10 Must-Read Books Set In Atlanta - BOOKGLOW (2024)

These must-read books set in Atlanta include Pulitzer Prize winning fiction, contemporary fiction, memoirs, and nonfiction. Visit The A with these books that take place in Atlanta, Georgia.

1. Gone With the Windby Margaret Mitchell

Taking place in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War, “this is the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, who arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life. A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage, in the pages ofGone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell brings to life the unforgettable characters that have captured readers for over seventy years.”

2. Peachtree Road by Anne Rivers Siddons

“Headstrong, independent, and devastatingly beautiful Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable will never become the demure Southern lady her family requires—while her older cousin, Sheppard Gibbs Bondurant III, is too shy and bookish, a far cry from the suave, gregarious Southern gentleman he’s expected to be. In the Bondurants’ sprawling home on Atlanta’s Peachtree Road, these two will be united by a fierce tainted love—and torn apart by a smoldering rage fanned by the cruelty of years and the unbending demands of privilege.”

3. Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

“It was the end of summer, a summer during the two-year nightmare in which Atlanta’s African-American children were vanishing and twenty-nine would be found murdered by 1982. Here fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison will discover back-to-school means facing everyday challenges in a new world of safety lessons, terrified parents, and constant fear. The moving story of their struggle to grow up – and survive – shimmers with the piercing, ineffable quality of childhood, as it captures all the hurts and little wins, the all-too-sudden changes, and the merciless, outside forces that can sweep the young into adulthood and forever shape their lives.”

4. An American Marriageby Tayari Jones

“Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circ*mstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.”

5. A Thousand Naked Strangers by Kevin Hazzard

“A former paramedic’s visceral, poignant, and mordantly funny account of a decade spent on Atlanta’s mean streets saving lives and connecting with the drama and occasional beauty that lies inside catastrophe.”

6. Them by Nathan McCall

“Barlowe Reed is a single, forty-something Black American who rents a ramshackle house on Randolph Street in Atlanta, just a stone’s throw from the historic birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Barlowe, who works as a printer, otherwise passes the time reading and hanging out with other men at the corner store. He shares his home and loner existence with a streetwise, twentysomething nephew who is struggling to get his troubled life back on track.

“When Sean and Sandy Gilmore, a young white couple, move in next door, Barlowe and Sandy develop a reluctant, complex friendship as they hold probing—often frustrating—conversations over the backyard fence.

“Members of both households, and their neighbors as well, try to go about their business, tending to their homes and jobs. However, fear and suspicion build—and clashes ensue—with each passing day, as more and more new whites move in and make changes and once familiar people and places disappear.”

7. A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

“The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.

“Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.

“And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.”

8. Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: The Saga of Two Families and the Making of Atlanta by Gary Pomerantz

“A fascinating tale of two cities told through the rise of two of Atlanta’s most illustrious political families…highly significant in what it reveals about ambition, hard work, success, and race relations.”—David Levering Lewis.

9. Reunion by Hannah Pittard

“Five minutes before her flight is set to take off, Kate Pulaski, failed screenwriter and newly failed wife with scarcely a hundred dollars to her name, learns that her estranged father has killed himself. More shocked than saddened by the news, she gives in to her siblings’ request that she join them, along with her many half-siblings and most of her father’s five former wives, in Atlanta, their birthplace, for a final farewell.”

10. While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax

“When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other…”

Related:10 Must-Read Books Set In Georgia

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