In case you're unfamiliar with the genre, Southern Gothic books are a sub-genre of the gothic novel, which focuses on death, horror, and sometimes romance—AKA every topic humanity is biologically programmed to care about.
The Southern gothic, though, takes place in the American South, specifically, but there's so much more that the regionalism entails than just its geography. It has all the components of Gothic novels, but it also addresses poverty, alienation, crime, or violence. The causes of these topics are more readily evident in the South than in other regions: its history gives the American South these qualities, and it breeds grotesque settings and eccentric characters through its very nature. Southern Gothic novels contain all of these elements, and here are some of the best Southern Gothic book examples, both classic and contemporary.
