Georgia Books: Best Books Set in the Peach State

Book Summary

Sisters Hadley and Kitzie have been hired to plan a reunion on St. Simon’s Island for the descendants of three men who became unlikely friends during WW2.

Before the war, Will was a farmboy from Tennessee and Dov was a Jewish student at Cambridge. During the war, they meet Hans, a German POW. The trio not only became close friends, they founded a business together after the war.

But 80 years after they met, their descendants are now fighting over control of the corporation. As Hadley and Kitzie investigate the backgrounds of the men to better understand the reunion, they uncover the life of the courageous young woman who links them all together.

Book Summary

Beverly is on the local school board, and her archrival, Lula, has turned into a local celebrity as she’s been on a mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read.

To counteract the “pornographic” books housed in the local library, Lula starts a little library in her front yard, full of “worthy literature”.

At night, Beverly’s adult daughter Lindsay sneaks over to Lula’s little library and replaces the books, but swaps the dust covers. Suddenly, Our Confederate Heroes actually contains Beloved and The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette turns into The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution.

As Beverly and Lula’s rivalry intensifies when they run against each other to replace the mayor, the townspeople who have been changed by borrowing the books from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. Everyone from the postman to the prom queen has something to say, eventually forcing Lindsay to confess.

Book Summary

Eby first saw Lost Lake on a postcard, and she knew it would be her future. But now, half a lifetime has passed. Her husband and extended family are gone, and Eby is left with a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins. Each year, the same faithful misfits return to the cabins. Developers have cash in hand to buy the property, but Eby wants one more summer with the regular visitors.

Kate spent her childhood summers at the cabins, and now she’s hoping her daughter, Devin, can enjoy a summer spent at Lost Lake. One after another, visitors like Kate are drawn to the lake, looking for something they weren’t even sure they needed. From mysteries solved to heartaches mended, will everyone find what they need before it’s too late?

Book Summary

Eight years ago, right after her daughter Alana was born, Sara left her hometown of Savannah, Georgia. Alana was born after a horrifying sexual assault and Sara would do anything to forget it, including staying away from Savannah for nearly a decade.

But now her father is ill and she must return to run his bookstore. While caring for him, she is also careful to keep Alana away from the wealthy family of the man who assaulted her, The Wylars. It shouldn’t be too hard because her attacker is in prison and his twin brother, Jacob, left town like Sara. Unfortunately, Jacob has also just returned to Savannah to piece together the fragments of his once-great family.

Book Summary

Once upon a time, on a particular stretch of the Georgia coast, there were the Saints and the Ain’ts. These terms delineated those who grew up spending their summers at the landmark St. Cecelia hotel and those who grew up on the “wrong” side of the river.

Traci was an Ain’t because her family wasn’t wealthy enough to summer at the hotel. But one fatefully summer, she got a job at the hotel and ended up marrying the boss’s son. Years later, she is now the widowed owner of the historic hotel. Despite financial woes, staffing challenges, and a greedy brother-in-law who wants to see her fail, Traci is determined to return the Saint to its glory days.

With just one summer to turn things around, Traci hires a motley crew that includes her former best friend’s daughter. But will new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threaten everything? It will take everything she has to put past wrongs right in order to save the Saint.

Book Summary

Philbet is happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But, the rest of his life is not easy. He has a misshapen chest that his Mama does her best to hide in specially sewn shirts. He also battles bullying, ignorance, and disdain because he was born gay in a small southern town.

This character-driven read is formatted as a series of vignettes about Philbet’s life, family, and rural Georgia community as he grows up from age 4 to 18.

Book Summary

Twelve-year-old Ceecee has a lot on her plate as the caretaker for her mentally ill mom. While they live in Ohio and it’s 1967, her mom is convinced that it’s 1951 and she’s the Vidalia Onion Queen of Georgia. Soon, Ceecee is whisked away with a previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie, who brings her to Savannah, where Tootie works trying to save historic homes from demolition.

