Books Set in Georgia
We are a bookstore in Georgia — which means we take Georgia literature personally. These are the novels, memoirs, and works of non-fiction that use our state as their stage. From Savannah's Spanish moss to the red clay of North Georgia, from antebellum plantations to Atlanta's highways, these books map a Georgia that is complicated, beautiful, and endlessly worth reading about.
The Books Every Georgian Should Read
These are the novels that have defined Georgia in the American literary imagination — the books people mean when they talk about Georgia fiction.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that defined Georgia for the world — Tara, Scarlett, and the burning of Atlanta. Whatever you think of its politics, it is one of the most technically accomplished historical novels ever written, and its portrait of Georgia during the Civil War and Reconstruction has shaped the state's self-image for nearly a century.
Walker's Pulitzer Prize winner — set in rural Georgia, told in letters by Celie, a Black woman surviving poverty, violence, and erasure, reaching toward love and selfhood. One of the great American novels. Essential, difficult, and unforgettable. Walker grew up in Eatonton, Georgia.
McCullers published this at twenty-three — the story of a deaf-mute and the people who confide in him in a Georgia mill town during the Depression. Extraordinary empathy for the isolated and the longing. One of the most assured debut novels in American literature.
Four Atlanta men canoe a wild North Georgia river before it's dammed. What begins as an adventure becomes a fight for survival. Set on a river directly modeled on the Chattooga, which flows along the border of Rabun County — just west of us. Dark, powerful, and deeply specific to this landscape.
The most beloved North Georgia novel — warm, funny, and deeply human. Set in a small town not unlike Toccoa, at the turn of the century, when the automobile was new and scandal could shake a whole community. Burns was from Banks County, right next door to us.
The longest-running New York Times bestseller in history — a true crime story told like a novel, set in the most eccentric city in America. Savannah's squares, cemeteries, drag queens, voodoo priestesses, and antiques dealers. Irresistible.
Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation who escapes on a literal underground railroad. Brutal, imaginative, and essential. The Georgia chapters are among the most harrowing in contemporary American fiction.
A newly married couple's life is shattered when the husband is wrongfully convicted. Set in Atlanta and exploring the intersection of race, justice, and love. Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction. One of the most important American novels of the 2010s.
Savannah in Fiction
Savannah is one of the most novelistic cities in America — its squares, its history, its heat, and its gothic eccentricity have attracted writers for generations.
A warm, funny, and thoroughly entertaining mystery set among Savannah's antiques dealers, eccentric neighbors, and crumbling mansions. Andrews is Georgia's most beloved popular fiction writer.
The first of Price's beloved Savannah Quartet — meticulously researched historical fiction set in the decades around the Civil War. A sweeping family saga with Savannah as its heart. Price is one of the great Georgia historical fiction writers, underread today.
Flannery O'Connor's Georgia
O'Connor's Georgia is a specific place — the backroads of Middle Georgia, the farmland around Milledgeville, the roadside motels and filling stations. Her characters are grotesque, her humor is savage, and her grace is real. If you haven't read her, start immediately.
Thirty-one stories, including "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "Good Country People," and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." The complete stories won the National Book Award posthumously. Among the finest short fiction in the English language.
O'Connor's first novel — Hazel Motes, a veteran, founds the Church Without Christ in a Georgia city. Grotesque, hilarious, and shot through with unwilling grace. One of the strangest and most original American novels.
Georgia Books at [ash-ling]
We're proud to be a Georgia bookstore with a strong Georgia section. Any title on this list is available to order — and many are on our shelves right now. Come see us at 47 Doyle Street in Historic Downtown Toccoa.
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