The Best Southern Books of October 2025 https://ift.tt/CZuGWzH
I‘m running out of ways to say that things are dark. People are being disappeared, communities are hurting, and many are struggling to buy groceries. New horrors are enacted every day. I hope you’re taking care of your neighbors however you can. Maybe that’s something as simple as a book recommendation — there are certainly plenty of wonderful new releases to choose from this month!
Viking: “Carson Faust captivates in this chilling literary debut that confronts the specter of colonization and the generational scars it leaves on Native American families. Steeped in Indigenous folklore and drawing from the author’s own family history, If the Dead Belong Here examines what it means to be haunted — both by the supernatural and by terrors of our own making.”
University Press of Kentucky: “In The Nature of Pain, Sheffel recounts coming of age during the opioid epidemic of the late 1990s and early 2000s. She illuminates the importance of kinship and connection to place while exposing the bitter truths of a community transformed by opioids…. Sheffel’s memoir is an aching tale of empathy for modern mountain folks — of love and grief, of family and place, and of the addictions that continue to pain them.”
University of Texas Press: “An Anchor in the Sea of Time unfolds individual stories but also a larger narrative about the development and distortions of history. A vivid encounter with lost selves, vanished worlds, and futures yet unrealized, An Anchor in the Sea of Time is perhaps the most personal book yet from this beloved writer.”
W.W. Norton: “crowell sifts through decades of obituaries, journals, and other ephemera to exhume the generations of her family from her hometown of Texarkana, Texas. She preserves her relatives’ stories in writing and in works of collage, a style of archive that layers the past and the present literally and poetically. Rhapsodic, inventive, and ambitious, Cord Swell establishes crowell as one of the most creative and dynamic new voices in poetry.”
Timber Press: “Brown had become fascinated with these empty lots around Austin, so-called ‘ruined’ spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands.”
Carnegie Mellon: “Steamy, sharp, and deeply human, Tamiami Trail depicts the beauty and brutality of Miami, evoking its lush landscapes and relentless energy. With wit and sharp insight, Bannan maps the unruly desires that drive her unforgettable characters and the city that shapes them.”
University Press of Kentucky: “Simultaneously mythic and realist, this collection is an invitation to sway in a swell of Black love and to stomp in protest against the world’s injustices. The voice in these poems is both intimate and international, welcoming us into his soul and taking us on a sweeping journey through the Black diaspora. In the process, upfromsumdirt demonstrates the complexity of Blackness by examining the portal of his own body through space and time and interrogating its binds.”
Astra House: “Hernan Diaz meets Ottessa Moshfegh in this madcap road trip chronicle; a moving display of human connection in the face of violence and climate destruction from a remarkable new voice in fiction. A catastrophe novel by turns tender and hilarious, fueled by a low-simmering political rage, Happy Bad is a rocket arrived on Earth.”
Alice James: “Cecily Parks draws on literary sources ranging from nursery rhymes to The Odyssey to examine how we form relationships with the natural world. The lessons of these poems are in processes that underscore humanity’s power to alter nature and powerlessness to control it: an epiphyte’s fall from a live oak, an urban creek’s response to drought, or a roof rat’s nest-building in the attic of the poet’s home. The Seeds deconstructs what it means to love nature, especially when the natural world challenges our desires for beauty, abundance, and safety.”
University Press of Kentucky: “Queer Communion is a collection of twelve essays, poems, and stories that follows and fractures the expectations surrounding LGBTQIA+ Appalachians and their religious beliefs. Gathered by Davis Shoulders, the pieces delve into themes of chosen family, loss, congregation, and alternative expressions of faith. Set against the backdrop of Christian cultural mores and a region considered to be deeply pious, these writings offer diverse perspectives on religion, queerness, and growth.”
Ecco: “A haunting, unforgettable novel of obsession, pride, and forgiveness, exploring the friendship and rivalry between two gifted boys in harrowing circumstances. Filled with Brandon Hobson’s trademark swirling yet visceral writing, and punctuated with original artwork, The Devil Is a Southpaw is an ambitious, elegant, and propulsive novel in the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez.”
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