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 September 12, 2024
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Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story
Berendt, John 1939-
Paper Book
THE LANDMARK NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, NOW A MAJOR MUSICAL COMING SOON TO BROADWAY * An enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city: "Elegant and wicked.... [This] might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast...
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...
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)...
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 ...
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,...
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 little friend
Tartt, Donna.
Paper Book
The hugely anticipated new novel by the author ofThe Secret History—a best-seller nationwide and around the world, and one of the most astonishing debuts in recent times—The Little Friendis even more transfixing and resonant. In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows...
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 1909-2001
Paper Book
A young woman who has left the South, returns to New Orleans several years later when her father is dying. After his death, she and her young stepmother go back to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past and herself....
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.

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