BOOKS FOR WINTER

Recommendations from LYN ROBERTS

General Manager, Square Books

Paradise is Jagged

by Ann Fisher-Wirth

In this extraordinary collection, Ann Fisher-Wirth looks levelly at mortality, grief, and memory, and reckons with what it is to be urgently alive, bringing her incisive nuance to subjects ranging from the loss of a beloved sister to Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary to our imperiled natural world to the comforts of marital love.

Somebody to Love

by Valerie June, Marcela

Avelar, & Chet Weise

Decent People

by De’Shawn Charles Winslow

A triple murder shocks a small North Carolina town into confronting its deepest fears and darker secrets lingering in the wake of the civil rights era.

Grammy nominated musician Valerie June’s Somebody to Love: The Story of Valerie June’s Sweet Little Baby Banjolele is a children’s book based on the story of how June wrote the song “Somebody to Love” from her album Pushin’ Against a Stone. The story is inspiring for children and beautifully illustrated with vivid watercolors.

The Southern Way of Life by

Charles Reagan Wilson

In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian, University of Mississippi Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region’s identity.

A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till

by Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. and Christopher Benson

The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story, with poignant recollections of Emmett as a boy, critical insights into the recent investigation, and powerful lessons for racial reckoning, both then and now.

Moonrise Over New Jessup

by Jamila Minnicks

Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether

Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama.