Great Fiction By Southern Writers
Discover the best fiction by Southern writers with our curated list of must-read books. Explore rich storytelling, deep characters, and iconic Southern literature.
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The Bottoms
by Joe R. Lansdale
In Depression-era East Texas, young Harry Crane discovers the body of a mutilated woman. As his father, the town constable investigates, Harry and his sister Tom think it was the work of the legendary Goat Man.
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Destiny of the Soul
by Heywood Steele
In 1968, Johnny Reno sold his soul to the Organization for a career in rock and roll. When fame and fortune became too much for him, be backed out on his contract and disappeared from the public eye. Since then, he has been forced pay off his debt by working for the Organization, a sinister and mysterious company that has the power to make people famous. Sick of the lifestyle he is forced to lead, and heartsick for fame, Johnny Reno enlists the services of a private investigator named Dorf Brentson to find his soul. Dorf, for reasons more personal than Johnny can imagine, takes the impossible case, and is offered help by his mysterious new partner, a haunted ex-writer, a girl who is eternally twenty-three years old, and a disillusioned youth named Dutch. Together, Dorf and Johnny must cross the boundaries of life and death and journey to a world where they will learn the secrets of the immortal soul, a world from which they may never return.
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The Edge of the Water
by Michael McNabb
Now in his mid fifties, Doug Wallace takes a look back at the summer that not only changed, but directed his life for almost thirty years. Although the novel is set in the sixties, it is not about the sixties. Anyone who has ever worked a summer job away from home or who remembers what it was like to start making adult decisions during their teen years will recall memories of that certain summer. This work is one part “Catcher in the Rye,” one part “Stand By Me,” and a little bit of “Trainspotting.” There are a few tears, a lot of laughs and some of the most colorful people the South has to offer. [Author bio]Mike McNabb, an English teacher in Greenville, South Carolina, has been writing for two years. Prior to becoming a teacher and writer, he worked as a sales manager and sales trainer for Michelin North America. He and his wife, Kay, have been married for thirty years and have two grown sons. The Edge of the Water is his first novel.
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Out of Focus
by Michael McNabb
Set in Atlanta, this work is about hard-drinking, freelance photographer Dave Coleman who left the Atlanta police force seven years earlier after the murder of his wife.
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These People are Us
by George Singleton
In George Singleton's smart and hilarious first book, characters that eerily resemble you and me try to make sense of modern absurdities: how to find a black-market sonogram so your pregnant wife won't find out you accidentally taped over the original; how to help your father -- and everyone else in town -- fake being hit by a tornado to get emergency government funds; and why not to look for your next wife at your local recycling center. With a style all his own, Singleton takes us into a world that wins our hearts but frightens our senses, as we realize that we are staring into a mirror that reflects our own wishes and desires.Singleton has distinguished himself with this rich volume of Southern-related stories, all previously published in literary magazines and anthologies including Georgia Review, New Stories from the South, Greensboro Review, Apalachee Quarterly, Southern Review, and Playboy.Step into George Singleton's world and you'll see why he is earning a reputation as one of the funniest, wisest, and most surprising Southern writers of his generation.
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The Half-mammals of Dixie
by George Singleton
Presents a collection of short stories that captures the lives of such characters as a boy whose reputation is ruined forever after he stars in a documentary on diagnosing head lice and a lovelorn father who woos his child's third-grade teacher.
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Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks
by Greg Bottoms
"Like Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Joyce's Dubliners, or Isherwood's Berlin Stories, these stories about loss and redemption possess an evocative sense of place and society as they are transformed by the author's nervous relationship with the world. In the title story, the narrator imagines his way into the dark, elusive world of southern writer Breece D'J Pancake; "Imaginary Birds" flawlessly renders the reverie of a senile old woman to make the world anew; in stories such as "Nostalgia for Ghosts," "The Metaphor," "Intersections," and "A Seat for the Coming Savior," the quiet desperation of urban places gives way to moments of beauty, profundity, even holiness, in the midst of devastation and heartbreak."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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To the White Sea
by James Dickey
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Deliverance and Buckdancer's Choice comes the heart-stopping story of an American tail-gunner who parachutes from his burning plane into Tokyo during the final months of World War II. "A first-rate adventure story".--Newsweek.
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Deliverance
by James Dickey
The canoe trip from hell. Classic take of four men caught in a primitive and violent test of manhood. Their adventure turns into a struggle for survival.
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New Southern Harmonies
by Rosa Shand
The first collection of short stories from the Hub City Writers Project brings together the work of four award-winning fiction writers from South Carolina. New Southern Harmonies is a literary sampler of their art.
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Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
Ruth Ann Boatwright, a South Carolina bastard, tells her life with her family and the emotional and physical violence she experiences.
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Plantation
by Dorothea Benton Frank
Carolina Wimbley Levine had always sworn she'd never go home again, but when she must return to "see about Mother," she learns that Miss Lavinia, the Queen of Tall Pines Plantation, is filled with secrets and as maddeningly eccentric as ever.
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A Walk to Remember
by Nicholas Sparks
A high school rebel and a minister's daughter find strength in each other in this star-crossed tale of "young but everlasting love" (Chicago Sun-Times). There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister....Jamie, who was destined to show him the depths of the human heart-and the joy and pain of living. The inspiration for this novel came from Nicholas Sparks's sister: her life and her courage. From the internationally bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, comes his most moving story yet....
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City Infernal
by Edward Lee
When Cassie's twin sister, Lissa, commits suicide, Cassie discovers she can travel to Hell to retrieve her sister's soul. Cassie thought she knew all about the Hell of legend, but finds Hell has evolved over the millennia into a bustling city full of the damned with looming skyscrapers, crowded streets, systemized evil, and atrocity as the status quo. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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A Patchwork Planet
by Anne Tyler
A lovable loser tries to get his life in order. He is Barnaby Gaitlin, 30, the black sheep of a rich Baltimore family, ex-juvenile delinquent who specialized in housebreaking for kicks. He works for Rent-a-Back, moving furniture for old people, and dreams of having a future.
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Beach Music
by Pat Conroy
An American living in Rome with his daughter after his wife's suicide tracks a classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
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Southern Blood
by Lawrence Schimel
Perhaps more than any region, the American South is haunted by the mythology of the vampire, returned from the dead to drain life from the living.