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Alabama Books: The Best Books Set in the Cotton State
By: Angela & Melissa
Updated:
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we may earn a referral fee from qualifying purchases.Whether you’re participating in our Read Around the USA Challenge or simply found your way to our website researching books set in Alabama, we’ve curated a diverse list of highly-rated titles about the Cotton State! If you’re looking for another state, check our comprehensive list of books set in every state.
A Few Things Alabama is Known For
Alabama sits in the heart of the Deep South, where its complex history of the Civil Rights Movement has inspired countless powerful narratives. From the historic streets of Montgomery to the literary legacy of Harper Lee’s Monroeville, Alabama’s small towns and cities provide rich settings for Southern Gothic fiction, civil rights stories, and tales of resilience and transformation.
The Best Fiction Books Set in Alabama
The Seven Daughters of Dupree
Book Summary
In 1995, 14-year-old Tati is determined to find her father’s identity. However, her mom and grandma have many secrets and no inclination to share them. As Tati digs into her family history, she finds more questions than answers.
Tati’s 1995 storyline alternates between her POV and those of her female ancestors, tracing back to Jubi’s attempt to pass as white in 1917. You’ll see both generational trauma and resilience pass through the generations.
Thoughts on This Book
If you enjoy multi-generational sagas, this is a compelling pick! Keep in mind that, because the timeline isn’t linear and covers seven generations, it may slow your reading speed, as more focus is required to follow the connections. That said, the novel is on the shorter side at only 336 pages, so it’s not as large a time commitment as the synopsis may lead you to believe.
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Anna Kate’s grandmother owned the Blackbird Cafe in the small town of Wicklow, Alabama. When Granny passes away, Anna Kate returns to Wicklow to settle her estate. She intended it to be a very quick trip, but for some reason, she finds herself drawn to the quirky town that her mother ran away from many years ago. She wants to get to know the people of Wicklow, including her father’s side of the family, and she wants to learn more about the mysterious blackbird pie everybody is talking about.
As she discovers the truth about her past, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird can finally take her broken wings and fly.
About the Setting of This Novel
This charming Southern novel includes both romance and magical realism. While the small mountain town of Wicklow is fictional, the author said in an interview that it’s located exactly where the real town of Mentone is found on a map. Reviewers from Alabama say that the descriptions of this fictional town are very accurate to small-town Alabama life.
Similar Books You May Enjoy
Author Heather Webber has a highly-rated 2025 release, The Forget-Me-Not Library, which is also set in Alabama.
For another Kindle Unlimited option with a storyline about a woman returning home to Alabama, consider Burying the Honeysuckle Girls by Emily Carpenter, which is a combination of historical fiction and gothic mystery/thriller.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Civil is fresh out of nursing school and has dreams of making a big difference in her post-segregation African American community. She works for the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, and she’s sent to a rural cabin during her first week on the job. When she arrives, Civil is shocked to find that her patients are children, only 11 and 13 years old.
The girls, Erica and India, are innocent and not even thinking of boys. However, because they are poor and Black, those handling their benefits have requested that the children be on birth control. Civil struggles with this unexpected aspect of her new career. Despite the shocking reason for meeting the sisters, Civil is endeared to them and their family. However, when she arrives for one visit, something unthinkable has happened, and Civil soon finds herself involved in a legal case.
You’ll also see Civil years later, at the end of her career, with a daughter of her own, as she tries to find peace without forgetting those she encountered along the way.
Historical Background
This historical fiction novel is based on the 1973 legal case of Relf v. Weinberger. It’s a book all women should read, just be sure to grab a comforting blanket and a box of tissues before you start.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
You probably read this classic back in high school (or at least you were supposed to), but we recommend you give this famous book another read. Chances are you’ll get even more out of it this time around!
If you aren’t familiar with the story, it’s set in Alabama in 1933 and told from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl called Scout. Her widowed father, Atticus Finch, is a crusading local lawyer who risks everything to defend a black man accused of a terrible crime.
Thoughts on This Two-Book Series
When we asked our readers to vote on their favorite classic novels, it was a decisive victory! A full one-third of our readers submitted To Kill a Mockingbird as one of their three all-time favorites, with the majority of those readers listing it first.
Fifty-five years after the publication of this classic, Harper Lee published a Go Set a Watchman. Harper Lee actually penned this novel in the late 50s (the decade in which the story was set), but her early publisher had reservations and recommended she take a different approach – resulting in To Kill A Mockingbird. People either love or hate Go Set a Watchman. If you adore Atticus Finch, you might be happier not reading this book, but it does tackle the important reality of the racial tensions brewing in the South in the 1950s.
