Southern Gothic

Playing Books & Bites Bingo? Try these suggestions for the prompt, a Southern Gothic.

According to Book Riot, southern gothic literature "usually features eccentric, flawed characters, sinister events, elements of the supernatural or fantastical, and themes relating to race, class, decay, violence, and isolation."

Updated July 19, 2024
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Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story
Berendt, John
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city--now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author "Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and...
House of cotton
Brashears, Monica
Paper Book
FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award * NPR BEST BOOK OF 2023 * An enchanting Black Southern gothic debut, perfect for readers of Mexican Gothic... "Fresh, haunting...In her roller-coaster ride of a gothic debut novel, Monica Brashears upends expectations at...
Ring shout : or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the end times
Clark, P. Djèlí
Paper Book
Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror "A fantastical, brutal and thrilling triumph of the imagination...Clark's combination of...
The boatman's daughter
Davidson, Andy
Paper Book
"Go read Andy Davidson's lush nightmare, The Boatman's Daughter. It put an arrow through my head and heart." --Paul Tremblay, author of Growing Things "Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose . . . A stunning supernatural Southern Gothic." --...
As I lay dying : the corrected text
Faulkner, William
Paper Book
A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family's odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. As I Lay Dying is one of the most...
Crooked letter, crooked letter
Franklin, Tom.
Paper Book
"The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling....A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For...
Starling house
Harrow, Alix E.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "This book has everything you could possibly want this fall...a cursed town, a haunted house, a vivid & eerie setting--plus, characters willing to risk everything." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club October '23 Pick)...
Child of God
McCarthy, Cormac
Audiobook
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard--a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape--haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail.
Outer dark
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road * A novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother...
When the reckoning comes : a novel
McQueen, LaTanya
Paper Book
"LaTanya McQueen's When The Reckoning Comes is so deliciously uncomfortable there were moments where I had to put the book down, take a deep breath, and like Mira, its protagonist, urge myself to go further. This is a novel, like Octavia Butler's Kindred, that reminds its...
Beloved : a novel
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.  This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" (...
The devil all the time
Pollock, Donald Ray
Paper Book
From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiff--called "powerful, remarkable, exceptional" by the Los Angeles Times--comes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock...
The toll
Priest, Cherie
Paper Book
A 2020 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre. ...
Sorrowland
Solomon, Rivers
Paper Book
A TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2021 A New York Times Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2021 The Stonewall Book Award winner of 2022 Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly<...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their correspondence. With a new Preface by the author.
Sing, unburied, sing
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerAn Indie Next PickA National Book Award-winning AuthorA Finalist for the National Book Award for FictionA Finalist for the Kirkus PrizeA Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie MedalA Publishers Weekly Top 10 of 2017Jesmyn Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st...
A streetcar named Desire
Williams, Tennessee
Paper Book
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared - A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story of the fading and desperate Blanche DuBois and how her sensuous and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley...
Winter's bone : a novel
Woodrell, Daniel.
Paper Book
When Ree Dollys father skips bail, the 16-year-old knows if he doesn't show up, her family will lose their home. Her goal had been to leave her life of poverty and join the Army, but first she must find her father, teach her little brothers to fend for themselves, and escape a downward spiral of...

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