TV shows might be cranking out new episodes, but with our list of 12 Southern books you should read this fall, along with three Southern mysteries, we're guessing you won't have to touch the remote control. Get hooked by checking out the first lines from our selections:
Fiction
“Isabel’s mother watched her tie on her hat with the look of intense pride and suppressed doubt that is particular to the mothers of grown daughters.” — ‘Twain's End’ by Lynn Cullen
“On a Friday evening in June, stoked by the awesome weather, Chip, Lee, and I were doing tequila shots on the patio of Noah’s Ark Taxidermy.” — ‘The New and Improved Romie Futch’ by Julia Elliott
“When Elsie came outside into the backyard to see why her husband was shouting her name, she saw Albert lying on his back in the grass, his little legs splayed apart and his head thrust backward.” — ‘Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of A Man, His Wife, and Her Alligator’ by Homer Hickam
“A thick drizzle from the sky, like a curtain’s sudden sweeping.” —‘Fates and Furies’ by Lauren Groff
“Conflict begets commerce, and theirs was the American Civil War.” — ‘Honey from the Lion’ by Matthew Neill Null
“That day, I woke up from a dream the way I always woke up: pressed against my mom’s back, my face against her and her turned away.” — ‘The Mare’ by Mary Gaitskill
Nonfiction
“On a spring morning in 1997, Jim Harper, a young man from Durham, North Carolina, woke up in his two-bedroom apartment with no clue that he would soon become gravely ill.” —‘Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine’ by Damon Tweedy
“In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on a hot Sunday morning in early October, I sat in my car in the parking lot of a motel studying a map, trying to locate a certain church.” — ‘Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads’ by Paul Theroux
“At unexpected points in life, everyone gets waylaid by the colossal force of recollection.” —‘The Art of Memoir’ by Mary Karr
“The creak of the large oak door then slow, muffled steps across the floor woke me in the pitch-black dark of the early morning hours.” —‘A Boy from Georgia: Coming of Age in the Segregated South’ by Hamilton Jordan
