The Best Books of 2016 by Southern Authors

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At the end of the Civil War, Ava is alone. Her family has been lost to the conflict, and she's at the mercy of unmerciful and angry men who want to take everything she has left. Her unlikely savior is Callum, a horse thief who chooses to rescue Ava even though it puts him in danger, and the two roam the war-torn South that's been ransacked, devastated and burned.

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Vivienne Cally and her friends spend hot Texas summers darting between lake houses, church, boutiques and parties. Vivienne is the one with the important family name and seemingly effortless charm—she's also the one who's going broke and trying to hide it from her friends. But as hard as she tries to keep her mask on, Preston, an architect who drops in and out of her social circle, might just have what it takes to look past the disguise and see the real Vivienne underneath.

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We've treasured Lee Smith books like The Last Girls for decades, and Dimestore is a new gem for our collections. This time, she's given us a window into her own childhood; as a girl, she worked in her father's dimestore. Her window into the past is clear and distinct, and the nostalgia she conjures is perfectly sentimental without being sappy. We also get to see Smith grow as a writer, beginning as a girl in love with stories and ending up the writer who's brought us so many beautiful books.

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Ellie Robbins wasn't trying to be a trailblazer. She didn't want a position of power. She wanted a happy life with her husband. But when he dies, leaving her his position as sheriff in a Tennessee town already hit hard by the Depression, Ellie decides to stand up and fight instead of giving up. As she fights injustice and battles her own demons to defend the powerless, Ellie becomes a new heroine who meets the challenges of her life with gumption and wisdom.

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Irenie wants to leave her husband, but in 1930s North Carolina, that's impossible. Instead, she sneaks out of bed at night and goes for long walks by herself—but this odd behavior convinces her husband, a strict pastor, that she's possessed by Satan. He's so convinced that she's possessed that he'll do anything to stop her, and that includes hurting her, her friends, or anyone else in the community unlucky enough to earn guilt by association.

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When Jonah Williams escapes the plantation where he's been kept as a slave, he has almost nothing—no supplies, no support, and no idea where he's going. The only thing he can hold onto is the star that he hopes will help him find a way to freedom. Jonah's ability to hide and scramble away from the people who hunt him and want to bring him back to the plantation is challenged when he realizes Angel, another escaped slave, is trailing him and expects to follow along to freedom.

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Miss Jane is one of our favorite new Southern heroines. She's innocent without being naïve, brave without being overbearing, and gentle without being boring. Born with a birth defect that forever puts her at a distance from her family and friends and that requires her to always be detached from other people, Jane finds ways to make connections anyway, and her bond with nature is pure and unbroken.

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Cece and Joan are inseparable, and that's just fine with Cece—even though Joan overshadows her at almost every turn. Their group of 1950s socialites takes Houston by storm, partying in gorgeous dresses at their favorite hotel by night and lounging poolside by day. But when Joan disappears without a word, Cece is left to try to piece together answers, wondering how a friend she'd always considered a sister could leave her without explanation or closure.

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In this sequel to her smash-hit novel The Kitchen House, Kathleen Grissom brings us back into the life of Jamie Pyke, the son of a slave and a landowner. Passing for white, Jamie made his way to Philadelphia, where he built a comfortable life. But all that could crumble when he returns to the South, determined to keep a promise and prove his loyalty. A wonderful follow up to The Kitchen House, Glory Over Everything also works as a stand-alone book.

Buy It: $17.18; amazon.com

When two little girls are taken to a cabin in the woods and kept from their families for weeks, the case becomes a media event. For the girls who were taken, it's much more than that. Once they're rescued, the bond the girls made, the only thing keeping them grounded, is severed, and their real memories get mixed up by the conjecture and assumptions of other people. As adults, the girls both take work on a project that's eerily close to their own story—it may be a chance for them to reconnect and help heal the wounds from their pasts.

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The story of George and Willie Muse is true, but it reads like fiction—the African American albino twins were kidnapped from their mother in Truevine, Virginia and toured as oddities and curiosities in America and even England while their mother fought for almost 30 years to get them back. Author Beth Macy sidesteps the trap of being too sappy or painting unbelievably distinct heroes and villains, instead weaving a complex narrative about race and poverty that's realistic and compelling.

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We've just lived through a difficult election season with polarizing personalities, and it's easy to forget that our country has been swept up in epic personality clashes before; H.W. Brands retells the contentious debate about nuclear warfare during the Korean War by examining two men who personified the issues for American as the time. President Harry Truman was disliked while General Douglas MacArthur was beloved, and the battle between the two was dramatic, political and personal.

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Winston Groom returns to fiction with El Paso, his first departure from reality since Forrest Gump. Like that novel, this new book mixes imaginative characters with true-life events and historical figures in a story that spans decades. But instead of camping in Alabama and Louisiana, this time Groom sets his story in the American Southwest, and his characters battle Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. It's a sweeping story full of lively, well-painted characters—and it's an incredibly fun ride.

Buy It: $18.29; amazon.com

Dark and nostalgic, The Jealous Kind brings us to Houston at the beginning of the 1950s. The Korean War is raging, and back home in Texas, classes are becoming more distinct and dangerous as rich oil families clash against the poorer laborers. Aaron Holland Broussard comes up against these tensions when he accidentally stumbles into a fight that gives him purpose, angst and an epic first love.

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Artist and conservationist Alex Beard is known for his children's books, but this lush coffee table book full of gorgeous paintings is all grown up. The flora and fauna of the South come to life on his pages, and the rich colors of Beard's paintings are vivid, bold and beautiful.

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This always quirky, sometimes strange, and compulsively readable book of short stories feels like spending a long afternoon with a best friend, a sister, or the funniest woman at book club. Author Helen Ellis has fun with the expectations placed on womanhood—especially Southern womanhood—but her sometimes-cynicism isn't bitter or melodramatic. Instead, it's relatable, compelling and laugh-out-loud funny.

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The nuns at The Sisters of the Supreme Adoration have a few challenges on their hands—and they're all named Guinevere. Win, Ginny, Gwen and Vere test the bonds of religion as they grow into women and into a tight friendship. What secrets and stories do the girls hold? Will they wait patiently to grow up and leave the nuns, or will they fight against the restrictions of the church and run away to freedom and danger? This coming-of-age story clearly outlines both religion's glorious moments and its sometimes tragic consequences.

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Lovers of True Crime and Southern Gothic will be entranced by the intrigue, investigations and institutional corruption in Murder in the Bayou. Between 2005 and 2009, eight women were murdered in Louisiana's Jefferson Davis parish. Police blamed a serial killer, but after studying the investigations, author Ethan Brown believes the truth is more insidious—that the women had different killers, all tied to the black markets of drugs and sex that have proven so difficult to prosecute and weed out. Brown does an incredible job of humanizing the victims and exposing corruption.

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Four black girls in the 1970s grow up together in a neighborhood in Brooklyn. They're devoted to each other until life starts picking them apart, fracturing their bond as they grow into women facing the dreams and dangers of growing up. The story is about Brooklyn, but author Jacquelyn Woodson was raised in South Carolina, and you can hear the rhythm of the South in her words; Woodson is a poet, and that ear for verse moves her story along beautifully.

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In Commonwealth, a stolen kiss starts two families on a path that will change their lives. A marriage is ripped apart by the act of adultery, and the children mixed up in their parents' mischief form new bonds with each other based on the fallout. This epic American story traces family lives over generations until they're rocked by another scandal that spills their secrets onto a public stage. Ann Patchett's magical storytelling has impressed us again and again, and Commonwealth is no different; the summers in Virginia, the humor and the poignant family moments are at once very Southern, very American, and very human.

Buy It: $16.77; amazon.com

Samuel Andresen-Anderson is a struggling author whose mother left when he was a child. She abandoned him then, but when she shows up in the national news because of a strange attack on a politician, the media is hungry for information about her—and that could be Anderson's big break. As he investigates his own mother to mine the details of her life and possibly publish a book about her, he uncovers secrets, new discoveries, and a history he never imagined—a history that challenges him to try to save his mother instead of exploiting her.

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Throughout her career as a blogger and author, Glennon Doyle Melton has advocated fierce love even when it comes hard. She teaches that pain can lead to better things, and as a former alcohol and bulimic, she knows of which she speaks. Love Warrior traces her family's path to healing—but that resolution unexpectedly comes through divorce. Her decision to be open and honest about her brokenness instead of covering up her life's messiness in order to sell more "self help" books is what makes this story so beautiful, compelling and inspiring.

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When Michael Lewis sets his sites on a topic—whether it's football in The Blindside or finance in The Big Short or baseball in Moneyball—it gets our attention (and the attention of Hollywood, usually). That's because Lewis takes big, complicated concepts and makes them relatable by distilling them down to fascinating character studies. In The Undoing Project, those characters are Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, social scientists and friends whose unorthodox theories have shaped modern understanding of perception and realty and won the pair a Nobel Prize.

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Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain, but instead of preaching to the dying, she's chosen to listen and learn. She brings those lessons to her readers in On Living—lessons about making peace with our lives, examining what we find meaningful, rediscovering dormant dreams, addressing our regrets and learning to really love the people around us. These themes come from the dying, but far from being morbid, this book is about finding a better way to live life and reexamining our lives before they're near an end.

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Abe is a dreamer. He's come from the old country to the United States to work for his uncle and make his fortune, but he's distracted by the love of a mysterious Native American woman he meets one day in the woods. Determined to win her love—even though it seems clear she's not interested in giving it—Abe makes passionate promises and silly mistakes. But as he matures, his crush deepens into a life-changing friendship and an opportunity to bear witness to unspeakable tragedy that affects not only his lover, but all the Cherokee people of post-Civil War North Carolina.

