Michael Farris Smith signs LAY YOUR ARMOR DOWN.

A dark Southern tale of desperate souls who've wound up on the road of poor choices, a messianic child with untold powers, and those out hunting her for their own reward, all drawn together by Michael Farris Smith's trademark mournful, spirit-gnawing prose. An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose...

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Lauren Rhoades signs SPLIT THE BABY.

In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures with rich but conflicting religious traditions, the young girl struggles...

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Robert Busby signs BODOCK.

In 1994, the real Mid-South Ice Storm strikes the fictitious town of Bodock in Claygardner County, Mississippi. In the wake of the storm, what is left unbroken, and what broken things can be rebuilt? Hailed by Maurice Carlos Ruffin as “leaving no feeling untouched,” Robert Busby’s debut balances grit with heart, violence with depth, and tragedy with humor. Two siblings survey the damage to their family’s orchard after the storm while their rich nephew circles in the hopes of buying up the property...

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Yrsa Daley-Ward signs THE CATCH.

Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2025 by TIME, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, We Are Bookish and Book Riot. The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, The Catch is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity. Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor...

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Bishop Barlow signs LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

Look in the Mirror is Bishop Barlow's story of losing his hair to alopecia in 2008 when he was nine years old and in third grade. Hair loss was a difficult challenge to overcome as a young third grader. Bishop dealt with identity and confidence issues. He even had bullies who made fun of him. Through all this, nothing Bishop did to stimulate hair growth worked. One night, Bishop looked in the mirror and conversed honestly with God. He realized mirrors...

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Darden North signs Rooftop.

When the husband of a partner in her busy surgical practice is shot, Dr. Bratton is thrust into a political battle of money versus medical ethics with international financial reach. Diana’s own life is threatened not once but twice at gunpoint when the uncle of the assailant is accused of murdering his sister, the attacker’s mother. While dealing with difficult patients, Diana’s personal life is entwined with raising a cheerleader teenage daughter and dealing with a treasured...

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Kamel King + Joe Lee sign Jacktown USA.

Known as The City with Soul, Jackson, Mississippi, is a rough, gritty place with a star-crossed past. In the music made here, the spirit of hard work, perseverance, and the ability to reinvent oneself amid lessons learned comes shining through. No posers or pretenders allowed, as Jackson music lovers of all genres will sniff out performers in a heartbeat that aren’t authentic, aren’t real, and boo them right off the stage. What so many up-and-coming musical artists who’ve graced Mississippi’s...

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Kendall Dunkelberg signs TREE FALL WITH BIRDSONG.

Tree Fall with Birdsong explores the natural world around the poet’s home in Mississippi and delves into memories of the rural landscapes of Iowa where he was raised, Flanders, and other places he has traveled. These poems look to the natural life cycle as a corollary of loss and renewal, both in response to illness and death of family and friends and to the collective sense of grief in the wake of the recent pandemic...

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Billy Loper signs BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS.

Sarah Silvergrove has spent two years trying to outpace the guilt she carries over the death of a friend. Living as a nomadic traveler and attached to no one, she discovers the Belhaven, a haunting library hidden in the ruins of a long abandoned city. It holds the secrets to commanding the world’s magic, and Sarah, now one of the few magic users not under the control of the struggling empire, sets out to build a new community in hopes of redemption...

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William Kelleher Storey signs THE COLONIALIST.

Mining magnate, politician, and imperialist, Cecil Rhodes had a larger-than-life impact on the development of Southern Africa and the extension of British imperial power. This critical biography of Rhodes elaborates his life and times, showing how his racist politics impacted mining, industry, transportation, warfare, and society, while discussing his controversial and enduring legacies...

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Susan Gregg Gilmore signs THE CURIOUS CALLING OF LEONARD BUSH.

When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, he decides to give his leg a proper burial in the hilltop cemetery of his East Tennessee town. This event somehow sets off a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events—upending the lives of Leonard’s rigidly God-fearing mother, June; his deeply conflicted father, Emmett; and his best friend, Azalea, and her mother, Rose, who is also the town prostitute...

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Patricia Lockwood signs WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER YOU.

Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are...

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