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Everyone knows that books make the best gifts, right? If you’re reading this blog you probably agree with us. Last year, Overlook got into the true spirit of the holiday season and spent twelve days in December giving away some of our favorite books that we’ve published over the past forty years. We had such a strong response that we’ve decided to continue the tradition this year, with another

Yesterday, we got the extremely exciting news that True Grit will be the next #1 on the New York Times bestseller for trade paperback fiction. For a book that's been around since 1968, the "Portis revival" (The New Yorker) is incredibly welcome. While of course we love to see our books sell, we acquired Charles Portis' work long before the Coen Brothers film adaptation was planned--because we think they are truly American classics that deserved to stay in print.

To celebrate, we're giving away a FULL SET of Charles Portis' novels. At this point, everyone's heard of True Grit. But some of us are huge fans of Norwood here, and many consider The Dog of the South to be Portis' finest work. We also thought Gringos and Masters of Atlantis were absolute American classics. So we're giving away ALL FIVE books to one lucky winner. Leave a comment here, on Twitter or on Facebook to win--winners announced tomorrow!

Don't forget that these will all be available as ebooks next week and stay tuned for the announcement of the Academy Awards nominees on January 25--we're keeping our fingers crossed that the great reviews of the film translate into much-deserved Oscar nods! And check out this great book buzz from USA Today about True Grit.

Happy reading!

Check out this rave from Joshua Ferris in the September issue of GQ magazine for the great Charles Portis: "Forget the Apatow ascent. Forget the Stewart-Colbert juggernaut. Funny as they are the greatest testament to American laughter is a novel published in 1979, by Charles Portis, called The Dog of the South. . . . Portis's quirky improvised dialogue is why The Dog of the South is such a winning book. It's the funniest iteration of that particularly American specimen, the road novel, with a finicky and hapless version of Sal Paradise as hero and a cast of characters that is half Pynchon, half Bottle Rocket. As with all great novels - and great comedy - how things end up matters a whole lot less than the fun had in getting there."

The Baltimore Sun's Kevin Cowherd offers a money-back guarantee for readers of The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis: "If you're looking for a great summer read and have vowed to take a break from the usual trash that ends up on your nightstand, have I got a book for you. It's a wonderful comic novel by the great Charles Portis called The Dog of the South, first published in 1979. Oh, I know what you're thinking.You're thinking: Hey, Mr. Helpful, how about recommending a book we've actually heard of, or something that's been published in this century? Sure, go ahead, make your jokes. But this is a terrific book.I feel so strongly about it that I will personally refund the purchase price of the book, plus an additional 20 percent for your troubles, if you buy it and don't like it. (Note to editor: Run some kind of legal disclaimer here that gets me out of that. Thanks.) The Dog of the South is about a man named Ray Midge who sets out to track his wife, Norma, who has run off with her first husband, a sleazeball named Guy Dupree.To make matters worse, Norma and Guy have also taken Ray's credit cards and his car, not to mention his good raincoat and shotgun.So Ray waits for the credit card receipts to come in and sets off on the trail of the two lovebirds, tracking them from Arkansas to Mexico to Belize.Along the way, he meets all sorts of characters, including Dr. Reo Symes, a cranky physician who lives in a school bus called "The Dog of the South" and who's obsessed with the mysterious John Selmer Dix, a deceased writer of inspirational books for salesmen. OK, that might sound a little too off-the-wall for your tastes. But I'm telling you, this novel will draw you in with its themes of betrayal and revenge, its deadpan dialogue and its lineup of picaresque rogues looking for adventure in a world they don't quite understand. If you take this book to the beach and start reading it, you won't even take a break to go in the water. You'll just keep reading and reading, and finally you'll look up and it'll be dusk. The beach will be almost empty, except for a few dogs and maybe a guy surf-fishing and a couple of old guys in gym shorts and knee-high socks running those stupid metal detectors over the sand.Then you'll go home and get something to eat and start reading again. And you won't be able to stop reading until you pass out from exhaustion. Portis, by the way, was a Marine infantryman in the Korean War and later a reporter for a number of newspapers, including the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New York Herald Tribune and the Arkansas Gazette.Then he left that low-brow racket and went legit, writing fiction full time, and we're all the better for it. His best-known novel is True Grit, which came out in 1968. The book is a taut tale of a 14-year-old girl who recruits an aging, drunken U.S. marshal named Rooster Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer.The book was made into a movie starring John Wayne, who won an Academy Award for best actor. And if you think Wayne was a good actor in that film, you must have a drinking problem, too. But that's how good the story was and how good Portis was, too. Portis made a few bucks off True Grit, of course. But for my money, The Dog of the South is his best work, and they should have made a movie out of it, too. Anyway, you'll love this book. Go buy it today. Remember my money-back guarantee." - [email protected]

Jenny Shank takes a look at Charles Portis's classic novel True Grit in New West, the fine magazine and website that bills itself as the "Voice of the Rocky Mountains." Shank suggests that "the irresistible voice of Mattie Ross rings as clear today as it must have in 1968." Overlook has reissued True Grit in new paperback edition featuring in introduction by novelist Donna Tartt.

Robert Klitzman, author of the upcoming book When Doctors Become Patients is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University. He was recently interviewed about the personal injury lawyer out of Atlanta, Andrew Speaker, who traveled to Europe after being diagnosed with a drug resistant form of tuberculosis. Here the podcast here.

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