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The Night Train

Clyde Edgerton · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers · 334 pages

Set in 1930s Georgia, the novel centers around a deaf and mute man, John Singer. Singer has been devastated by the loss of his dear friend, Antonapoulos, who was committed to an asylum for bad behavior

American SouthMusicianRacismHistorical Fiction
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The Sweetest Hallelujah

Elaine Hussey · 344 pages

Betty Jewel Hughes was once the hottest black jazz singer in Memphis. But when she finds herself pregnant and alone, she gives up her dream of being a star to raise her beautiful daughter, Billie, in Shakerag, Mississippi. Now, ten years later, in 1955, Betty Jewel is dying of cancer and looking for someone to care for Billie when she's gone. With no one she can count on, Betty Jewel does the unth

American SouthMusicianRacismHistorical Fiction
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The Little Known

Janice Daugharty · 224 pages

A good-hearted boy. A segregated town. A stolen fortune. A coming-of-age story full of hope and forgiveness. When twelve-year-old Knot Crews, an African American boy growing up in the segregated south Georgia town of Statenville, discovers a bag of bank-robbed cash in an alley, he is nearly overcome with happiness and terror. All that money-a hundred thousand dollars-could be the ticket to everyth

RacismAmerican SouthHistorical FictionMale Lead
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A Fine Dark Line

Joe R. Lansdale · 308 pages

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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The Great Santini

Pat Conroy · 475 pages

American SouthRacismComing of AgeHistorical Fiction
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Geronimo Rex

Barry Hannah · 381 pages

Harry Monroe leaves his Louisiana hometown to travel around the South of the 1950s and 60s.

American SouthMusicianRacismComing of Age
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Paperboy

Vince Vawter · 224 pages

When an eleven-year-old boy takes over a friend's newspaper route in July, 1959, in Memphis, his debilitating stutter makes for a memorable month.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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The Liberation of Gabriel King

K.L. Going · 155 pages

In Georgia during the summer of 1976, Gabriel, a white boy who is being bullied, and Frita, an African American girl who is facing prejudice, decide to overcome their many fears together as they enter fifth grade.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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A Thousand Never Evers

Shana Burg · 310 pages

IN KUCKACHOO, MISSISSIPPI, 1963, Addie Ann Pickett worships her brother Elias and follows in his footsteps by attending the black junior high school. But when her careless act leads to her brother's disappearance and possible murder, Addie Ann, Mama, and Uncle Bump struggle with not knowing if he's dead or alive. Then a good deed meant to unite Kuckachoo sets off a chain of explosive events. Addie

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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The Color Purple

Alice Walker · 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

American SouthMusicianRacismHistorical Fiction
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The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove

Susan Gregg Gilmore · 303 pages

Born to prominent but dysfunctional Nashville parents, Bezellia Grove leans on disregarded African-American servants as substitute family figures and incites wrath from both groups when she pursues an interracial relationship.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain · 330 pages

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Zora and Me

Victoria Bond, T.R. Simon

A fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood with her best friend Carrie, in Eatonville, Florida, as they learn about life, death, and the differences between truth, lies, and pretending. Includes an annotated bibliography of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, a short biography of the author, and information about Eatonville, Florida.

RacismAmerican SouthHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Bud, Not Buddy

Christopher Paul Curtis · 249 pages

It's 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud's got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase filled with his own important, secret things. 2. He's the author of Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but

MusicianRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Chiefs

Stuart Woods · 432 pages

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionMale Lead
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Crazy in Alabama

Mark Childress · 383 pages

The tale of Peejoe, an orphan boy who comes of age during a racially restless summer in the Alabama, and his aunt Lucille, who jumps at the chance to escape her life for a role on the "Beverly Hillbillies."

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Glory Be

Augusta Scattergood · 205 pages

In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Mother of Pearl

Melinda Haynes · 466 pages

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionMale Lead
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A Calamity of Souls

David Baldacci

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionMale Lead
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American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Sounder

William H. Armstrong · 116 pages

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and through his relationship with his devoted dog Sounder.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Saint Monkey

Jacinda Townsend · 359 pages

"Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky--but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chanc

RacismAmerican SouthHistorical FictionComing of Age
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Paris Trout

Pete Dexter · 320 pages

An expertly crafted and bleakly fascinating tale of social conflict and madness in the deep South, this novel centers on the eponymous Paris Trout, owner of a general store and other property in Cotton Point, Ga., during the years just after World War II. A cunning, violent man, with deep roots in the community, Trout has become an economic predator of the town's poor blacks by running a loan serv

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionMale Lead
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Sources of Light

Margaret McMullan · 236 pages

Fourteen-year-old Samantha and her mother move to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962 after her father is killed in Vietnam, and during the year they spend there Sam encounters both love and hate as she learns about photography from a new friend of her mother's and witnesses the prejudice and violence of the segregationists of the South.

American SouthRacismHistorical FictionComing of Age

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