Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors. The Great Santini is my favorite. Faulkner, Truman Capote. Absalom, Absalom by James Dickey is wonderful. All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren. Anything William Styron. For lighter fare, Ellen Gilchrist is great.

I was going to say that I know Faulkner i always mentioned. I did read The Sound and the Fury and had a very hard time with it. I might give the one you suggest a try..

Editing as I see jakabedy was replied while I was typing. Great suggestions, thank you. I always enjoyed Truman Capote..

Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Peter Taylor.

I was coming to mention Ellen Gilchrist. I started with The Annunciation. IIRC, The Annunciation is set mostly in NW Arkansas.

If you think of Maryland as the South, I’d also recommend Anne Tyler.

And, of course, there’s John Grisham, a native Mississippian now living in Virginia. The Painted House was one of my favs.

ETA:

Mysteries, Greg Iles from Natchez, MS

The first Joshilyn Jackson book I read was Gods in Alabama. I think I’ve read all of her ”Southern Fiction” books, but I don’t think I’ve read any of her thrillers/mysteries.

Flannery O'Connor. Walker Percy.

You've probably read To Kill a Mockingbird but I've enjoyed rereading books I read when I was much younger.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers is a classic.

Cold Sassy Tree

James Lee Burke

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Janis Owens' trilogy set in North Florida is an excellent and very evocative set of books-the first one 'My Brother Michael' shares a title with several others so be sure to link it with her name.

The two remaining in the series are Myra Sims and The Schooling of Claybird Catts.

Here's a brief overview of the first book:

Winner of the Chatauqua South Award for Fiction

Out of the shotgun houses and deep, shaded porches of a west Florida mill town comes this extraordinary novel of love and redemption as told by Gabriel Catts. On the eve of his fortieth birthday, Gabe attempts to reconcile a family shattered by his betrayal of his older brother, Michael. As Gabe contends with a host of personal demons, he recounts his lifelong love for his brother's wife, Myra, whose own demons threaten to overwhelm all three of them. Circumstance and passion push them beyond the moral boundaries of their close-knit community in this intimate view of a Southern family.

Thank you - these are great. Many of them I've heard of but either didn't know they were southern lit, or I forgot them so this is all so helpful.

And yes, Midnight ithe Garden of Good and Evil might have started me on this.I so adored the book and did visit Savannah and the Mercer House.

Ernest Gaines -- Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Gathering of Old Men, A Lesson Before Dying to name a few.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_J._Gaines

bbstx - Ellen Gilchrist! Loved her. Drunk with Love, I Can't Get You Close Enough, The Annunciation - I could not get enough of her work in the 80's and 90's. A wonderful southern writer!

Adding a couple of other suggestions for quirkier/grittier tastes: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and something by Harry Crews, maybe Feast of Snakes.

From 1937 Zora Neale Hurston’s classic Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Fannie Flagg for some humor and lighter reading. But also thoughtful and interesting.

Funny that this topic of Southern literature just came up for me, when a friend who hadnt ready any of Pat Conroys books recommended Harrison Scott Key so enthusiastically, I put a couple of his books in my Amazon cart. She especially loved and recommended How to Stay Married .

And if you don't mind reading plays, Tennessee Williams. His plays tell a slightly different tale than the movie versions due to the moral codes at the time.

oh I'm really loving the replies.

Just to comment, I have read some Tennessee Williams ( and loved it)....enjoyed Fannie Flagg,

LOVED Confederacy of Dunces, could not stand Their Eyes Were Watching Gd,

I guess I'm all over the place.

I will definitely be looking into many of the ones suggested. Inever heard of Harrison Scott Key.

So glad I asked.

Reynolds Price

For you Pat Conroy fans, he wrote a wonderful cookbook too. A friend gave it to me and I loved it. It is part recipes and part great stories. It is available from The Great Zon, but can also be found used.

I think Beach Music is my favorite Pat Conroy book.

If you want quirky/madcap with a little rom-com, try Mary Kay Andrews. She’s from Savannah, GA.

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. I’ve read it twice.

And another lighter suggestion, the Sweet Potato Queens books by Jill Conner Browne.

Donna

Love Carl Hiaasen. Just wish I knew how to pronounce his name! Is it High-ass-en or more like hyacinth: Higha-sen?

I like the way he takes on Florida ecological problems with a light hand but, nevertheless, getting the point across.

Rick Bragg All Over But The Shoutin' Also Ava's Man.

Bbstx, it’s higha-sen.

Attica Locke writes crime stories, most set in eastern Texas. She really develops characters well, and I've enjoyed them all.

Fairly often, when someone comes here to ask for something ... they get way more than they expected, or bargained for - often to their delight.

ole joyful

Larry McMurtry could be considered Southern, and he was my creative writing professor at university.

