This Week: July 25th

News and Updates

It’s my birthday week, and I’m taking some time away on a solo retreat to reflect and recharge. While I’ll be less active than usual, there will still be plenty of valuable content available throughout the week, with limited live interaction.

I also want to share an important update: this will be our final weekly newsletter. If you missed last week’s edition, I encourage you to read it for more details on the changes and new opportunities coming over the next few months.

Beginning next week, we’ll transition to a monthly newsletter, delivered during the first few days of each month. Each issue will include recommendations and guidance for the upcoming challenge prompts, helping you plan and participate more effectively.

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list so you can receive each newsletter directly in your inbox.

This Week

Southern Gothic takes familiar, grounded settings—small towns, family homes, churches, and sweltering summer streets—and infuses them with a sense of decay, memory, and buried tension. It’s a genre built less on shock than on atmosphere: oppressive heat, lingering secrets, fractured families, moral ambiguity, class divides, and the feeling that the past is never fully gone. Even readers unfamiliar with the term often recognize its distinctive mood immediately.

At its best, Southern Gothic combines rich character drama with a deep sense of place. Readers may arrive for the haunted houses, family secrets, eccentric characters, and lyrical prose, but they stay for the genre’s unflinching exploration of power, shame, loneliness, faith, race, inheritance, and the pressures of maintaining appearances. Foundational voices include William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams, while contemporary discussions often intersect with Southern noir, literary suspense, Appalachian Gothic, and darkly atmospheric family sagas.

Monthly Reading Challenge: Realistic Fiction

Weekly Reading Challenge: Southern Gothic

When I think of Southern Gothic, Sean Dietrich is one of the first authors who comes to mind. He has a remarkable gift for storytelling, weaving relatable small-town dramas with just enough danger, mystery, and moral complexity to keep readers captivated.

The Incredible Winston Browne captures many of the qualities that define the genre: a vividly rendered Southern setting, unforgettable characters shaped by hardship, and the constant tension between grace and darkness. While it is less bleak than some Southern Gothic classics, it still evokes that distinctly Southern sensibility where pain, redemption, secrets, and community coexist in complicated ways.

Unlike many Southern Gothic novels set in Georgia or Appalachia, this story unfolds in a small Florida town in an earlier era. Eccentric characters, looming danger, hidden histories, and people who carry far more than they first reveal draw readers into the narrative and make it difficult to put down.

If you’re looking for other great books for this prompt, try one of these reads recommended by our StoryGraph community:

• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Long After We Are Gone, Terah Shelton Harris
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
• Over Yonder, Sean Dietrich

New This week

One of our most anticipated titles is releasing this week!

Backtrack by Marc Cameron is the eighth installment in the Arliss Cutter series, following a U.S. Marshal dedicated to protecting Alaska’s rugged backcountry. In this latest adventure, a threat rooted in Cutter’s own past—and his family history—forces him to confront old secrets before they endanger the life he’s worked so hard to build.

Told across dual timelines and settings, the novel offers a deeper look at Cutter’s grandfather, the man whose example first inspired his path into law enforcement. The story moves between rural Texas decades ago and Alaska’s remote coastline today, weaving together a tense pursuit involving missing jewels, a deadly armored truck robbery, and long-buried connections that refuse to stay hidden.

I’m especially excited to see this one hitting shelves this week. I’ll be stopping by my local bookstore on Tuesday morning to pick up a copy—an early birthday gift to myself.

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In Case You Missed It

Last Week’s Prompt

In Abscond, Abraham Verghese turns a brief story into a deeply felt exploration of grief, tradition, and growing up. Set around Ravi’s sudden loss of his father, the story captures the painful moment when a child begins to understand both the weight of family expectations and the need to find his own path.

At just 38 pages, Abscond is compact enough to read in one sitting but resonant enough to linger afterward. It is a poignant, memorable choice for readers drawn to quiet coming-of-age fiction, emotionally rich family stories, and literary work that finds depth in a single turning point.

I give Abscond 5 out of 5 stars. Read the full review here.

Additional Review

Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard is a fast-paced, immersive nonfiction account of Abraham Lincoln’s final days, the end of the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth’s assassination plot, and the manhunt that followed. Even though Lincoln’s assassination is one of the most familiar events in American history, this book makes it feel immediate by combining historical detail with the pacing of a thriller.

I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars. I especially enjoyed the day-by-day structure and the way the authors move between Lincoln, Booth, and the people surrounding them. The chapters are clear, dramatic, and easy to follow, making the history feel engaging without becoming overwhelming. As someone who enjoys presidential history and lesser-known details, I found plenty here to appreciate.

Readers who enjoy presidential history, Civil War history, or narrative nonfiction will likely find this both informative and entertaining. You can read the full review here.

Last Week’s Preview

Sex Positive by Brooklyn Rose is a bold, timely college romance that centers sexual health, consent, reproductive freedom, and self-advocacy without losing the banter and emotional pull readers expect from the genre. Charlie is preparing to launch a broader education program at the clinic where she works, but she is also trying to understand her own pleasure and experiences before teaching others about theirs. That tension gives the story a strong coming-of-age feel and makes her journey feel personal, vulnerable, and relevant.

I give this one 4 out of 5 stars. I appreciate the way Rose writes about sex positivity for a college-aged audience, especially the reminder that not everyone explores or experiments on the same timeline. The discussions of consent, bodily autonomy, and reproductive health are clear and fact-driven, but they never completely overwhelm the romance or the characters. I also enjoyed the witty banter and the way the story challenges abstinence-only education and the gaps it can leave behind.

I would recommend Sex Positive to readers who enjoy contemporary romance with strong social themes, sex-positive storytelling, and a politically aware edge. It is not overly spicy, but sexual acts are discussed clearly on the page, so I would suggest it for older teen and adult readers.

Read our full review here.

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Reading Challenge Prompts

With my birthday coming up at the end of July, I chose this month to explore a few of my favorite subgenres around the library. From beach reads to get you ready for vacation, to southern gothic stories that will pull at your heart, I am excited to get started on our books this month!

I am also including what my kids would call a “free space” prompt – something easy to check off your list without it feeling like a real challenge. For us, that is going to be our “favorite author” prompt. One note – it definitely like work trying to narrow down my choice for this prompt – I have too many favorite authors to choose from!

I invite you over to our StoryGraph reading challenges where you can follow along, check off the prompts, and see what the rest of our community is choosing for these challenges. Don’t forget you can also follow along on our social media pages like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest to continue the conversation!

What reading adventures are you most excited for this month?

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What I’m Reading

• Current print book: Mother Daughter Sister Stranger, Hank Phillippi Ryan
• Current audio book: The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies, Kate Westbury
• Book I’m most looking forward to: The Magic of Chamomile Cottage, Heather Webber