Some Go Home A Novel

Winner of the 2021 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction A searing debut novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi. An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby’s community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act. As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare’s guilt—and of the townsfolks’ potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss. Some Go Home twists together personal and collective history, binding north Mississippi to northside Chicago, in a richly textured, explosive depiction of both the American South and our larger cultural legacy.

"Today We Go Home shines an illuminating light on history and the female soldiers who have served this country from the Civil War to Afghanistan today. Kelli Estes passionately brings the past to life, interweaving the story of two women from different centuries whose journey towards hope is timeless."—GWENDOLYN WOMACK, USA Today bestselling author of The Fortune Teller and The Time Collector In this evocative work of historical fiction, USA Today bestselling author Kelli Estes pairs two military women who—in the Civil War and Afghanistan—share determination, honor, and a call to serve the United States, no matter the cost. Seattle, Washington: Larkin Bennett has always known her place, whether it's surrounded by her loving family in the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest or conducting a dusty patrol in Afghanistan. But all of that changed the day tragedy struck her unit and took away everything she held dear. Soon after the disaster, Larkin discovers an unexpected treasure—the diary of Emily Wilson, a young woman who disguised herself as a man to fight for the Union in the Civil War. As Larkin struggles to heal, she finds herself drawn deeply into Emily's life and the secrets she kept. Indiana, 1861: The only thing more dangerous to Emily Wilson than a rebel soldier is the risk of her own comrades in the Union Army discovering her secret. But, as the war marches on and takes its terrible toll, Emily begins to question everything she thought she was willing to risk her life for. Historical fiction fans of Marie Benedict, Beatriz Williams, and Kate Quinn will be inspired by this story of two women in militaries, separated by centuries, but united in hope and dignity.

A meteorite is hurtling toward the Black Hills of South Dakota. . . . Brady Steele watches in awe as a fireball comes crashing through the roof of his house. Brady immediately calls up his cousin, Quinn. They both love all things extreme, and this is the most extreme thing ever! Fred, as Brady names his space rock, turns out to be one of the rarest meteorites ever found. Professor Rip Ripley from the museum in Hill City wants to study a sliver of it in search of extraterrestrial bacteria. He's hoping to discover the first proof of life beyond Earth, a momentous breakthrough for the new science of astrobiology. During a wild week of extreme bicycling, fishing, and caving, Brady and Quinn battle their rivals, the notorious Carver boys, for possession of the meteorite. With each new day, Brady is discovering he's able to do strange and wonderful feats that shouldn't be possible. At the same time, he's developing some frightening symptoms. Could he be infected with long-dormant microbes from space? Is Fred a prize or a menace?

Glory Boughton has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with torment and pain. A troubled boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. He is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Reverend Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, beguiling, lovable and wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with John Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is arguably Marilynne Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

This "thrilling" novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi "has the grit, power, and soul of Janis Joplin and the hardscrabble depth of Johnny Cash." (Randall Kenan) An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby’s community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act. As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare’s guilt—and of the townsfolks’ potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss. Some Go Home twists together personal and collective history, binding north Mississippi to northside Chicago, in a richly textured, explosive depiction of both the American South and our larger cultural legacy.

Gordon Korman’s uproarious, outrageous, and all-too-familiar summer camp adventure is BACK! Rudy Miller really isn’t into the whole camping thing. So when his parents send him to Camp Algonkian “for his own good” all he wants to do is go home. Rudy teams up with his cabin-mate Mike for a series of carefully planned — yet hilariously bungled — escape attempts. Unfortunately, their counsellor (and nemesis) Chip is as determined to keep them there as they are to get away. Rudy and Mike spend their days plotting, playing chess, and working off punishments for their failed escapes. Hmmm, maybe it isn’t such a bad way to spend the summer after all . . .