Erskine Caldwell is good, and someone should have mentioned Margaret Mitchell, who is one of the most obvious. Mark Twain also strikes me as being Southern - I think MO was considered part of the South when he was born.

I had to read Flannery O'Connor when I was getting my degree in English, and I found her stories to be terrifyingly realistic - so much so that I could not sleep after reading them. I've also read many of Faulkner's novels, as well as Tennessee Williams plays. As plays go, his are some of the best for reading.

Truman Capote was from New Orleans. Incidentally, his Beverly Hills home is for rent.

I am on vacation and totally forgot so came back to recommend Carl Hiaason and Rick Bragg. Two of my favorites that make me smile. I see someone else chimed about those two already.

Also Dorothea Benton Frank, and for some fun beach reads, Mary Kay Andrews, Mary Alice Monroe, Kristen Harmel and few others. The Sweet Potato Queens will have you dying from laughing so hard. So will Lewis Grizzard. Anyone who has (or knows someone who has) any type of heart procedure should read one of his first books ’They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat’.

Lars, how was McMurtry? I used to love his books and especially enjoyed when they were adapted into films.

Larry McMurtry liked my short stories and said of one that it was Kafkaesque. I also wrote a play that he liked. I don't remember what he said about my poetry, but I made an A in the class.

He had some interesting stories to tell about Ken Kesey, but I don't remember too much else that he said, although I did tell him that my grandmother had friends in Archer City, which is where he was from, but I did not know who they were or what their names were. Anyway, I was very familiar with the part of Texas where he was from, and so we had that in common.

This is great. I have saved this thread ( hopefully that function still works on houzz) as there's so much info here.

I used to belong to 4 book clubs, and have slowly faded out from 2. I'll probably keep up with one for sure but I'm finding more and more that I have such a long list of books I want to read that the book clubs have become less enticing. This list has me being even more discerning with the book club picks. :)

I did read a few of Rick Bragg's books and loved them.

Again, thank you for all the posts. I am taking your recommendations and will even give another try to the ones I did read that I might have decided I was one and done.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Love Reynolds Price -especially The Promise of Rest, just a beautiful book.

Pat Conroy absolutely but if you don't know (as I didn't for many years), the man has one of those Southern storytelling voices that I could listen to for hours, so if you find an audio book, I'd give it a listen.

Rick Bragg's All Over But the .Shoutin' is one of my favorite books.

And of course, one of my all time favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Completely OT, but DD1 and I are going to Chicago in July to visit one of her friends. While we are there, the Goodman Theater is doing a new musical of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It's written by Jason Robert Brown, whose music is amazing. We have our tickets!

Just came back to say I thought I'd try Confederates in the Attic , not knowing what to expect. It has immediately drawn me in. I'm only at the very very beginning, but so engaging . Thank you @msmeow

If you can get your hands on anything by Lewis Grizzard, grab it! He was a Southern columnist and humorist and his books can be hard to find. They are light reading but full of Southern humor and expressions.

@salonva, it’s a very interesting story!

salonva, you might want to add this thread to the Meta thread so you can find it in the future....

North and South by John Jakes. Part one of a trilogy & I didnt read 2 & 3. Excellent book which was made into a lousy tv movie.

If you're reading Confederates In the Attic, one of my favorite books ever, don't miss Tony Horwitz' 2019 followup Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide. That was the last book he wrote before his untimely death.

His biography of John Brown, Midnight Rising, was another good read. I love all his books.

I loved Confederates in the Attic. Time for a reread.

Barncatz, thanks for the rec for Spying on the South.

The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All is a terrific book.

A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor won the Pulitzer in 1987

@sushipup2, I’ve never heard of Peter Taylor. I just read a short summary of A Summons to Memphis. I’m intrigued. Thanks for bringing it to our collective attention.

Toni Morrison's Beloved is set in Ohio but I think of it as southern. I also liked

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom.

I wouldn't call this one literature, but it was a ripping good story-trigger warning, if you don't like dark themes this book probably isn't for you.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is about pretty much what the title says. Set in Charleston, the author did a fantastic job both creating vivid characters and evoking a very particular social and regional milieu.

Would be a good summer read, just maybe not late at night if you're alone LOL.

bbstx, back in the early 30's, my mother was Taylor's father's secretary, first in St Louis, then they opened an office in Memphis. There's also a collection of short stories that I love, The Old Forest.

How fascinating! What company did Taylor’s father own/run?

It was a branch of an insurance company. My father came to work there, in Memphis, which is how they met.

Anne Rivers Siddons is an author who wrote in a similar style to Pat Conroy, and they were close friends. Conroy's last wife, Cassandra King, is also a novelist.

Kaye Gibbons is another southern author I enjoy.