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
A profound portrait of family dynamics in the rural South and "an essential novel" (The New Yorker) "As close to flawless as any reader could ask for . . . The living language [Allison] has created is as exact and innovative as the language of To Kill a...
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...
Ivory shoals : a novel
Brandon, John
Paper Book
In the tradition of Mark Twain and Cormac McCarthy comes this distinctly American, pulse-quickening epic from the acclaimed author of Citrus County and Arkansas. "I opened John Brandon's new novel and fell hard. An adventure full of grit and wonder, far-flung...
Citrus County
Brandon, John.
Ebook
There shouldn’t be a Citrus County. Teenage romance should be difficult, but not this difficult. Boys like Toby should cause trouble but not this much. The moon should glow gently over children safe in their beds. Uncles in their rockers should be kind. Teachers should guide and inspire....
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 gospel singer
Crews, Harry
Paper Book
"Harry Crews is magnificently twisted and brutally funny." - Carl Hiaasen A Penguin Classic Golden-haired, with the voice of an angel and a reputation as a healer, the Gospel Singer appeared on the cover of LIFE and brought thousands to their knees in Carnegie...
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
Faulkner, William
Ebook
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...
The keepers of the house
Grau, Shirley Ann.
Ebook
A "beautifully written" Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family's secrets in the American South (The Atlantic Monthly). Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought...
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)...
Wake the Bones A Novel
Kilcoyne, Elizabeth.
Ebook
"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.
Audiobook
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 environmental...
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
Ebook
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
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...
Wise blood
O'Connor, Flannery.
Paper Book
The American short story master Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes,...
The Devil All the Time
Pollock, Donald Ray.
Ebook
Now a Netflix film starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson A dark and riveting vision of 1960s America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree.  In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the...
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 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 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 : a novel
Tate, Dizz
Paper Book
The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut--a coming-of-age story about the crucible of girlhood, from a writer of rare and startling talent We would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones....
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Now a Broadway musical featuring Jennifer Hudson Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the National Book Award   Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice...
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
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew...
A streetcar named Desire
Williams, Tennessee
Paper Book
The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance.
Holy city : a novel
Wise, Henry
Paper Book
"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. Nothing sacred. Holy City is the...
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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