The Best Southern Books of September 2025 https://ift.tt/GK0NfIl
Somehow I’m always surprised when fall arrives, as if pumpkin spice everything hasn’t been on the shelves since July. I do love a season change though, the way it feels like anything is possible. Maybe if I watch When Harry Met Sally again, maybe it’ll get cold enough to wear a cute coat. Maybe a new book will fix all of my problems, who knows! Here’s a list of the best new releases that might just change everything.
Little, Brown: “Nathan Harris delves into the critical years of the Civil War’s aftermath to deliver an intimate and epic tale of what freedom means in a society still determined to return its Black citizens to bondage. Populated with unforgettable characters, Amity is a vital addition to the literature of emancipation.”
Avid Reader: “One young woman’s relentless quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut will irrevocably alter the fates of the people she loves most in this tour de force of a debut about ambition, belonging, and family… Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.”
University of Florida: “In expanding her exploration of motherhood and daughterhood to include these ‘other mothers,’ Wade takes a new and surprising kaleidoscopic approach to her portrayals of family life. This book reveals a young woman in the late twentieth century grappling with gendered expectations, beauty and body ideals, and complex messages about who she is permitted — or destined — to become.”
Atria: “A chilling and seductive coming-of-age story, The Belles is an excavation of the dark side of girlhood, the intricacies of privilege, and the unbridled desire to belong at any cost.”
Knopf: “In a world where what one is, and how one looks, or even just the idea of a person can get one killed, this is transformative work. This collection does not stump for its humanity, nor does it compromise its art in order to speak in its own voice. Sprung to its own sound, celebratory without apology, this is a book which reclaims the act of poetry itself, too, for the way it can reshape the writer, the mind, the body, the story we choose, and the images the world can imprint on us.”
Blair: “Poems of praise for community and the collective appear alongside others tinged with nostalgia and grief when House keenly observes the loss of rural America as he once knew it. Returning to his touchstone subjects, House recalls wild places, echoes stories from a lingering and living past, and explores an abiding connection to family, friends, and fellow artists.”
Simon & Schuster: “Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse. You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.”
Simon & Schuster: “A vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is. Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back — where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.”
Hub City: “Journeying through landscapes of Alabama, the Middle Passage and Underground Railroad, interior spaces of loss and love, and her father’s garden, Jones constructs both an elegy for her father and a celebration of the sacred exuberance and audacity of life. Featuring poems from her tenure as Alabama’s first Black and youngest Poet Laureate, Lullaby for the Grieving finds calm in unimaginable storms and attempts to listen for the sounds of healing.”
Crown: “In this unflinching and moving memoir, John T. Edge takes us on a quest for home in a South that has both held him close and pushed him away, as he tries and fails and tries again to rewrite the stories he inherited… Beginning in Georgia and concluding in Mississippi, his search spans the Deep South and charts a very American story of the truth telling and soul searching it takes to love your people and your place.”
Knopf: “The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves — as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.”
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