Buy It: $17.64; amazon.com

In The Throwback Special, a group of men get together to play football, but they know exactly who'll win and who'll lose, because they're not so much playing a game as staging a reenactment—they're trying to recreate the fateful 1985 play when Joe Theismann broke his leg while playing the Giants. In this funny meditation on marriage, parenthood, aging and friendship, football acts as an emotional connection and as a metaphor, giving the men an excuse to act out both their dreams and their disappointments.

Buy It: $16.56; amazon.com

Epic and addictive, Homegoing is the story of two sisters and the generations of family who come after them, all interwoven and connected both by geography and by their differences. One sister is married to an African slaver; the other is sold into slavery. Their story is one of privilege and powerlessness, of circumstance and choices, of family and brokenness. This is a story many kinds of bravery and cowardice; about power grabs and missed opportunities; about strange, dark twists of fate.

Buy It: $17.68; amazon.com

Two brothers are hit by one of many small bombs that detonate around the world; one dies, but the other survives, and through his scars (both physical and emotional), we trace the effects of terrorism on families, on countries, and on the psyches of both those who are wounded by the violence and of those who make it happen. Difficult and dark, this book is an important and empathetic look at some of the most serious problems in our world today.

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Diana Abu-Jaber was raised between two strong heritage traditions—she had a German grandmother named Grace on one side and an Arab grandfather named Bud on the other. Both had strong opinions about her life, and neither one of them kept silent about them. In order to forge her own path, Abu-Jaber had both triumphs and failures; she ultimately learned from those choices, from herself, and from the generations who came before her. This memoir is full of family, love, and incredibly good food.

Buy It: $11.46; amazon.com

A little girl named Raymie believes winning the Little Miss Central Florida Tire crown will bring her runaway father back home, so she struggles to do everything in her power, including learning to twirl a baton, to win. Her fellow baton twirling students, Beverly Tapinski and Louisiana Elefante soon drop their competitive attitudes and begin to help each other, forming a tentative friendship. Because it's a children's book, Raymie Nightingale is told in simple words, but the themes run deep.

Buy It: $11.16; amazon.com

Horoscopes are taken seriously in Maya's father's kingdom, and hers promises only death and destruction. Because of her grim prophesy, Maya assumes she's safe from being married off, but she soon learns she's wrong when she's married to Amar and taken to his kingdom. He shows her respect and desire and compassion, but should she trust him? A lush and vivid story steeped in Indian folklore and mythology, The Star-touched Queen is a wonderful new fantasy story that blends mystery, magic and love.

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In this meditation on the forests and fields of the rural South, author J. Drew Lanham finds connections to family and identity that we often miss in nature because we don't engage with it much in the modern world. Lanham is a professor of ecology, and that interest in science and biology shows, but the real beauty of the book is in his very personal connection to nature. From red clay to gold tobacco, this is the memoir of a man drawn to the colors of the South—and the picture he paints with them is moving and beautiful.

Buy It: $18.75; amazon.com

Isaias Ramos is one of the most promising students in Memphis. Many kids at his school can't read well, but he's thrived, becoming the hope of many. But Ramos isn't sure if he'll go to college; his Hispanic parents can't fill out the forms they need to sign, and the price of college, both monetarily and otherwise, may be too high. Author Daniel Connolly's true story about the realities of many American immigrant families raises important themes but explores them in an easy-to-read voice that's conversational, not overbearing.

Buy It: $18.78; amazon.com

We were so sad to say goodbye to legendary southern storyteller Pat Conroy this year, and A Lowcountry Heart is the best epigraph we can think of—a collection of speeches, letters and articles from the master himself, plus reminiscences from his friends and family. We're sad to have lost Conroy, impressed by his writing, and overall so thankful for this last conversation with our old friend.

Buy It: $25.37; amazon.com

Jess continually makes bad choices for good reasons. She lost her mother when she was young, and her family felt fractured ever since. She loves her half-brother, Adam, even though she despises his mother, but even that bond is broken when Adam, mentally disabled and mistreated, is found dead. Jess is suspected, and when she goes on the run from police, many believe that she's guilty. Scared and unsure what to do next, Jess seeks out a rumored safe haven she hopes will hide her away from society.

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Underground Airlines teaches us about our own history by exploring an imagined one—the central question of this novel is, "What would happen if everything in our world were exactly the same, but the Civil War had never happened?" In author Ben Winters' alternate reality, slavery still exists in four states. The mystery he pieces together through the pages follows Victor, a man who's hunting runaway slaves and but ultimately has to confront truths within himself as he works to infiltrate the abolitionist group Underground Airlines

Buy It: $17.37; amazon.com
Two brothers, one responsible and one with a wild streak, both fall for a beautiful redheaded stranger who shows up suddenly in their North Carolina town. The woman, Ligeia, stirs things up and initiates a rift between the brothers that only grows more pronounced as time passes. When she disappears out of the blue, the distance between them is solidified—until one day when both men are grown, and the brother who can't let the past go finally delves into the truth of what happened during the Appalachian summer of their youth.