Book Summary
Geneva owns the historic Rosalie Inn in St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama, which is famous for two things. It has survived multiple hurricanes over the last century, and was the site of a murder during Hurricane Marie back in 1984.
When Geneva learns that a writer is coming to town to write a book about the old crime, she hopes that the new attention will help her struggling bottom line at the inn. But the writer doesn’t come to town alone. He’s joined by Lo, the local who was infamously accused of the murder.
As the temperature rises both outside and within the case, another monster hurricane is twisting its way toward town.
Another Book You May Enjoy
The author has another thriller set in Alabama, The Wife Upstairs, which is a twist on the Gothic classic Jane Eyre, flipping the script and shifting the power dynamic.
Junie
Book Summary
Junie has spent all of her 16 years on the Bellereine Plantation in Alabama as a slave. She cooks, cleans, and tends to the white master’s daughter, Violet. While she works, she dreams of poetry and a world outside her own, but at night, she’s overcome by grief due to the loss of her older sister, Minnie.
When the family has wealthy guests in town who hint at a marriage for Violet, which would upend Junie’s life, she does something to rouse Minnie’s spirit from the grave. When she needs help, she enlists the guest’s coachman, Caleb, who becomes a friend…then more. As the Civil War approaches, she realizes the dark truths and horrifying secrets about the Bellereine Plantation, and she begins to push back against her old life.
What to Expect in This Book
While the author’s real family history inspired this book, it also incorporates elements of magical realism, as Minnie’s ghost tasks Junie with completing three missions related to family secrets and Minnie’s own fate.
The German Wife
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
99% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Inspired by the true events of Operation Paperclip, this historical fiction novel tells the story of the US intelligence program that employed former Nazis in Huntsville, Alabama, after WWII.
The story begins in Berlin in 1930. Changing political powers are sweeping through Germany. Sofie von Meyer Rhodes and her husband, Jürgen, are concerned with the social views taking hold in their country. But her academic husband’s work benefits from the ambitions of the newly elected chancellor. Soon, however, their morality is challenged, and they realize that neutrality has a price.
At the same time, Lizzie Miller is living in the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The future looks bleak as their farm dries up. And that’s all before her brother, Henry, is called to Germany to fight in WWII.
Twenty years later, in the 1950s, Jürgen is one of the many German scientists who are offered a pardon for their part in WWII in exchange for working on the fledgling space program in the US. Sofie welcomes the chance for a fresh start in a new country, but she soon finds that her Huntsville neighbors aren’t as welcoming or forgiving of her family’s past as she’d hoped.
Jürgen’s boss at the US space program is Calvin Miller, Lizzie’s husband. This is where the two women’s stories collide.
Why We Selected This Book
Kelly Rimmer is the author of one of our very favorite WWII historical fiction reads, The Things We Cannot Say, so we had high expectations for this book. Those expectations were far exceeded!
Even if you read a lot of WWII novels, we’re certain this novel will offer you a new perspective. It draws unexpected parallels across the decades, and it will leave you contemplating how history will reflect on the events of our lifetime.
Where the Wildflowers Grow
Book Summary
Leigh is the last person in her family line, and she knows this because she witnessed the death of everyone else. And when the transport bus to prison that she’s on crashes, she again witnesses the death of everyone but herself. The only option she sees is to do what she’s always done. She must find a way to survive.
As she searches for a safe place to hide, Leigh finds a flower farm, tucked away from the rest of the world. The owners have built it from the wreckage of their own lives, creating a peaceful found family. As she begins to heal and find redemption on the farm, she’s still at risk of her past catching up to her.
The Hideaway
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
When Sara’s grandmother, her last living relative, passes away, she’s called back to Alabama to tie up loose ends at her grandmother’s ramshackle B&B in Sweet Bay. Sara intends to handle the estate and then quickly return to her antique shop in New Orleans, but it turns out the B&B will need major renovations if she wants to sell it. In addition, her grandmother’s best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there.
Soon, Sara learns more about Margaret Van Buren in the wake of her death than she ever knew in life. And a dusty box in the attic reveals even more clues about her grandmother’s mysterious life.
