"I think the difference between going into an indie bookstore and going into a Barnes & Noble is like the difference between going out to dinner with the love of your life versus going on a blind date with someone you met on OkCupid. At indie bookstores there's so much more human thought put into the way books are arranged and presented."
author of
Eileen,
Homesick for Another World, &
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
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OPEN DAILY
Square Books, Jr.:
M-Sat 9am-7pm;
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Dear Reader
Signed Firsts
Staff Picks
Gift Cards
  
160 Courthouse Square Oxford, MS 38655
662-236-2262
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MISSISSIPPI MATH*
Spend $50 with a local indie and keep
$22.50 in Mississippi
Spend $50 at a national chain and keep
$6.50 in Mississippi
Spend $50 online to a remote vendor and keep
not one red cent in Mississippi.
*source:
The Economist,
7/30/2009
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BOOK SIGNINGS THIS WEEK
Unless otherwise indicated, author events begin with an informal reception at 5pm, followed by the author's presentation at 5:30, with a book signing both before and after the reading/talk.
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Wednesday, July 11th at 5 p.m.
 
From the author of
Mr. Eternity, a darkly comic road novel about a millennial couple facing the ultimate question: how to live and love in an age of catastrophe.
Young Miami couple Murphy and Eva have almost decided to have a baby when Yahweh, the Old Testament God, appears to Eva and makes an unwelcome demand: He wants her to be his prophet. He also wants her to manage his social media presence.
Yahweh sends the two on a wild road trip across the country, making incomprehensible demands and mandating arcane rituals as they go. He gives them a hundred million dollars, but he asks them to use it to build a temple on top of a landfill. He forces them to endure a period of Biblical wandering in the deserts of the southwest. Along the way they are continually mistaken for another couple, a pair of North Carolina society people, and find themselves attending increasingly bizarre events in their names. At odds with their mission but helpless to disobey, Murphy and Eva search their surroundings for signs of a future they can have faith in.
Aaron Thier is the author of
The Ghost Apple and
Mr. Eternity (both semifinalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor). A regular contributor to
The Nation and a graduate of Yale University and the M.F.A. program at the University of Florida, Thier received a 2016 NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing. He lives in Great Barrington, MA.
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Thursday, July 12th at 5 p.m.
(University of Georgia Press, $24.95)
 
Catfish Dream centers around the experiences, family, and struggles of Ed Scott Jr. (born in 1922), a prolific farmer in the Mississippi Delta and the first ever nonwhite owner and operator of a catfish plant in the nation.
Both directly and indirectly, the economic and political realities of food and subsistence affect the everyday lives of Delta farmers and the people there. Ed's own father, Edward Sr., was a former sharecropper turned landowner who was one of the first black men to grow rice in the state. Ed carries this mantle forth with his soybean and rice farming and later with his catfish operation, which fed the black community both physically and symbolically. He provides an example for economic mobility and activism in a region of the country that is one of the nation's poorest and has one of the most drastic disparities in education and opportunity, a situation especially true for the Delta's vast African American population. With
Catfish Dream -- written as a part of the Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place series -- Julian Rankin provides a fascinating portrait of a place through his intimate biography of Scott, a hero at once so typical and so exceptional in his community.
Julian Rankin is the recipient of the Southern Foodways Alliance's first annual residency at Rivendell Writers Colony and is the director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.
Hear a podcast featuring the book
here.
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Friday, July 13th at 5 p.m.
(Turner Press, $11.99; ages 11-15)
 
"How brave are you?"
"Not very."
"Well, you will be tomorrow."
Twelve-year-old Lizzie is in trouble. She used to live a comfortable life with her loving father, but after the stock market crash of 1929 and his sudden death, she and her family now live in poverty. Lizzie is expected to help support the family, but she can't even cook without burning food.
One day, a letter arrives. Her wealthy uncle has offered her a paying job as a summer governess for her two young cousins at a remote logging camp, so she travels alone into the wilderness of Vancouver, British Columbia. To her horror, she discovers that her uncle is missing from the camp.
Penniless and stranded, Lizzie's worst fears are soon confirmed -- she is being held hostage by the camp's boss. "Accidents are easy to explain in the woods," he writes in a ransom letter to her uncle. Lizzie learns that in order to survive, she will have to perform the most dangerous job at the camp -- the high climber. She has one chance to save herself and return to her family. Her intelligence and bravery will be tested to the limit as she pulls on the climber harness to prove to everyone, including herself, what she is truly capable of.
Caroline Arden holds an MFA in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband and daughter.
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Saturday, July 14th at 4 p.m.
at Square Books, Jr.
(Random House, $16.99; ages 8-12)
 
All her life, Cricket's mama has told her stories about a secret room painted by a mysterious artist. Now Mama's run off, and Cricket thinks the room might be the answer to getting her to come back. If it exists. And if she can find it.
Cricket's only clue is a coin from a grown-over ghost town in the woods. So with her daddy's old guidebook and a coat full of snacks stolen from the Cash 'n' Carry, Cricket runs away to find the room. Surviving in the woods isn't easy. While Cricket camps out in an old tree house and looks for clues, she meets the last resident of the ghost town, encounters a poetry-loving dog (who just might hold a key to part of the puzzle), and discovers that sometimes you have to get a little lost . . . to really find your way.
Fans of
Three Times Lucky and
Chasing Vermeer will eat up this Southern mystery about art, family, and finding your way home. Mississippians will recognize references to Walter Anderson, but anyone will be charmed by Cricket's tenacity, strength of character, and brilliant imagination.
Jo Watson Hackl was born in Biloxi, Mississippi and grew up in Electric Mills, Mississippi. She lives with her family in Greenville, South Carolina.
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SAVE THE DATE
for upcoming events:
Click
here
for a full listing of scheduled events.
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Events are always free and wheelchair accessible.
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