While hardcover editions of new books comprise more than two-thirds of the 2016 Square Books bestseller list, 32 paperback titles appeared, including Larry Brown's #93 Facing the Music, William Faulkner's Selected Stories and Light in August, Lisa Howorth's #70 Flying Shoes; Eudora Welty's #83 Delta Wedding; How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others by Kiese Laymon; Tom Franklin’s #61 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter and Laura Lane McNeal's #88 Dollbaby; national bestsellers and our #30 A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman as well as Jojo Moyes’ #24 Me Before You; Adichie Chimamanda’s
#99 We Should All Be Feminists; Curtis Wilkie's enduring #23 The Fall of the House of Zeus; # 27 In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White; and several by those who made an author appearance here, including Sally Mann with #84 Hold Still and Erik Larson with #44 Dead Wake ; many of the contributors to #29 Mississippi Noir; Julie Cantrell and #35 Feathered Bone; Michael Henry and #21 Murder in the Grove; T. J. Ray and #60 Side by Side; Pulitzer Prize winner #78 The Sympathizer by Viet Nguyen Thanh; and Preston Lauderbach for #82 Beale Street Dynasty.
More books by writers known to many folks around here included #13 The Innocents by Ace Atkins; #12 Confessions of an Undercover Agent by Charlie Spillers; #19 The Land of Rowan Oak by Ed Croom; #8 For a Little While by Rick Bass; #14 Free Men by Jackson's Katy Simpson Smith;
Meridian native Brad Watson's National Book Award Finalist, #9 Miss Jane; #81 Riot, by Ed Meek; Julia Reed and #20 Julia Reed’s South; the pair by Al Povall, #s 22 & 32, A Time Remembered and Tapestry of Red and Blue, respectively; #33, Crisis Point by Trent Lott with his liberal pal Tom Daschle; another pair from Jack Pendarvis, #s 58 & 68, Movie Stars and The Cigarette Lighter; contributions from the pair, Chris Offutt and Melissa Ginsburg, #s 33 & 56, My Father the Pornographer and Sunset City; Mary Hamilton’s #28 Trials of the Earth, with help from Kerry Hamilton and Shelilah Hamilton Pantin; and the nicely done brief biography of Faulkner, #32 Myself and the World, by Robert Hamblin, whose book on Evans Harrington in 2017 we eagerly anticipate.
Leading books by writers-from-afar visiting us this year was Nathan Hill and his remarkable first novel, #6 The Nix, accompanied by the likes of #17 Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney; #15 Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, who made a memorable initial visit to Oxford; Jaqueline
Woodson's #16 Another Brooklyn, also her first time in Oxford; #89 El Paso by Winston Groom; Richard Russo's #11 Everybody's Fool; #26 The African Svelte, which was specially signed and shipped from New York by both author Daniel Menaker and illustrator Roz Chast; and, due in part to his forthcoming engagement here, February 20, 2017, Amor Towles and #91 A Gentleman in Moscow.
Other guests at Square Books included C. E. Morgan and her brilliant #10 Sport of Kings; #96 Perfume River and Robert Olen Butler; Jonathan Rabb and #94 Among the Living; John Gregory Brown and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere; #18
The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith; #90 Ten Restaurants That Changed the World by Paul Freedman; #61 The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie; Taylor Brown's Fallen Land; #53 The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan, introduced here by Ann Patchett, who later slipped into town to sign copies of #7 Commonwealth.
(This is part two of a three part series. Read Part One and Part Three.)