We are nearing prime “cozying up with a good book” season as we approach fall. The cooler weather, the changing leaves, the pumpkin spice—it all just makes you want to curl up on the couch with your favorite book, which might be the latest pick from the Service95 Book Club. As always, the Service95 Book Club offers unique selections each month for their readers, pleasing those who have a diverse taste in genres. For September, the book of the month is The Trees by Percival Everett.
Author Percival Everett has written over thirty books, with several of distinct merit. For instance, his 2001 novel, Erasure, was adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction. His 2024 novel, James, was an instant New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller in hardback. It was also a finalist for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, was the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction, and was awarded the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. As for this month’s read, The Trees was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Everett himself has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
About The Trees, Dua Lipa shares,
“The scene: a white man in Money, Mississippi, is brutally killed, and the battered corpse of a long-dead but familiar young Black man is also left at the murder scene. Before long, a second white man is found beaten and mutilated, with the same Black figure by his side. As more and more men wind up killed, each with these eerily similar dead bodies beside them, local cops are left baffled—and mayhem ensues.
“Enter wise-cracking detectives Ed Morgan and Jim Davis, sent down to investigate from the big city. It doesn’t take them long to work out that each victim has a connection to historical cases of lynching, and that the recurring Black corpse bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy brutally murdered in real life by a lynch mob in that same Mississippi town in 1955.
“It might sound like a grim tale, and of course the subject matter is harrowing, but as the story unfolds, author Percival Everett cleverly sends up all the usual tropes, from TV cop shows to classic detective stories, using satire to bring deep-rooted political issues to light in this masterful blend of horror and humor. He even throws in zombies for good measure.”
In Dua Lipa’s author Q&A with Everett, the two discuss Emmett Till, topics that relate to bearing witness and being a savior, and the powerful way that writing can preserve a memory. Readers can also find a list of books and music that inspired The Trees, an essay on Emmett Till, and a list of five other must-read Percival Everett books, curated by the Service95 team.
You can find all of this and more in the ‘Book Club’ section of the Service95 website.
Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter here.
Follow the Service95 Book Club Instagram here.
Keep up with Service95: Instagram // X // Facebook // TikTok // YouTube // Website