The world of Savannah is full of eccentric characters that keep CeeCee entertained for the summer. However, just as she begins to find her sense of belonging in her new world, she’s reminded that her mom’s legacy may have left her destined for destruction.

Book Summary

This epic novel traces the journey of one American family from the colonial slave trade through the Civil War and up to the present day.

Ailey Pearl is named after two formidable Black Americans – a revered choreographer and her great-grandmother, who is a descendant of enslaved Georgians. She grows up in the city, but spends her summers in the small Georgia town where her mother’s family has lived ever since their ancestors were brought over from Africa in bondage.

As Ailey fights to come to terms with her identity and find where she belongs, she carries with her the whispers of two centuries of women in her maternal line. When she embarks on a journey through her family’s history, she uncovers shocking revelations about her ancestors.

Book Summary

Luke is a single father who works hard but has a surprising secret. When he realized how much it could affect his five-year-old daughter, he knew it was time to get help.

Tessa is new to Luke’s small town and is hoping for a fresh start after growing up in an upper-class family, which was not as pleasant as it sounds. She hopes that small-town life and her job as a librarian will help her with her anxiety. She didn’t expect to help with the literacy program at work, and she definitely didn’t expect how that task would change her life.

Book Summary

Isabelle has barely slept in the last year. The last time she had a full night’s sleep was one year ago…the night her toddler son, Mason, was taken from his crib. The case went cold, but Isabelle is still physically unable to sleep beyond cat naps and blacking out. She knows she can’t go on like this, but she also can’t stop her quest to find him.

Out of desperation, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster. His incessant questioning, paired with her severe insomnia, has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood. Can she even trust her own memories of the night Mason disappeared at this point?

Book Summary

Each member of the Russell family has a special gift. Penelope, the oldest sister, is a seamstress who infuses the fabric used in her designs with the strength, joy, or love that the wearer needs. Free-spirited younger sister Lilith leads a nomadic life with her daughter, and there always seems to be a person nearby who has just what they need – an apartment for rent, a temporary job opening, or a car to borrow. And music follows Lilith’s adult daughter, Mattie, wherever she goes. The perfect song always seems to start mysteriously playing.

When Lilith dies unexpectedly, Mattie returns to the family’s Victorian home (which has a personality all its own) with no intention of staying long. However, the reading of the will reveals that Lilith had different plans for her daughter. In order to receive her inheritance, Mattie must stay in the small town long enough to complete a series of tasks.

Her late mother hopes to lead Mattie to her birth father and help her discover her own path in life while keeping her heart open to love.

Book Summary

This fictional novel is based on the true story of the Atlanta Child Murders, which claimed the lives of 28 children and young adults over a two-year period. The book is told from the perspectives of three 5th graders – Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia. 

Throughout the story, you’ll grow closer to each of the characters and experience the growing panic in Atlanta as new children go missing and then are confirmed dead. The book covers more of the characters’ lives outside the murders and is also referred to as a coming-of-age story of three black 5th graders in late 1970s Atlanta.

Book Summary

Set during Thanksgiving week of 1962, this novel tells the story of a family torn apart by secrets.

Macey was just nine years old when her mom put her on a bus to her grandma’s farm and told her to wait at the station to be picked up.

Her grandma is keeping secrets from her mama. Her mom keeps secrets from her. And her father is so lost in the memories of the Korean War that he even keeps secrets from himself.

Now, Macey has a terrible secret of her own. Is this a secret she is meant to keep, or one she should tell?

Book Summary

When Merilee got divorced, she moved with her children to the Atlanta suburb of Sweet Apple, Georgia. But as she tries to start fresh, her past follows her as an anonymous, local blog gossips about the scandal that ended her marriage. 

