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South Carolina Books: The Best Books Set in the Palmetto 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 South Carolina, we’ve curated a diverse list of highly-rated titles about the Palmetto State! We also have a separate list of books set in Charleston that you might want to check out. If you’re looking for another state, check our comprehensive list of books set in every state.
A Few Things South Carolina is Known For
From Charleston’s antebellum architecture to Myrtle Beach’s tourist crowds, South Carolina embodies Deep South culture and coastal beauty. The state’s literature explores plantation history, Civil War legacy, Gullah culture, and modern Southern identity. Themes include family legacy, racial reconciliation, hurricane survival, and the tension between preservation and development. The Lowcountry’s unique landscape and dialect add a distinctive flavor.
The Best Books Set in South Carolina
Call Your Daughter Home
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
95% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Set in Branchville, South Carolina, in 1924 – shortly after the Boll Weevil Infestation that devastated southern cotton fields – this historical fiction novel tells the story of motherhood and womanhood. The story centers around three women at a crossroad – Gertrude, Retta, and Annie.
Gertrude, a mother of four, must make a difficult decision to save her daughters. Retta is a first-generation freed slave who comes to Gertrude’s aid. And Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude a job.
Despite having seemingly nothing in common, these three women unite to stand up to injustices long plaguing the small town. This book is a timeless story about the power of family, community, and the ferocity of motherhood.
Consider This Before Reading
Be aware that this book includes some potentially triggering topics, including domestic abuse and child sexual abuse. Additionally, this book includes some racially insensitive language reflective of the era in which it’s set.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Florence Day is a romance ghostwriter who no longer believes in romance. She has spent her career as the ghostwriter for one of the most well-known romance writers in the industry. But after a recent breakup with a man who took advantage of her trust and destroyed her self-esteem, she no longer believes in love and can’t seem to write about it either.
With a major deadline looming, her career is in serious danger. Then she gets a call from home that shifts her priorities.
She had an unusual but very happy childhood growing up in a funeral home in a small town in South Carolina before a controversy when she was a teen caused her to flee for college and never turn back. However, after the phone call, she has no choice but to return home for the first time in a decade.
On her first night back, she finds a ghost standing on the front porch of her family’s funeral home. Florence was already convinced that romance is dead… but this complicates things further.
Why We Think You’ll Love It
Angela downloaded this audiobook on a whim right before boarding a cross-country flight. She knew nothing about the plot, and thank goodness, because terms like ‘paranormal romance’ and ‘ghost love story’ would have scared her away. And then she would have missed out on one of her favorite books of the year! She binged the entire book in two days, and couldn’t stop smiling the whole time.
This story is unique and will keep you on your toes. Despite the romance genre getting a bad rap for being predictable, this book is anything but that.
The Indigo Girl
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1739 when she was 16, Eliza’s father left his three plantations in her hands as he pursued military ambitions. However, he also spent all the money from the estates, leaving her in a terrible position. Failure would have been fine with her mother, who would prefer they leave South Carolina behind and return to England.
Eliza finds hope for the plantations in an unlikely place. She has heard that the French will pay exorbitant amounts for indigo dye, one of the state’s largest exports. However, the process of making the dye is a closely guarded secret. Eliza will do just about anything to gain the knowledge she needs to save her family’s finances.
Historical Context
This historical fiction novel is based on the real story of Eliza Lucus, a very prominent figure in Charleston. She played a pivotal role in South Carolina’s agricultural history. When she passed away in 1793, President Washington was one of her pallbearers. The export of indigo dye was the foundation of extreme wealth for several South Carolina families, who continue to live in prosperity today.
For more books set in Charleston, check out this list.
Lightning in a Mason Jar
Book Summary
Following the death of her adoptive Aunt Winnie, Bailey Rae doesn’t feel as connected to the town of Bent Oak. She plans to settle her aunts estate and use her inspiring personal cookbook to start a food truck in Myrtle Beach. But her plans are upended when a young mother arrives in town clutching a copy of that very same cookbook, leaving Bailey Rae to question everything she thought she knew about her aunt. Inside the cookbooks, they uncover a code that promises sanctuary for women on the run.
