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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Bastard out of Carolina
Allison, Dorothy
Paper Book
Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family-rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone,...
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 The basis for the upcoming Broadway musical, coming in 2025! "Elegant and wicked . . . might be...
Citrus County
Brandon, John
Paper Book
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
Wake the bones
Kilcoyne, Elizabeth
Paper Book
"YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force." -...
Soil
Kornegay, Jamie
Paper Book
A darkly comic debut novel by an independent bookseller about an idealistic young farmer who moves his family to a Mississippi flood basin, suffers financial ruin--and becomes increasingly paranoid he's being framed for murder. It all began with a simple dream. An ambitious young...
The cutting season : a novel
Locke, Attica.
Paper Book
From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX's Empire: "The Cutting Season is a rare murder mystery with heft, a historical novel that thrills, a page-turner that makes you think. Attica Locke is a dazzling writer with a conscience."--Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times ...
Child of God
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
Cormac McCarthy plumbs the depths of human degradation in Child of God, his most brutally violent, shocking work. From the author of Blood Meridian and The Road. 1960s, Tennessee. Lester Ballard is a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman,...
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's child,...
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
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.  This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" (People) is an unflinchingly...
The devil all the time : a novel
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. ...
The Past Is Never: A Novel
Quay Tyson, Tiffany
Paper Book
**WINNER of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction** **WINNER of the Mississippi Author Award for Adult Fiction selected by the Mississippi Library Association** **WINNER of the 2019 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award for Fiction​** **​...
Sorrowland
Solomon, Rivers
Paper Book
"A fantastical, fierce reckoning... Sorrowland is gorgeous." Roxanne Gay "Dark, magical and incredibly satisfying." Independent "An exhilarating journey to the outer limits of science fiction." Guardian. "Epic!"...
The little friend
Tartt, Donna.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch comes an utterly riveting novel set in Mississippi of childhood, innocence, and evil. *  "Destined to become a special kind of classic." --The New York Times Book Review The setting is...
Brutes
Tate, Dizz
Paper Book
The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in thiswildly original debut-a coming-of-age story about thecrucible of girlhood, from a writer of rare and startlingtalent.
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino. Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, The Color Purple writes a message of healing,...
Sing, unburied, sing : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
*WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION *A TIME MAGAZINE BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 OF 2017 *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize *Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal *Finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize...
The optimist's daughter
Welty, Eudora
Paper Book
The people of Mount Salus, Mississippi always felt good about Judge McKelva. He was a quiet, solid reassuring figure, just as a judge should be. Then, ten years after his first wife's death, he marries the frivolous young Wanda Fay. No-one can understand his action, not least his beloved daughter...
A streetcar named Desire
Williams, Tennessee
Paper Book
Fading southern belle Blanche Dubois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley....
Holy city : a novel
Wise, Henry
Paper Book
EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL OF THE YEAR "Holy City is an amazing piece of work. A Southern novel that examines the pathos and ethos of small-town life and the weight of both grief and hatred. Love it."--S.A. Cosby No one innocent. No one free....
Winter's bone : a novel
Woodrell, Daniel.
Paper Book
Daniel Woodrell's modern classic is an unforgettable tale of desperation and courage that inspired the award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence.  Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose...

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