A gay man returns to his conservative hometown in a tale of memory and murder inspired by true events: “An emotionally resonant, page-turning story.”—Booklist Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author’s own experiences working in his family’s provincial Indiana restaurant, and wrestling with his sexual orientation, in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s. Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels’ Family Buffet for his ailing father. Understanding that knowledge of his sexuality may reap disastrous results on his family's half-century-old restaurant legacy—a popular Sunday dinner spot for the after-church crowd—Grey struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life. But he is truly put to the test when his former high school lover—and fellow classmate of the murdered student—returns to town as the youth pastor and choir director of the local fundamentalist Christian church. Some Go Hungry is the story of a man forced to choose between the happiness of others and his own joy, all the while realizing that compromising oneself—sacrificing your soul for the sake of others—is not living, but death. “This literary mystery follows Grey Daniels on a return trip to his hometown of Fort Sackville, Indiana where, decades earlier, one of his gay classmates was brutally murdered. While visiting, Grey must confront a painful past riddled in homophobia, secrets, religious hypocrisy and fear.”—Queerty “Some Go Hungry is at its best when confronting religious prejudice, and is even pulse-quickening when the narrator sits through one of his friend's sermons aimed directly at him....Only someone who has grown up in rural America could write so convincingly of the pressures there. It's also refreshing to find a book that relates the experience of being gay somewhere other than in a large city.”—Gay & Lesbian Review “Tells an important tale that in some ways is timeless, and in other ways could have been ripped from today's headlines.”—Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama

A wrenching and layered debut novel about a gay teen’s coming-of-age in the aftermath of his father’s suicide Colin’s family is dissolving in the aftermath of his father’s suicide. While his mother, Diane, retreats into therapy and cynicism, Colin clings to every shred of normal life. Awash with guilt, he casts about for someone to confide in: first his estranged grandfather, then a predatory science teacher. Shunned by his siblings and rejected by his homophobic best friend, Colin immerses himself in the notebooks his father left behind. Full of strange facts, lists, and historical anecdotes that neither Colin nor Diane can understand, the notebooks infect their worldview until they can no longer tell what’s real and what’s imagined. A novel of aching intensity, Some Hell shows how unspeakable tragedy shapes a life, and how imagination saves us from ourselves.

From a rising literary star comes a fresh, satirical novel about masculinity and tenderness, fatherhood and motherhood, set in the world of semi-professional wrestling—now in paperback After seven years on the semi-pro wrestling circuit, Ricky Twohatchet, a.k.a. Richard Powell, needs one last match before he gets called up to the big leagues. Unlike some wrestlers who only play the stereotype, Ricky believes he comes by his persona honestly—he’s half white and half Native American—even if he’s never met his father. But the night of the match in Omaha, Nebraska, something askew in their intricate choreography sets him on a course for disaster. He finishes with a neck injury that leaves him in a restrictive brace and a video already going viral: him spewing profanities at his ex-partner, Johnny America. Injury aside, he’s out of the league. Without a routine or identity, Ricky spirals downward, finally setting off to learn about his father, and what he finds will explode everything he knows about who he is—as a man, a friend, a son, a partner, and a wrestler. Go Home, Ricky! is a sometimes-witty, sometimes-heart-wrenching, but always gripping look into the complexities of identity.

In this smart, relevant, unputdownable psychological thriller, a woman cop is on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own. “My name is Nina Karim. I am a single thirty-one-year-old woman who likes cats, Ryan Reynolds movies, beautiful sunsets, walking on a wintry beach holding hands with a tall, caring, lightly bearded third-wave feminist. Yeah, right.” Nina is a tough Queens detective with a series of cold case homicides on her desk – men whose widows had the same alibi: they were living in Artemis, a battered women’s shelter, when their husbands were killed. Nina goes undercover into Artemis. Though she is playing the victim, she’s anything but. Nina knows about violence and the bullies who rely on it because she’s experienced it in her own life. In this heart-pounding thriller Nina confronts the violence of her own past in Artemis where she finds solidarity with a community of women who deal with abusive and lethal men in their own way. For the women living in Artemis there is no absolute moral compass, there is the law and there is survival. And, for Nina, who became a cop so she could find the man who murdered her father, there is only revenge.