Readers are introduced to Winnie’s story, stretching back fifty years. She was once a Southern debutant caught in a bad marriage who managed to escape and reinvent herself. But there’s even more to her story, including long-held secrets.
With each new revelation about Winnie’s past, Beeailey Ray is able to draw on her aunt’s courage to find her very own purpose right there in Bent Oak.
What to Expect in This Novel
While the cover might suggest a light and easy read, readers say this story is both compelling and heartbreaking. It deals with traumatic, abusive relationships while showing the strength it takes for women to endure and thrive.
That Last Carolina Summer
Book Summary
When Phoebe was a child, she was struck by lightning. Ever since, she’s had a gift of premonition alongside mysterious dreams. She left Charleston for the West Coast to get away from living in the shadow of her beautiful sister, but now she’s returning to South Carolina to help care for her mom, who had been showing signs of dementia.
The longer Phoebe stays in her childhood home, the more her nightmares intensify. The bad dreams are also bringing her closer to a shocking truth that will irrevocably change everything.
More About This Book
The chapters alternate between Phoebe’s and a family friend, Celeste’s, points of view, which helps connect the past and present.
Author Karen White has also written numerous other books set in South Carolina, including The Time Between.
Carolina Moonset
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Set on the coast in Beaufort, South Carolina, Carolina Moonset is as moving as it is mysterious. Joey takes a trip to his hometown to help his father so his mom can take a break. His dad’s dementia is advancing, and his short-term memory is almost nonexistent. However, his longest-term memories are flooding back, and he’s often reliving his time as a young boy in Beaufort.
While this is nice at first, his dad soon begins having hallucinatory arguments with people from his past. Long-buried secrets and scandals begin to re-emerge, causing Joey to question everything. The past was problematic enough, but now the police have arrived to discuss a new murder.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
On Mallow Island, off the coast of South Carolina, sits an old cobblestone building in the shape of a horseshoe. It’s called the Dellawisp, named after the tiny turquoise birds who reside there alongside its human tenants. The building has an air of magical secrecy.
When 19-year-old Zoe inherits her late mother’s apartment at the Dellawisp, she meets the quirky and secretive neighbors, including a henna artist, a lonely chef, middle-aged sisters (one of whom is a hoarder), and three ghosts. The property is overseen by Frasier, who has a special affinity for the birds.
When one of the residents turns up dead, the other neighbors search for answers, but each is also hiding secrets of their own. The investigation leads to the island’s famous but reclusive author and to a long-lost relative of the sisters.
Thoughts on This Book
Reviewers recommend giving this unique book a chance, even if magical realism isn’t your usual genre of choice. They say you’ll fall in love with this cast of eccentric and flawed characters, and be sad to say goodbye to them when you turn the final page.
The Secret Life of Bees
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
After her mother passes away, 14-year-old Lily Owens runs away with her friend and nanny, Rosaleen. The two escape to Tiburon, South Carolina, where an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters takes them in.
Lily is introduced to the world of bees and honey, the Black Madonna, and the town that holds the secret to her mother’s past.
Another Book by This Author
Sue Monk Kidd is also the author of the best-selling novel The Invention of Wings, which is featured on our list of books set in Charleston.
Southern by Design
Book Summary
After her husband sent an unsolicited personal photo to another woman that quickly went viral among every mom group in Charleston, thirtysomething Magnolia “Mack” Bishop is facing divorce and single motherhood. But she’s determined not to let her personal life get in the way of her professional interior design ambitions.
Mack is close to securing the prestigious Historic Preservation Design Fellowship, but after a series of calamaties at a house tour her shot at the fellowship goes up in flames. Her mom – the original Magnolia Bishop, who enjoys her perch at the top of the Southern social ladder, swoops in with a lead on a big project to save Mack. But it comes with strings attached, which is of no surprise to Mack, given how much her mom likes to control her life.
