You are, on vacation and would like to sit in the sun at the beach and read an interesting book. But there are so many choices, so many decisions to make.... what to pick?

Of course we do always encourage everyone to read about our area, about its rich history or some local mysteries. Click here for some of our featured local titles.

Here aref some interesting reads we think you'll enjoy.

The Help
A Novel by
Kathryn Stockett

The Washington Post - Sybil Steinberg
Southern whites' guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don't tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.

Publishers Weekly
Four peerless actors render an array of sharply defined black and white characters in the nascent years of the civil rights movement. They each handle a variety of Southern accents with aplomb and draw out the daily humiliation and pain the maids are subject to, as well as their abiding affection for their white charges. The actors handle the narration and dialogue so well that no character is ever stereotyped, the humor is always delightful, and the listener is led through the multilayered stories of maids and mistresses. The novel is a superb intertwining of personal and political history in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, but this reading gives it a deeper and fuller power. A Putnam hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 1). (Feb.)
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Entertainment Weekly
Graceful and real [and] compulsively readable. . . .[A] wholly satisfying novel. A-

People Magazine
[A] wise, poignant novel. . . . You'll catch yourself cheering out loud.