The cottage that Marilee is renting from the town’s gruff 93-year-old matriarch, Sugar Prescott, becomes her refuge, and Sugar becomes her ally. As Sugar shares stories about the town, she gets a different perspective on the shiny wealth surrounding her.

However, she’s still drawn into that world via her new friend Heather, whose life seems perfect. But in this small town, sins and secrets are abundant, and keeping up appearances is vital.

Book Summary

Nura is a thirty-one-year-old third-generation matchmaker in Atlanta with an exclusive clientele and an excellent track record. While she occasionally gets hate mail from those she doesn’t take on as clients, she is blindsided by a cascading chain of increasingly terrifying events and realizes someone is taking things too far.

Although she’s still single herself, Nura’s childhood best friend Azar plays the role of her fiance at weddings so her clients don’t think she’s failed at her own love life. Luckily, he’s also willing to help her get to the bottom of the threats against her business.

Book Summary

When 17-year-old Avery is uprooted from DC and moved into a house with her terminally ill grandmother in a small Georgia town, she’s convinced her life is ruined. Even worse, tension within the home is high between her grandmother, called Mama Letty, and her own mom. There seems to be something from the past that they both refuse to discuss. 

Things are getting better outside the home as she makes friends with Simone, the captivating girl next door, and Jade, a daughter from the town’s most prominent family. Jade’s mother’s murder is the biggest unsolved mystery in town, and it seems like something insidious is still bubbling under the surface in this town with a racist history.

Book Summary

As a teenager in a small Georgia town, Nola had the reputation of being a bit wild. After school, she left the area and has been traveling the world for work. Now, it’s time to return home to help her parents with the peach orchard.

Unfortunately, a poor harvest and rising costs are threatening the farm. Even those big problems feel small when Nola stumbles on a dead body among the trees. She has to change gears and narrow down the list of suspects before she is the next victim.

Book Summary

The Color Purple portrays the lives of African American women in the Deep South throughout the first half of the twentieth century, though most of the story takes place in the 1930s between the two world wars. Separated when they are young, sisters Celie and Nettie maintain their relationship through a series of letters spanning twenty years. This book broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, while taking readers on a journey of love and redemption.

Book Summary

Joanna’s dad is a popular radio evangelist. He was fine with her being out in Atlanta, but when he moves the family to a more rural conservative town, he asks her to lie low for the remainder of her senior year. 

She knows it will be easier to fit in as the new kid if she’s a straight girl, so isn’t opposed to hiding a part of herself to make life smoother. It’s going well until she meets Mary Carlson, her new friend’s sister. She doesn’t want to break the promise to her dad, but it gets complicated as she falls for the girl.

Book Summary

Fletcher Dukes is a 70-something grandfather and widower in Southwestern Georgia. One day, he takes his older sister to the Piggly Wiggly for groceries and spots a woman, Altovise, who he hasn’t seen since he was a teenager. They grew up marching together in Albany, Georgia, during the Civil Rights Movement. As a sign of his love, Fletcher gave Altovise a delicately carved peach seed monkey, which was an important and long-standing tradition in his family. But the summer before college, a protest went wrong, and they were split apart.

He’s unsure if he should try to reconnect with her, especially as he has his hands full between his sister losing her sight and his daughter and grandson both struggling with addiction. Fletcher’s story is told not only through his lifetime but goes back to the family patriarch, Malik, in 1796 Senegal, when he was captured as a slave and brought to Georgia.

Book Summary

In the early morning of May 2, 1981, shots rang out in a grand Savannah mansion. A question haunts the city’s moss-hung oaks and shaded squares for the next decade – was it murder or self-defense?

This is a work of non-fiction about a landmark murder case that reads like a spellbinding novel.

Book Summary

Frank Money is an angry and self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who returns to a racist America with more than just the physical scars of the front lines. He barely recognizes his home or himself, but when he hears that his younger sister is in danger, his life has a new purpose.

Together, they return to their rural Georgia hometown. After spending years trying to escape, he learns what it means to come home.