Mack dreads working for her mom until a television network puts out a call for local designers and she sees the opportunity to pitch the project and potentially win the renovation and historic preservation TV pilot of her dreams. But she’ll have to keep it secret in order to avoid interference from her mother.
Just when she’s starting to get her professional life back on track, the man who got away starts unloading a moving truck next door. Fifteen years earlier, she had a summer romance with Lincoln Kelly, but then he followed his dreams to New York and left Mack broken-hearted.
Why We Think You’ll Love It
This debut novel has a good mix of mother-daughter drama and second-chance romance, and it completely transports you to Charleston, where the streets and homes come alive like characters. If you enjoy audiobooks, the narrator’s accent definitely adds to the story.
We are both huge Gilmore Girls fans, and while Angela didn’t start making the connections until later in the novel, it definitely gives Southern “Gilmore” vibes. As the grandmother-mother-daughter storyline continues to unravel, you’ll start to see more and more similarities.
Lowcountry Boil
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Private Investigator Liz Talbot is a modern kind of Southern belle who blesses hearts and takes names. When her grandmother is murdered, Liz returns to her South Carolina island home to help find the killer. Her brother, the local chief of police, tries to shut her out of the case, so she opens an investigation of her own. Along the way, Liz gets help from the ghost of her long-dead best friend, who gives her cryptic advice.
More About the Series
Unlike a typical cozy mystery heroine, Liz is not an amateur sleuth. She’s a professional PI, and readers enjoy her as a smart and strong character.
There are currently 11 books in the charming Lowcountry Boil series, including one about a book club and one set in a bookshop for our readers who love books about books.
Black Cherokee
Book Summary
Set in 1990s South Carolina, this is the coming-of-age story of Ophelia as she searches for home and family.
Like many Americans, Ophelia Blue Rivers is mixed race, and her two racial identities are as complicated as the politics of the continent itself. She’s both Black and Native American, and she is being raised on a Cherokee reservation by her grandmother. Grandma Blue is a Black descendant of Cherokee freedmen and married to the Cherokee Chief Trouthands.
The Cherokee freedmen were formerly enslaved Africans who were once owned by Cherokee elites. After Emancipation and the Trail of Tears, these formerly enslaved people were freed, but their belonging to the Cherokee nation remained a point of controversy. It’s a complex question – can people who once belonged to another people who were displaced claim birthright to that heritage?
About the Author
Author Antonio Michael Downing grew up in the rainforest of Trinidad before later moving to Canada. His career spans writing, singing, and music production. His memoir, Saga Boy, explores his own lifelong search for his Black identity.
The Bookshop at Water’s End
Book Summary
Bonny treasures the memories of her idyllic summers spent with her best friend, Lainey, among the sand dunes and Spanish moss-draped oaks of Watersend, South Carolina. They spent their days swimming and reading at the local bookshop. But everything changed the night that 13-year-old Lainey’s mother disappeared.
Years later, Bonny works as an emergency room doctor. She’s in her early 50s when a tragic mistake threatens her career. With her marriage also crumbling, she and her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, escape to her river house in Watersend. Soon, Lainey and her two young kids join them for the summer. Amid long, lazy days and magical nights, the two old friends reunite with Mimi, the owner of their beloved bookshop. Throughout the summer, buried secrets and long-lost loves return like the tide.
Thoughts on This Book
This character-driven story of female friendship is told from three different points of view and alternates between past and present.
Beach House
Book Summary
Caretta had no intention of returning home to the South Carolina Lowcountry, but when her mother makes an unusual request, she can’t say no. Soon, Caretta adjusts to the rhythms of the island, begins repairing the family beach house, and even earns the title “turtle lady.” Through reconnecting with her mother, Caretta learns precious lessons about true love, sacrifice, and forgiveness.
More About the Series & the Author
Our readers voted this one of the Best Beach Reads of All Time! It’s the first of seven books in The Beach House series, published between 2002 and 2021. The Beach House has also been adapted into a Hallmark Original Movie.