Thanks to her grandmother’s friend and a very charming contractor, Sara finds it easier than she expected to slip back into life in Alabama. But when an opportunistic land developer threatens to seize The Hideaway, she’s forced to decide whether to stay and fight for the people she’s grown to love, or to return to her easy, but solitary, life back in New Orleans.
About the Book
Some readers call this Southern Fiction a bit predictable, but most agree that it’s both wholesome and enjoyable, with Hallmark-movie vibes.
Lauren Denton has written a number of highly rated novels set in Alabama. We recommend also considering The One You’re With (set in suburban Mobile), The Summer House (set on the Gulf Coast), and Hurricane Season (set on an Alabama dairy farm).
Denton’s books are published by a Christian publisher, but reviews indicate that religion plays little, if any, role in her novels.
Red Clay
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This multigenerational saga traces the interwoven lives of an enslaved Black family and their white owners as the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins.
In 1943, a frail old white woman named Adelaide Parker shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, on the morning of the funeral for a Black man named Felix H. Parker. His family doesn’t know what to expect after she utters the words, “…a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.” Adelaide has a story to tell, but there are gaps in her knowledge, and she’s come to Red Clay to reconnect with the family she shares a history with, a history neither knows in full. A history filled with ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption.
As the story unwinds, it takes readers from Alabama to Paris, and from the Côte d’Azur to New Orleans. Secrets are exposed, and the line between good and evil becomes even more difficult to discern.
This novel lays bare the ugliness of slavery, the uncertainty at the end of the Civil War, the optimism of Reconstruction, and the pain and frustration of Jim Crow.
About the Author
Author Charles B. Fancher draws upon his own family history to weave together this tale of triumph over adversity, illustrating both seasons of joy and unspeakable pain.
Born six years after the death of his great-grandfather, Charles didn’t know much about his ancestor until the 2020s, when his mother began to share stories about the man born into slavery on an Alabama plantation who proceeded to build a life for his family in the post-Reconstruction South. According to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, after his mother encouraged him to write about his great-grandfather, he returned to their ancestral home to interview residents and learn more about his history.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This novel is set in 1985 Alabama as gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode recounts her younger years to middle-aged Evelyn. Her stories transport you back to the 1930s when her friends Idgie and Ruth opened a cafe in tiny Whistle Stop, Alabama. While serving up good coffee and barbecue, the café was a place for friendship … and the occasional murder.
About This Book
While many people have seen the movie adaptation of this novel, as is often the case, the story in the book unfolds differently, and most agree the book is better. Because the book is partially set in segregated 1930s Alabama, there is some unfortunate but historically accurate language.
The sequel, The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, also goes back and forth in time between the 1930s and the present day.
Fannie Flagg also wrote The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, which is set in both Alabama and Wisconsin.
Time’s Undoing
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
98% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1929, Robert moved to Birmingham, Alabama, for a new job opportunity as a master carpenter. The city was booming, and his young family enjoyed the busy markets and nightlife. However, his success and snazzy car, combined with his light-skinned wife, make him concerned about attention from the Klan, which is also booming in the region.
Ninety years later, Meghan is the youngest reporter for the Detroit Free Press. She decides to use her position to investigate the murder of her great-grandfather. His body was never found, and no one knows what happened to him. Spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement, Meghan travels to Birmingham to uncover the past. However, revealing secrets that span cities and decades may put her own life at risk.
What to Expect in This Book
Time’s Undoing is based on true events. While the topics and some events are difficult, the book is also an uplifting story about the community of friends and supporters that rallied together to help with Meghan’s search and to fight together for change.
Transcendent Kingdom
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
90% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Transcendent Kingdom immerses you into the life of a Ghanaian family who immigrated to Alabama. Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine, studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction.
Gifty’s brother, Nana, was once a promising high school athlete, but then he was prescribed OxyContin after a knee injury. He became addicted to the pills, which led to the less expensive replacement drug, heroin. And that unfortunate choice led to his death by overdose.
Gifty’s mother is now suicidal and lives in her bed. Despite the suffering around her, Gifty is determined to find a scientific answer that can explain her family’s pain and prevent others from sliding down the same path. At the same time, she is grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised.
At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Twenty-seven-year-old Ava is struggling one month after the death of her ex-boyfriend. Although she lives in Ohio, she receives a mysterious letter with an ad to become a caretaker for a cantankerous older man and his cat in the small town of Driftwood on the Alabama coast. Despite her normally fearful approach to life and her suspicion that her ex is now haunting her, Ava takes a risk and heads to the quaint beachside town.
