The books Southern indie booksellers are recommending to readers everywhere!

Adult Fiction

Polybius by Collin Armstrong

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Polybius by Collin Armstrong
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Definitely reminded me of all of those cult classic 80’s horror movies. I figured out some things earlier than the characters did, but I was hooked to the end, wanting to find out what happens. Would recommend to booksellers, co-workers, friends and family.

Polybius by Collin Armstrong, (List Price: $28.99, Gallery Books, 9781668044971, April 2025)

Reviewed by Stacey Schwartz, Murder On the Beach Mystery Bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida

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The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

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The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
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The horrors of this book provide both an obvious fear but also a deeper, sinister psychological kind (which I’d argue is worse than what looks you in the face). I loved the dynamic of the horrors of the characters’ experience and how they work through the estrangement of a once-familial friendship. The exploration of the relationship between fear, guilt, isolation, and grief through the lens of horror was quite captivating! This may all sound a little vague in regards to what actually occurs, but honestly, anything more would spoil the fun. Please check all trigger warnings before reading, not for those who do not enjoy body/gore horror

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig, (List Price: $30, Del Rey, 9780593156568, April 2025)

Reviewed by Sol Johnson, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina

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Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

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Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
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Behind You Is the Seais a powerful debut that tells the stories of three Palestinian American families living in Baltimore. Reading like intertwined short stories, each chapter is told from a different family member’s point of view–taking readers through the highs and lows of relationships both within and outside the family. Perfect for book clubs and readers who enjoyed A Woman Is No Man and Against the Loveless World.

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj, (List Price: $16.99, HarperVia, 9780063324244, January 2025)

Reviewed by Beth Seufer Buss, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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The Poet’s Game by Paul Vidich

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The Poet's Game by Paul Vidich
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Paul Vidich’s The Poet’s Game masterfully captures the essence of a classic spy novel. Vidich weaves a compelling narrative filled with intrigue, suspense, and carefully crafted characters. Alex Matthews is a retired CIA station chief, now capitalizing on the new Russian economy. He learns the hard way that the Russians have a long memory, and he will need to risk everything to keep himself and his business alive. Vidich’s attention to detail and his deep understanding of the espionage genre make this book a must-read for fans of spy fiction.

The Poet’s Game by Paul Vidich, (List Price: $27.95, Pegasus Books, 9781639368853, May 2025)

Reviewed by Brent Bunnell, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina

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One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

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One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
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A 32-year-old with a disappointing job, a newly absent “life” partner, and a lake house filled with memories…and neighbours who have grown up a lot since they were 17: “I think the older we get, the scarier shit becomes…” One Golden Summer is a simple, yet affecting story of one Canadian summer by the lake where frustrated photographer, Alice, looking after her grandmother, finds the cock-sure tease with a heart of gold handyman, Charlie, and learns to start thinking more about herself for once.Sweet,. wry, an astute meditation on second chances, this is a summer breeze of a book with a twist straight out of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune, (List Price: $19, Berkley, 9780593638910, May 2025)

Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana

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Atavists by Lydia Millet

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Atavists by Lydia Millet
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In an age of futility, where “abnormality is the new normal,” where everything feels depressing, and where rationality is not a given, the interconnected stories and characters of Atavists feel like a portrait of now. These stories are like moral litmus tests, digging into the compulsions of everyday people during this five-years-post-covid time, where regression is high and the worst base instincts of humanity are on display (jealousy, greed, fear, rage, etc.), all set among the absurd bleak backdrop of living at the end of the world among divided neighbors and messy morals. Yeah, it’s bleak, but it’s also compulsively readable thanks to Lydia Millet’s talent of getting at the granularity and nuance of what is going through people’s minds, what still makes us human, even and especially as tension is pulled to snapping points.

Atavists by Lydia Millet, (List Price: $27.99, W. W. Norton & Company, 9781324074410, April 2025)

Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina

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The Pretender by Jo Harkin

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The Pretender by Jo Harkin
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The Pretender is an absolute blast. In a similar vein to writers such as Maggie O’Farrell or Hilary Mantel, Jo Harkin has taken a footnote from the history books – in this case Lambert Simnel, a 15th-century pretender to the English throne – and from it created a character and story that just leaps off the page. It’s bawdy, earthy, irreverent and witty, and I absolutely loved it.