Author Mary Alice Monroe was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors’ Hall of Fame. You may also want to check out her recent historical fiction release, Where the Rivers Merge. Keep in mind, however, that it’s the start of a new series, so you won’t get full resolution by the end of that book.
Under the Magnolias
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
When Austin is barely a teenager, her mother dies during childbirth and she’s left caring for six siblings. Life on the family’s tobacco farm is tough, and Austin does everything she can to save face as she tries to hide how bad it really is at Noila Farms. However, the colorful citizens of Magnolia help ease the hardship with random acts of kindness.
When Austin begins building a relationship with Vance, the son of a wealthy farmer, her father reveals family secrets that lead to a public reckoning.
What to Expect in This Book
Under the Magnolias was nominated for the Christy Award Nominee for General Fiction in 2022. Readers say the religious themes play an important role in this story.
T.I. Lowe has authored numerous other books set in South Carolina, including the 2024 novel, Lowcountry Lost. Readers say that this novel portrays Christian values, but that religion plays a less prevalent role than in Under the Magnolias.
Contemporary Fiction
The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
90% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Judith Kratt is an affluent 75-year-old woman living in her family’s grand, but aging, mansion in South Carolina. It’s the home she’s known all of her life, and one she hasn’t left since 1929. It’s now the 1980s, and Judith and Olva, the old family maid, spend long, slow afternoons rocking on the front porch.
When Judith learns that her sister, Rosemarie, is coming for a visit for the first time in 60 years, she decides it’s time to take inventory of the home. This includes everything she inherited from the Kratt family – the cut-glass letter opener, the pie safe, the copper clock, and the murder that no one talks about.
As Judith catalogs her possessions, the story is interwoven with chilling flashbacks from the fateful night in 1929 that changed everything. Through her list-making, she begins to piece together her family’s influence on their small cotton town and to acknowledge the devastating effects of their dark family secrets.
Consider This Before Reading
Judith is an unreliable and, at times, unlikeable narrator – just the way the author wants it.
Some readers find that the story starts a bit slow since you may not connect with the characters immediately. But once it draws you in, you’ll be hooked. This is not a mystery novel in the sense that, thanks to clever writing and foreshadowing, you’ll likely unravel some of the family secrets before the characters unveil them – but this feels intentional and adds to the reading experience rather than detracting from it.
By Invitation Only
Book Summary
What happens when a young, sophisticated Chicagoan falls for the owner of a farm on Johns Island?
The book opens at the couple’s engagement party in South Carolina’s low country, then there’s a second engagement party hosted by the bride’s wealthy parents back in the Windy City.
Ultimately, this is a tale of two families – one very well-to-do and the other struggling to do well – and the young couple caught in the middle.
About the Author
Dorothea Benton Frank was considered the queen of Southern fiction before her death in 2019. The author of twenty novels set in and around the South Carolina Lowcountry, Dorothea was born and raised on Sullivans Island (which was also the title of her first book).
My Magnolia Summer
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In this summer read, you’ll meet thrdorothee generations of women from Sullivan’s Island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The matriarch gran, mother Lily, and grown daughters Magnolia (Maggie) and Violet. The Magic Lantern Restaurant has always been run by the women in the family, but Maggie is struggling to forge her own culinary path in NYC.
When Maggie gets a call that she’s needed back home, she returns to find the restaurant in disarray. She’s also about to uncover some shocking secrets about her family’s past. And then there’s the handsome farmer who catches her eye…
About the Author
Dorothea Benton Frank, the queen of Southern fiction, passed away in 2019, but her daughter Victoria stepped in to fill her shoes. If you enjoy her debut novel, also consider picking up The Violet Hour, which is considered a companion novel because it is set in the same fictional world.
