The Best Southern Books of May 2025 https://ift.tt/189t7q3
Well, y’all, the horrors persist. The Trump administration is gutting funding for arts, culture, and media in devastating ways. Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts canceled many of the grants for literary organizations across the country, which you can read more about over at LitHub. There are so many people that are hurting right now, and so many causes and organizations that need funding. But if you have a little extra, now is a really good time to support small literary organizations.
It’s also a great time to support local bookstores and writers! To that end, here’s a roundp of new May releases to add to your bookshelf. Like I’ve said before, reading is a form of activism, and I hope that in between contacting your representatives, you’re also turning to books that mean something.
Harper: “Pulsating with menace and narrated with hypnotic lyricism, Girls with Long Shadows is an electrifying literary thriller that captures how female teenage angst can turn lethal when insecurities are weaponized and sibling bonds are severed. Tense, lush, and painfully beautiful, it forces us to consider the lengths to which we will go to claim our own personhood.”
Hub City: “In illustrated essays, World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After explores the intersections of faith, motherhood, and the climate crisis across the South. From man-made wetlands in Arkansas to conservation cemeteries in South Carolina, from a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky to the reenactment of the Scopes Monkey Trial, Park chronicles the ways the faith in which she was raised now seems like an exception to the rule, exploring this divide with compassion and empathy.”
Deep Vellum: “New from Alan Govenar, Come Round Right is a deeply personal novel and a paean to a pivotal moment in American history—when the Vietnam War was raging, and the idealism of the 1960s was losing ground to frustration, anger, and violence. Lyrical and poetic, juxtaposing Shaker melodies with a twangy sound and a heavy percussive beat, Come Round Right is at once a moving reckoning with the author’s own trauma and an expansive novel that speaks to the most pressing issues of our time.”
Zando – Hillman Grad Books: “Abe Jacobs is Kanien’kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne ― or, as white people say, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. At eighteen, Abe left the reservation where he was raised and never looked back. He met the love of his life, started writing poetry, and began an open marriage. Now at forty-three, Abe is suffering from a rare disease ― one his doctors in Miami believe will kill him. … Delivered with crackling wit and heart-wrenching tenderness, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the power and secrets of family, the capacity for healing and intimacy, and the ripple effects of history and culture.”
Timber Press: “Drawing from original interviews with the author, Holler is an illustrated look at six inspiring changemakers. Denali Nalamalapu, a climate organizer in their own right, introduces readers to the ordinary people who became resisters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia—a teacher, a single mother, a nurse, an organizer, a photographer, and a seed keeper. … More than anything, Holler is an invitation to readers everywhere searching for their own path to activism: sending the message that no matter how small your action is, it’s impactful.”
William Morrow: “Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century American South, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.”
Ecco: “An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel. Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other — a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.”
Little, Brown: “A debut of enormous ambition” spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil (Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water). Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.”
Atria: “The Labasques aren’t like other families. Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community. So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. … Weaving through the swamps and bayous of rural Louisiana, Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric, smoldering suspense about our darker impulses — and how to set things right.”
Bull City Press: “In the dazzling flash fictions of Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars, lives are altered in what appear to be minor moments: an unlatched lock, an old photo, a light left on too long. But in the care of acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, those details constellate into something mysterious and magical. … Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars tenderly navigates the shadows, inviting readers to take comfort. There’s plenty of light left.”
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