The Pretender by Jo Harkin, (List Price: $30, Knopf, 9780593803301, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi

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Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou

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Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou
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Told via a fairytale pitch-perfect unreliable narrator (who continues to shift the story in acquiescence to the ghost chorus), Sour Cherry brings the reader along to witness the hauntings and the haunted, complicit women trapped in violent cycles, and the rot and decay that are apparent when the stories are stripped away. If Angela Carter and Carmen Maria Machado were trapped in House of Leaves, you’d be holding this book in your hands.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou, (List Price: $17.95, Tin House Books, 9781963108194, April 2025)

Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina

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Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

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Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
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It is late on a Thursday evening, and I just finished this absolutely exquisite book. If I could give the author a hug right now, I would. I loved the highly detailed history. I was gripped by the family drama. I was seduced by Luella and William and Robert! I embraced the poetry of the cry-inducing ending. This book is truly exquisite storytelling. In a case of purely delightful coincidence that made this book feel so personal and special, there is a post-Civil War community near my hometown called The Promised Land that had been settled by formerly enslaved people. As I read this book, I kept imagining the story taking place there. If anyone reading this would like to know more about these communities, check out the nonfiction book titled The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson!

Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, (List Price: $29, Berkley, 9780593337721, April 2025)

Reviewed by Thomas Wallace, Reading Rock Books in Dickson, Tennessee

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A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

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A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
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Away from the walls of the Empire is the port city of Yarrowdale, a quasi-Empire outpost responsible for processing the reagents behind powers like Din’s engraving. And here occurred a murder even more vexing than the last, where a Treasury official vanished without a trace. What Ana and Din begin to unfurl are the cascading consequences of a top-secret program, infighting to sustain a dying monarchy, and a murderer at the center of it all who can seemingly predict their every move. A Drop of Corruption probes at the tantalizing false promises of autocracy, the thankless job of justice, and the oft-stifled battle cry of a society worth fighting for. Even with all the dangers within every page, Bennett has crafted a world I’d love to live in, with characters as fascinating as the leviathans themselves.

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, (List Price: $30, Del Rey, 9780593723821, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jordan April, Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

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Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto
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Hey, peeps, stop giving out your personal information and password question answers! When Vera Wong (not Wang the designer, Wong the tea house owner and sometimes detective) gets snookered into giving the “police” her SSN and emailing them a copy of her ID, it snowballs quickly into a trip to the police station in person and Vera starting another adoption cycle of people of interest. How can you not be charmed by Vera “gathering a bunch of new people who are obviously slightly terrified and brazenly accusing them of murder”? And feeding them, of course. I am really needing some homemade Chinese food right about now.

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto, (List Price: $19, Berkley, 9780593546253, April 2025)

Reviewed by Lisa Yee Swope, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

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Say You'll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
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Abby Jimenez tackles two topics we don’t see a lot in romance: long-distance relationships with tangible obstacles, and the harsh realities of caregiving for someone with dementia. Anyone who’s experienced either situation will resonate deeply with Xavier and Samantha’s struggles. So beautiful.

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez, (List Price: $28, Forever, 9781538759196, April 2025)

Reviewed by Sarai Rivera, Spellbound Bookstore in Sanford, Florida

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Audition by Katie Kitamura

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Audition by Katie Kitamura
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A middle-aged actress, preparing for a challenging part, meets a younger man who asks her a question that changes the nature of roles they each play, on-stage and off. Halfway through, this book changes its own rules, morphing into a bewildering and beautiful sleight of hand. Katie Kitamura’s sparse, intricate, and always confident prose pushes this from a simple story into something way more beguiling. Auditionexplores performance, expectation, and how hard choices can shape the story of a life. This is my favorite kind of book – one that leaves me eager to talk to other readers about its many layers.

Audition by Katie Kitamura, (List Price: $28, Riverhead Books, 9780593852323, April 2025)

Reviewed by Rachel Knox, Tombolo Books in Savannah, Florida

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Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller

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Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller
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All the feelings for Red Dog Farm! Mr. Miller tells a beautiful story of family, landscape, and the way you can never truly know either. It’s a tale of fierce love, harsh wind, and a really good dog. It’s one of those books I wish I could experience for the first time again and again. It’s oh so good!

Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller, (List Price: $28, Little, Brown and Company, 9780316575140, March 2025)

Reviewed by Susan Williams, M Judson Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina

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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
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SGJ has once again opened his veins and spilled himself onto the page, giving us a dense, heart-breaking, and revenge-filled vampire novel — one that stabs deep and drinks fully.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, (List Price: $29.99, S&S/Saga Press, 9781668075081, March 2025)

Reviewed by Adam Fall, Underbrush Books in Rogers, Arkansas

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