Books like Provinces of Night — picked by fans

This is my book's protagonist's favorite book.

The Bundren family sets out across Mississippi to honor their dying matriarch's wish to be buried in her hometown, and nearly everything that can go wrong does. The ending is uneasy rather than truly resolved, and the landscape itself is a main character: it floods and burns and resists the Bundrens throughout.

Faulkner understood something crucial about the South, and Southerners by extension: it will not cooperate, and the people who love it regardless are complicated and oftentimes their own worst enemies.

I have been pressing this book into people’s hands since I studied it under the direction of Faulkner scholar Charles Chappell, and I aimed for my own book to sit in the same uneasy space.

Though my own work will never come close to equaling its wonder, this is the novel that taught me the most about the actual craft of writing. Before he redefined the western, Cormac McCarthy was a master of Southern Gothic storytelling, and Suttree was his crowning achievement. Perhaps only Blood Meridian does more in the McCarthy canon as far as elevated imagery, but Suttree accomplishes its beauty without the benefit of the sprawling southwestern landscape. Rather, McCarthy’s Knoxville becomes like Joyce’s Dublin, and he paints it in such vivid dereliction, there can be no mistaking Suttree is the novel by which all other southern works ought to compare themselves. Bonus points for somehow making watermelon fornication into a literary act.

As a leader in autobiographical fiction, Wolfe writes of a large family dominated by an alcoholic, authoritarian father who is highly dramatic in words and behavior.

His wife’s determination to survive by running a boarding house and investing in real estate leaves little time for parental attention to the needs of their children.

While most grow to repeat the dysfunctional family habits that hinder healthy development, the youngest child, with the help of his teachers, struggles enough to finally take steps away from the pain, and out of the cycle, as I did with my own life.

David Joy writes contemporary crime in Appalachia with beauty, ferocity, and wit few can match. This was my first David Joy book and his first novel, but I’ve read everything he’s written since.

I love his books because of his focus on the intricacies of character and place in contemporary Appalachia that people outside the region don’t usually get to see. On top of that, his stuff is always suspenseful as all hell and full of tension. This one is a barn burner.

This book damn near ticked every single box I have when it comes to what I love in a novel. 

A complex and conflicted addict as the main character? Check. Regrets? Check. Deep childhood friendships? Check. An evil magician and a creepy carnival? Check and check.

Black Mouth is dark and intense, and even though it plunges straight into the supernatural, it’s very much grounded in the real world. A world full of pain, heartache, loss, and broken people. 

It also features a character with a disability, and he’s drawn with such love and tenderness that I can’t help but think more novels would benefit from disability representation. The character of Dennis is often seen most clearly in the way others interact with him, revealing much about the kindness or cruelty of the other characters. 

A special book that I didn’t so much read as live inside. 

This ranch-centered book puts a human face on the cost of war.

A best in the West (or at least his small Nevada town) bull rider is physically and mentally torn apart by war. He can’t see the future he envisioned for himself anymore. But the story is really about his younger brother, Cam. I love Cam’s humor most of all, but his devotion to his idolized big brother is what makes this more than a story about a skateboarder turned bull rider.   

This book is about family in an opposite way from The Red Pony it confirms the safety net family can provide. 

I read this book a few years ago and have never forgotten it, it affected me so profoundly.

It tells the story of two Kurdish brothers in a mountain village in Iran who are forced to flee persecution and slaughter, one of whom ends up in California. Khadivi, Iranian herself, tells this with such haunting beauty and honesty that it still gives me chills to remember it.

It's part of a trilogy, and I've read all three, but this is my favorite volume.

I got this book in a subscription book box and was immediately intrigued by the premise. The town of Bone Gap is full of “gaps,” openings to other realities that someone can slip into and disappear. This story is not your usual read. The writer creatively mixes mystery, magic, love, loss, regret, forgiveness, and overcoming. 

The story follows Finn, a teenage boy, who tries to discover why his brother’s girlfriend disappeared, and the girlfriend, who is made a prisoner because she’s beautiful. 

The book made me think about a lot of things: that there is a difference between looking at and seeing someone else; that past trauma may not show on your face, but it’s part of you; that things seem more beautiful when you leave them behind; and that everyone has their reasons to see things differently. This book is character-focused, weird, entertaining, and very cathartic. 

This 2002 novel follows young Harriet Cleve Dufresnes in 1970s Mississippi during the aftermath of the death of her nine-year-old brother, who was killed by hanging in the shadow of unexplained circumstances. I am particularly enamored by the novel’s focus on the customs and dynamics of Harriet’s extended Southern family.

Tartt best describes in her own words why I love this novel: It is “a frightening, scary book about children coming into contact with the world of adults frighteningly.”  

I love a good short story, especially when it’s written for kids.

In More Tales to Keep You Up at Night, main character Gilbert finds audio tapes after his brother is injured in a mysterious accident, and starts to listen to them. Gilbert soon figures out that the stories are connected to his family, and that he’ll have to listen to all of them to save his brother…

Perfect for readers of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And as you probably can tell from the title, there is a first book by the same author. Dan Poblocki is one of those authors who just know how to tell a scary story for the middle-grade audience.