In Driftwood, thirty-eight-year-old Maggie runs Magpie’s, a coffee and curiosity shop where magic is found when the old and new are paired. While she’s cheerful on the outside, she’s still mourning the loss of her mom and worried about her aging father. Newcomer Ava might be just what Maggie needs to learn to let go of the past.
Magical realism is sprinkled throughout the novel with unexplained predictions and events, and through the use of butterflies.
What to Expect in This Book
This book is told in the first person from both Ava’s and Maggie’s points of view. They’re both likable, as are the town’s other quirky characters. While the book covers hard topics, including mental health and grief, it avoids being dark and instead is a heartwarming tale of found family.
Homegoing
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This multi-generation epic follows the divergent paths of two half-sisters born in 18th-century Ghana and their descendants over 300 years. Effia marries a wealthy Englishman and lives in a castle, but she doesn’t know Esi is imprisoned in the dungeon below. Esi is sold in the slave trade and shipped to America, where she, her children, and her grandchildren are raised in slavery in Alabama.
The book continues to follow each generation of Effia and Esi through to the present day and spans a range of historical periods, including the American Civil War and the Jazz Age.
What to Expect in This Book
Despite spanning many decades, the book is only 305 pages, so it’s not a traditional epic with extensive storylines for each generation. Instead, each chapter introduces a new character, and it reads more like a series of short stories. Some readers are disappointed that not every chapter/character has a full arc and conclusion.
Author Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama.
WARNING: This book contains graphic scenes of sexual and physical abuse, along with adult language.
We also found a second book that spans both Ghana and Alabama called The Scent of Burnt Flowers. The description sounds fascinating, but the reviews are a bit lower than we hoped.
Death on Eat Street
Book Summary
Zoe has always wanted to own her own restaurant, but after being passed over for a promotion, she has to rethink the path to get there. Taking a leap of faith, she trades in her fancy digs for a fixer-upper diner in a shady part of town. To fund the renovations, she buys a used food truck to serve the downtown and waterfront areas of Mobile.
From her kitchen on wheels, she serves up classic Southern food and her specialty: deep-fried biscuit bowls that are far superior to traditional bread bowls. Things are off to a good start until someone tries to rob the cash register. Then she’s threatened by the owner of a competing food truck who accuses her of taking their spot. When the competing owner winds up dead in her rolling restaurant, she’ll have to find the real killer before the murder gets pinned on her and her sole employee.
Another Book You May Enjoy
If you love cozy culinary mysteries, you might also enjoy the Sarah Blair Mystery Series that begins with One Taste Too Many, which is set in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama.
The Education of Dixie Dupree
Book Summary
This highly rated book is set in 1969 Alabama, and drops you into the life of 11-year-old Dixie. At her young age, she’s already an expert liar – sometimes, the lies are to protect her mother, Evie, and other times they are to spite her. As life in her family takes a tumultuous turn, she learns the hard way how much her past lies have hurt her credibility.
Consider This Before Reading
The cover looks like a sweet story, but it’s pretty dark and disturbing at points, including suicide and graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse.
Many reviewers pick it up based on the cover and then are unhappy with the contents, which we understand. Those who enjoy it say that it’s a great mix of Southern charm and the darkness of some, unfortunately, real families. The novel is said to be both heartbreaking and eventually hopeful.
Book Summary
For seven generations, dating back to the early 1800s, members of the Howland family have been pillars of their Southern community. An extraordinary family lore has been passed down to Abigail Howland, but she doesn’t know the whole story.
When shocking facts come to light about her late grandfather’s relationship with a Black woman named Margaret, the community is outraged and turns against Abigail.
Alone in the house built by her family, and shaken by those who have betrayed her, Abigail is determined to punish the town that has persecuted her.
Awards for This Classic Novel
This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, and recent reviews indicate that it stands the test of time. It continues to be recognized for its multi-layered indictment of racism and rage.
Gods in Alabama
Book Summary
A decade ago, in the aftermath of a horrible event, Arlene left her hometown in Alabama. But then an old classmate shows up at her door in Chicago, asking questions about Jim Beverly, a former quarterback with godlike status at Possett High. At the same time, Arelen’s boyfriend, Burr, has given her an ultimatum – introduce him to her family or it’s over. At last, she’s forced to embark on a long-avoided trip back home.
Arlene loves Burr deeply, but knows that her deeply religious and deeply racist family will not approve of her relationship with a Black man. Returning home, she’s forced to face her guilt and deception. As her patched-together alibi begins to unravel, she’ll discover just how far she’s willing to go for love and redemption.
