Ten Southern gothic novels that changed the game

Daryl Gregory is the author of Revelator, Spoonbenders, Afterparty, The Devil's Alphabet, and other novels.

[My Book, The Movie: Afterparty; The Page 69 Test: Afterparty; Daryl Gregory's five top books about psi powers]

At Publishers Weekly he tagged ten "favorites books that do something remarkable with Southern gothic," including:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Morrison’s haunting and haunted novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and there’s no better book about trauma and the way it cannot be escaped or erased. Sethe, a former slave, made it to the free state of Ohio and has raised her children there. But when a young woman named Beloved shows up on Sethe’s doorstep, long-buried secrets come rushing out. By centering this Southern story on a Black woman, Morrison makes us reckon with the greatest sin in American history.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beloved also appears on Anne Enright's list of six amazing books, Candice Carty-Williams's list of six heroic women in literature, Kate Racculia's list of ten gothic fiction titles that meant something to her, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 1980s, Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue