Publication date: September 1997
From the Mississippi Delta: A Memoir
Simon & Schuster (Hardcover; $23.00; ISBN: 0684810115)
Publication date: September 1997
Description:
Holland went from poverty and prostitution to acclaim and self-respect as a professor and a playwright. Now, in a memoir that is by turns funny and angry, this remarkable African-American woman candidly recounts the story of her fascinating life. Includes photos.
A Time to Heal: John Perkins, Community Development, and Racial Reconciliation
By Stephen E. Berk and John Perkins
Baker Book House (Hardcover; $17.99; ISBN: 0801057566)
Publication date: September 1997
By Zig Ziglar
Revised Edition
Thomas Nelson (Hardcover; ISBN: 0785271198)
Publication date: September 1997
Zig Ziglar’s Little Instruction Book; Inspiration and Wisdom from America’s Top Motivator
By Zig Ziglar
Honor Books (Paperback; $6.99, ISBN: 1562923641 )
Publication date: September 1997
Home for Christmas: A Story of the South
Children’s Fiction By Howard Bahr
Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America: (Hardcover; $17.95, ISBN: 1877853518)
Publication date: September 1997
God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights
By Charles Marsh
Princeton University Press (Hardcover; $24.95; ISBN: 0691021341)
Publication date: October 1997
Description:
In the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil
rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the
political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over
racial justice. This book focuses on the events and religious convictions
that led each person in the political upheaval of 1964 to believe as he or
she did. 24 illustrations.
By Gianni Versace, Edited by Barry Hannah
Abbeville Press (Reprint Edition, Hardcover; $11.95; ISBN: 0789203820)
Publication date: October 1997
Description:
Sensuous, stylish, decadent, Gianni Versace’s kaleidoscopic vision of male beauty and men's fashion is available for the first time in this miniature edition—a burst of color, clothing, and artful design. Featuring contributions by Richard Martin, Barry Hannah, and others, Men Without Ties also includes 686 full-color photographs by Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, and Bruce Weber.
A Novel by Thomas Harris
Bantam Doubleday Dell (Reprint Edition, Paperback; $11.95; ISBN: 0385319673)
Publication date: October 1997
Description:
From the bestselling author of Silence of the Lambs comes this reissue of a gripping thriller combining mystery, horror and suspense. A gruesome tale unfolds when a brilliant detective takes on the most terrifying case of his career—a psychopathic murderer who takes pleasure in killing happy families. Reissue.
Houghton Mifflin (Hardcover; $23.00; ISBN: 0395809770)
Publication date: October 1997
Description from Kirkus Reviews (1 September 1997):
Barthelme’s latest exercise in existential pulse-taking focuses on the democratic vice of gambling, though it's less a study in addiction than a celebration of risk-taking and downward mobility. Raymond Kaiser, his wife Jewel, and her daughter from a previous marriage, RV, all quietly enjoy life in Biloxi, Miss., a “simple, easy, cheap” town on the Gulf Coast. With work as an architect drying up, Ray finds himself increasingly interested in the glitzy world of offshore gambling, especially at the Paradise, where Jewel wins over $1,000 on their first trip. In their daily life, “everything’s dull,” so it’s no wonder that Jewel and Ray enjoy the visceral excitement of gambling. They soon graduate from slots to the blackjack table, and slowly find themselves down by over $4,000.
Meanwhile, back home, RV seems headed into a downward spiral of teen rebellion—boy trouble, substance experimenting, and body piercings. It doesn’t help that her parents are largely absent, spending their nights at Paradise. When Ray’s father dies, it sends him further into a midlife crisis. He comes to see himself no longer as “an ordinary guy,” but as a full-time gambler. The problem is—he’s not very good at it. Spending 18 hours at a time in the casino does nothing but increase his debts. Maxing out a handful of credit cards, he finds himself over $35,000 in the hole, but still juiced by “the losses, the excitement, the hopes, the desperation, the high.” Quitting architecture altogether, Ray and Jewel decide to downsize, selling their belongings and moving in with Ray’s mother. In their new simplicity, this besieged family finally finds that happiness is not in middle-class stability, nor in the quick fix of gambling's artificial Paradise, but in their everyday Edenic lives. Barthelme strains for topical textures—cool repartee is interrupted only by channel surfing. But the real payoff is straight-up and timeless: a novel of surprising heart and soul. — Copyright © Kirkus Associates, LP.