The Prince of Tides
Book Summary
Tom Wingo, a former teacher and football coach from South Carolina, travels to New York to help his suicidal twin sister, Savannah, a gifted poet tormented by their dark past. Through sessions with Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, Tom unearths the haunting memories of their childhood—an upbringing marked by abuse, secrets, and the fierce love that binds the Wingo siblings.
As Tom recounts their family’s history, he is forced to confront his own pain, rekindle his sense of self, and navigate an unexpected romance with Susan.
What to Know Before Reading
While the “present day” portions of this 1986 novel take place in New York, where he helps his sister and meets Dr. Lowenstein, the emotional core lies in the flashbacks in which Tom recounts his childhood and family history in South Carolina.
Before picking up this famous novel, keep in mind when it was written and the historical time frame covered in the narrative. This book contains racist terminology, sexism, n-words, and pretty much every ‘ism’ or ‘phobia’ you can think of. Additionally, keep in mind that this book deals with complex themes of family dysfunction and trauma.
The late Pat Conroy lived in South Carolina for most of his life and wrote numerous books set in the state, including South of Broad, which is featured on our list of books set in Charleston. Published more than 20 years after The Prince of Tides, South of Broad is said to reflect an author who has a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for those who are different than himself.
Book Summary
Claire returns to her small South Carolina hometown to care for her mother, who is experiencing memory loss. Years earlier, Claire’s sister disappeared under mysterious circumstances shortly after her eighteenth birthday, a trauma that still lingers over the family.
When unsettling events begin happening in the present, including signs that someone may be targeting Claire, she begins to suspect that her sister’s disappearance may not be as resolved as people once believed. As she reconnects with people from her past and questions long-held assumptions, Claire searches for answers while navigating strained family dynamics and resurfacing fears.
Sing Me Home to Carolina
Book Summary
Hattie Norwood grew up in Mountain View, South Carolina, but moved to the big city to pursue her career as an event planner. When she learns that the family peanut farm is in trouble, she returns to lend support.
It was meant to be a short trip home, until the town councilwoman asks her to to use her event planning expertise to help plan a musical benefit concert. Hattie agrees to stay in Mountain View to help with the Founder’s Day celebration. The hadsome new owner of Fox’s Hardware even suggests that the celebrations be moved to the the Norwoods’ barn as the first step toward reinventing the failing farm as a music and event venue.
There’s just one catch – the benefit is aimed at stopping the construction of a new NFL stadium – a project Hattie is actually in favor of, much to the dismay of the locals. And to complicate matters further, Hattie’s ex, MLB player Lee Lockhardt, shows up in town after suffering a career-ending injury.
Thoughts on This Book
Author Joy Callaway is known for her historical fiction, but early readers of this new novel praise her first foray into contemporary romance. It’s described as a perfect small-town romance with a love triangle that will force you to decide if you are Team Lee or Team Fox.
Non-Fiction Books About South Carolina
Brown Girl Dreaming
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
91% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This highly-rated memoir is written through vivid poems as the author shares what it was like to grow up African American in the 1960s & 1970s as awareness of the civil rights movement grew.
The poems give you a glimpse into Jacqueline Woodson’s soul as a child and the experiences she had that made her into a successful writer today.
Thoughts on This Book
One of our readers described this memoir-in-verse as “absolutely beautiful writing and an important story”.
The Demon of Unrest
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Travel back to 1860 as Abraham Lincoln wins the presidency of a very divided America. Southern extremists states were trying to destroy the Union by seceding one after another. Slavery was a big topic of debate, and eventually, the beliefs of both sides were focused on one piece of land – Fort Sumter in Charleston.
The Demons of Unrest covers the five-month period between Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the start of the Civil War in April 1861. In addition to Lincoln, the book teaches us about Major Robert Anderson, Fort Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both.
What to Expect in This Book
As with most Larson books, The Demon of Unrest is long at 608 pages. However, despite being non-fiction, he writes about history in a page-turning way. The book is based on real diaries, secret communiques, slave ledges, and plantation records.
Read Around the USA – Books Set in Other States
We hope you enjoyed this list of books about South Carolina 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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