The Best Southern Books of May 2026 https://ift.tt/mI0xaUS
My corner of the South is continuing its downward spiral in lots of ways, including redistricting, chaos in Congress, and the loss of representation for people of color. I have to take this time to remind you how important it is to vote in your state and local elections! And get involved in your community! Like Anjali Enjeti said in her interview about Ballot, “regardless of electoral politics, we can shape the society that we want to shape.”
Once you’ve noted down the dates for your area’s next election and made a plan to get yourself to the polls, read on for a list of amazing Southern fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. While you’re on your way to your next city council meeting, stop by your local independent bookstore and grab one!
BOA: “Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione (“sacred conversation”), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space… For a Black, queer person so often dislocated from time and place, pleasure becomes an act of resistance — a grounding in the now. This Elegance is a love song — an offering to Black artistry, a tribute to visionary lives, and a testament to the power of beauty in even our most precarious moments.”
Holt: “Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks — even so late in the day — can still change, and then change everything.”
Counterpoint: “In suburban Miami, sixty-year-old Sakeena — co-owner of a Dunkin’ franchise along with her husband, Ramzan — has nine months to live unless she consents to an organ transplant. Thirty years ago, at Ramzan’s behest, she left her beloved Rawalpindi, India, for the United States. In the years that followed, she compromised her belief in naseeb, the Muslim notion of destiny, and acquiesced to fertility treatments. This time, she is adamant that she should live as intended — without medical intervention. As her health deteriorates, Ramzan desperately seeks to reunite their grown children with the hope of convincing Sakeena to extend her life.”
Doubleday: “The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother’s mission: they’ll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one… Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill’s fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.”
Random House: “A sweeping novel of one Kentucky family’s rise and fall throughout the 1980s — a tragicomic tour de force about love and marriage, parents and children, and the perils of mixing family with business. While trying to maintain the facade of a perfect success story, Fred and Fran learn that in matters of love and money, once it’s gone, it’s gone — no returns, no exchanges.
Scribner: “In these pages Ward contemplates the writers and novels of her youth and adulthood — the transformative power of discovering Octavia Butler as a twenty-something, the mirror that Richard Wright’s novels held up to her own childhood, and of course, her lifelong love for Toni Morrison. Ward ruminates on her approach to both fiction and life, reflecting on the power of the novel, how to raise a Black son in an era of rising divisiveness and cruelty, as well as her own personal tragedies — including the titular essay of the collection, which tells the story of her partner’s sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic.”
Hub City: “Set in 1980s Kentucky, this striking debut novel is told from inside a treatment home for troubled teenagers, where lost boys become more than their pasts and dare to imagine different futures. In his deeply honest and soulful debut, Bond crafts a coming-of-age story that sears with the anger and spirit of abandoned youth. The Nickel Boys meets This Boy’s Life, Hope House is a novel about belonging, care, and the desire in all of us to find a home.”
Regal House: “When teenager Nadine Harvey helps her best friend hide a disturbing secret, she’ s also concealing her own deepest truth: she’ ll do almost anything to be wanted. Five years and three thousand miles later, Nadine is thrilled when her idol, Celeste — a rock singer known as “ the oracle” — befriends her. As Celeste’ s career begins to falter, she launches a bold program encouraging women to speak their truths. Nadine eagerly becomes her business partner, but as their ambitions clash, their alliance starts to unravel. Determined to hide their growing rift, Celeste and Nadine invite their mothers to a high-profile awards gala. When painful histories resurface, each woman must confront how she sees herself — and how the world sees her.”
Harper: “In this wry, provocative debut, two gay Afghan men — cast out of their respective countries of birth by circumstances beyond their control — collide in Istanbul, a city that will test their willingness to sacrifice everything for the ones they love. Told through the alternating viewpoints of Delbar and Mansur, Bobuq Sayed’s debut is a story of borders and boundaries transgressed, and a seductive exploration of what it means to make a home at the margins of society. At once an immigrant family saga, a thwarted love story, and a searing portrait of politics made intimately personal, No God but Us is an ambitious introduction to a bold new voice.”
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