Reader Thoughts on This Book
Readers note that this book also includes the character’s childhood abuse, while praising the witty dialogue and saying that this novel blends humor with whodunit mystery. This novel follows a non-linear timeline, with some chapters set in the present and others in the past, which is said to help build suspense.
If you are an audiobook reader, note that some reviewers did not enjoy the interjection of dramatic music into certain moments of the story.
Looking for Alaska
Book Summary
Miles “Pudge” Halter trades his uneventful Florida life for Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama, hoping to find what he calls the “Great Perhaps.” At boarding school, he meets his roommate Chip “The Colonel” and falls for the captivating but unpredictable Alaska Young.
The friends spend their time pulling pranks and breaking rules together. The novel splits into two parts, “Before” and “After”, counting down to and away from a devastating moment.
About the Author and Book
While YA novelist John Green is best known for his cult sensation, The Fault in Our Stars (about two teens who find first love in their cancer support group), Looking for Alaska was his debut young adult novel. While this story is fictional, the characters and plot events of Looking for Alaska are based on author John Green’s own early life.
Looking for Alaska commonly appears on banned book lists due to some sexual content, adult language, drug use, and themes of suicide.
Forrest Gump
Book Summary
Born to a very poor family and bullied as a child, everyone tells Forrest that he’s not very smart. But he’s a great football player, and after accidentally becoming the star of the University of Alabama’s football team, Forrest goes on to be a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, a NASA astronaut, and a business tycoon. All without losing his childlike curiosity and wisdom about the world around him. Though it all, he remains in love with the girl from his childhood – Jenny.
Notes on the Adaptation
Although the novel and the 1994 Oscar-winning movie share the same basic premise, they are quite different. While most find the main character in the movie to be lovable, readers say Forrest in the book is depicted as more crude, including the use of vulgar language at times. Though famously played by Tom Hanks, it’s reported that the author had someone more like John Goodman in mind when he wrote the character of Forrest.
Book Summary
Recently retired from her career as a professor of social work, Cleo falls in love with Fairhope, Alabama, the moment she arrives. Home to an eclectic community of retirees, Harbor Village in Fairhope offers classes in painting, pottery, and photography. Residents also relish the fact that it’s a buyer’s market for husbands.
Cleo feels certain it will be an ideal place for her to make new friends. But when the body of the unpopular director of senior living is found floating in the pool, Cleo is named the acting director. Challenged by the short-term memory issues of many of the residents, she’ll have to rely on her well-honed people skills to uncover the killer.
Another Cozy Mystery You May Enjoy
One of our readers also suggests the Ashton Corners Book Club, starting with A Killer Read, by Erika Chase, if you’re looking for a Cozy Mystery set in Alabama.
Non-Fiction Books About Alabama
Just Mercy
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
As a young attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office dedicated to helping poor, incarcerated, and wrongly condemned defendants.
One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was wrongly convicted of the murder of a young white woman. He was sentenced to death despite the consistent declaration of his innocence.
About the Movie Adaptation
Michael B. Jordan does a phenomenal job portraying author Bryan Stevenson in this adaptation, which is both heartbreaking and inspirational. If you enjoy legal dramas, movies based on true stories, or films that pull at your heart, this would be an excellent pick.
Book Summary
The winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, this book examines what it calls “The Year of Birmingham.” Author Diane McWhorter, a journalist and daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI documents, interviews with Black activists and former KKK members, as well as personal memories to paint an extraordinary portrait of the city in 1963. It was the year that became a major turning point in America’s long civil rights struggle.
Operation Paperclip
Book Summary
Following WWII, the US government had to decide what to do with all the scientific minds who were part of the Third Reich. The answer was Operation Paperclip, a decades-long covert project that brought many of Hitler’s scientists and their families to the US, where they became instrumental in helping the US win the Space Race as well as helping America win the Cold War.
Drawing on exclusive interviews, archival documents, and other in-depth research, the author asks difficult questions about the moral
Fiction & Non-Fiction Pairing
This non-fiction read is a great supplement if you’ve already read The German Wife and want to learn more about the history behind Operation Paperclip.
Read Around the USA – Books Set in Other States
We hope you enjoyed this list of books about Alabama and found some great titles to add to your TBR. If you’re participating in our Read Around the USA Challenge, be sure to check out our alphabetical index of books set in each state.
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