Redneck Night Before Christmas
Humor by David Davis, Illustrated by James Rice
Pelican (Hardcover; $14.95; ISBN: 1565542932)
Publication date: October 1997
Description:
Redneck mania is sweeping the country and the best gift for rednecks and redneck-wannabes this Christmas is the hilarious A Redneck Night Before Christmas. In this delightful tale, the “Christmas Redneck” travels to the trailer park in his beat-up pickup with eight hound dogs to deliver his presents! Color illustrations.
Outside the Southern Myth
Nonfiction by Noel Polk
University Press of Mississippi (Paperback: $17.00, ISBN: 0878059806)
Publication date: October 1997
Body Parts
Stories by Jere Hoar
University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $26.00, ISBN: 1578060192; Paperback ISBN: 1578060192)
Publication date: October 1997
Description from Kirkus Reviews (1 September 1997):
Eleven very Southern short stories in a first collection from a veteran of the small-press scene. Many of Hoar's tales are set in the same region of Mississippi that Faulkner wrote about—but his closest literary ancestor is really Erskine Caldwell. That’s especially true in “The Snopes Who Saved Huckaby,” featuring a plot that bears some resemblance to Sanctuary and even a character supposedly related to Faulkner. The language, humor, and characterizations, however, are more reminiscent of Caldwell’s Journeyman. As in that novel, an itinerant preacher is irresistible to women, and his conquests get him into trouble. He takes refuge in a girls’ finishing school, resolving to leave women alone, but he can’t, and the Lord strikes him with lightning, beginning a great storm that saves the town of Huckaby from drought. It’s a delightful story, funny as Caldwell, but gentler, with a hilarious sequel, “How Wevel Went.” By contrast, “Tell Me It Hasn’t Come to This” is mindful more of Flannery O’Connor: A lonely widow waves to passersby until, finally, one knocks at her door. He’s a newly released prisoner who has come to God, though menace seems to lurk beneath his friendliness. The widow nervously spurns him, only to realize when he’s gone that the man was sincerely offering just what she needed—friendship—and that she’s more alone now than ever. “The Incredible Little Louisiana Chicken Killer”concerns a sort of dybbuk that attacks a farm couple’s chickenhouse; they make the mistake of taking it into their house, with unpleasant results. Finally, Hoar offers several growing-up stories set in the time of WW II. The title piece and “A Brave Damn-Near Perfect Thing,” for instance, are both meandering reminiscences of puppy love and small town life in the 1940s, and rather wistful. A winner. —Copyright © 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Americans at War
Nonfiction by Stephen E. Ambrose
University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $28.00, ISBN: 1578060265)
Publication date: October 1997
Description:
Collected here for the first time are 15 essays that span over 100 years of American history—and the remarkable 30-year career of America’s foremost historian. From Grant’s stunning Fourth of July victory at Vicksburg to Nixon’s surprise Christmas bombing of Hanoi, Ambrose takes readers into the trenches of the homefront, ground zero of the Atomic Bomb, and into the arsenals of the 21st century.
Ambrose’s theme, the American way of war, is significant, for war indeed has delineated each era in America’s turbulent history and has focused the nation’s democratic perspective. Throughout, these essays encompass two large subjects. First, Ambrose is drawn to the experiences of those who have gone to war, both the leaders and the led. Second, he is intrigued by men who make big decisions—or fail to make them. He concludes that generals alone don’t win wars. Infantrymen, he believes, as well as the generals and the intelligence officers, were responsible for the Allied victory in World War II. And although the stalwart common soldier is credited with winning America’s wars, Ambrose also gives fair and empathetic examination to soldiers who break under strain.
The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
Fiction by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin (Hardcover, $23.00, ISBN: 0395717582 )
Publication date: November 1997
Description:
Magical, passionate, lyrical, and gritty, the three short novels in this collection are perhaps the finest yet by the acclaimed author of Winter, The Lost Grizzlies, In the Loyal Mountains, and The Book of Yaak. Sharing the central theme of land, these deeply original stories will amaze and delight readers.
Ten Point: Deer Camp in the Mississippi Delta
By Alan Huffman
University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover; $35.00; ISBN: 1578060001)
Publication date: November 1997
The author writes:
“Ten Point is basically an illustrated history of a group of people who found themselves at a crossroads—where the frontier of the old South and 20th century progress temporarily coexisted, and then collapsed upon one another in the Mississippi Delta. The story of Ten Point Deer Club illustrates one aspect of southern culture that has been very little documented—the relationships between people and the woods and with others of like minds. Most books on southern culture focus on the Civil War or civil rights, yet hunting and fishing are probably of greater interest to a larger number of southerners, and unfortunately, few have traditionally photographed those past-times or written about them. Ten Point and the big woods in which it nestled—where Teddy Roosevelt once hunted bear, and which Faulkner described as the last holdout of the Delta wilderness—are now sadly gone. But in these photographs, a way of life there and elsewhere in the South endures. My job was simply to tell the story, to fill in the blanks between the captions of my grandmother’s photographs, which were taken during the final years of the Delta’s big woods between the 1920s and the 1960s.”
And All These Roads Be Luminous: Selected Poems 1969-1993
Triquarterly Books (Hardcover, $39.95, ISBN: 081015076X; Paperback, $14.95, ISBN: 0810150778)
Publication date: November 1997
Description:
As Angela Jackson has developed as a poet, her poetry has engaged various artistic perspectives, yet always maintains a characteristic combination of compassion, grace, and daring. Jackson moves with ease from the personal to the historical—filled alternately with wonder, righteous anger, tenderness, and a tangible intensity. Her verse is rich and passionate and brimming with poetic surprises.
The Notebook of Trigorin: A Free Adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s the Sea
Gull
Adaptation by Tennessee Williams based on the play by Anton Chekhov; edited by Allean Hale
New Directions (Hardcover, $19.95, ISBN: 0811213714; Paperback, $9.95, ISBN: 0811213625)
Publication date: November 1997
Description:
Near the end of his life, Tennessee Williams’ chance to interpret The Sea Gull was realized at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where a production which brought Chekhov’s buried conflicts to the surface was produced in 1980. Williams’ genius, combined with the powerful Russian classic by Anton Chekhov, creates a daring new concept for today's American theatre.
Jack’s Skillet: Plain Talk and Some Recipes from a Guy in the Kitchen
By Jack Butler
Algonquin (Hardcover, $19.95, ISBN: 156512149X )
Publication date: November 1997
Description:
“I’m the original improvisational cook,” writes Jack Butler in the introduction to Jack’s Skillet. And his book proves him right. Butler’s food writing is flavored delightfully by his down-home good-ol’-boy Arkansas/Mississippi roots and spiced up by his humorous observations. Luckily for hungry readers, the book also includes 60 recipes for all the essential dishes in Butler’s pantry, including Apple Bread Pudding, Fajitas, Strawberry Shortcake, and Chicken Pot Pie.
The Secret to Staying Motivated/Audio Cassettes
By Zig Ziglar
Audio Edition
Harper Audio (Audio Cassettes; $15.95; ISBN: 1559944714 )
Publication date: December 1997
And Also with You: Duncan Gray and the American Dilemma
Providence House (Hardcover, $26.95, ISBN: 1577360362)
Publication date: December 1997
Shakespeare’s Champion
St. Martin’s (Hardcover, ISBN: 031217005X)
Publication date: December 1997
Description from Kirkus Reviews:
The author's strong, often silent heroine, Lily Bard, and Shakespeare, Arkansas, her adopted hometown, in a second appearance (Shakespeare’s Landlord, 1996). Lily cleans houses for a living and works out at the BodyTime Gym. There, early one morning, she and young Bobo Winthrop discover the body of fitness enthusiast Del Packard—crushed by a weight-laden bar.
Accident or murder? Police Chief Claude Freidrich, Lily’s neighbor and would-be lover, doesn’t have a clue. Meanwhile, Packard’s death seems yet more evidence of the town’s sinister atmosphere, a sense of unease going back to the not-long-ago beating death of black Darnell Glass and the killing, a few weeks later, of white farmer Lee Elgin—neither murder ever solved.
Now, the racist fliers placed in car windows around town don’t help. Then there’s the pony-tailed stranger seen with Hollis Winthrop Jr.—one of Lily’s employers and head of his family’s lucrative sporting-goods business now that patriarch Hollis Sr. has retired. A frightening act of violence in the black community church prompts the stranger to reveal his true identity to Lily, and it’s she, with help from an unexpected source, who rescues him as the whole ugly scenario unravels.
Wheels within wheels in a suspenseful story packed with nasty characters, a few good guys, some graphic sex, and more exercise and karate lore than you ever wanted to know. Lily’s stubborn, moody, gutsy persona holds it all together, and most readers will be with her to the finish. —Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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