A Lowcountry reading list
Books Set in Charleston and the Lowcountry
This is a bookseller’s list, not a complete one. Charleston and the Lowcountry have been written about for as long as there have been books to write, and we could fill a page with every novel that mentions Rainbow Row. We would rather tell you which ones are worth your time.
Every book here is one we would put in your hands if you asked what to read before a trip, after a move, or on a porch in August. Most of our shelf leans fantasy and romance; this list is its local counterpart. If you want to know who is doing the picking, here is our story.
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Charleston, Whole
These are the books that put the peninsula itself on the page: the houses south of Broad Street, the barracks at The Citadel, the harbor at low tide. Some of them love the city and some are hard on it, and the best ones manage both. Start here if you want to understand the place, not just visit it.
South of Broad
Conroy’s Charleston novel: a boy from south of Broad gathers a circle of misfit friends in 1969, and the book follows them for twenty years. Big, sentimental and sometimes over the top, but nobody writes the city’s light and water better.
The Lords of Discipline
A senior at a thinly disguised Citadel is asked to look out for the school’s first Black cadet, and learns what the institution will do to protect itself. Part coming-of-age story, part thriller; for anyone who has driven past the barracks and wondered.
Rich in Love
A seventeen-year-old in Mount Pleasant comes home to find her mother has left, and spends the summer holding her family together. Quiet, funny and short. The one to read if Conroy is too much.
The Invention of Wings
Sarah Grimké and Hetty “Handful,” the enslaved girl given to her on her eleventh birthday, trade chapters across thirty-five years of Charleston history. Pairs well with Denmark Vesey’s Garden further down.
How to Sell a Haunted House
Two siblings have to clear out their late parents’ Charleston house, and their mother’s puppet collection has opinions about it. Properly scary, very funny, and set squarely in Charleston.
The Lowcountry Beyond the Peninsula
Past the bridges the Lowcountry gets wider and quieter: marsh, tidal creeks, and small towns like the Beaufort that Conroy renamed and wrote about all his life. These books are about that country and the families who cannot leave it, or cannot stop coming back.
The Prince of Tides
Tom Wingo leaves the South Carolina marsh for New York to help his twin sister’s psychiatrist understand their family. Conroy at full volume: gorgeous about the tidewater, unsparing about what happened in that house.
Beach Music
A widowed father living in Rome is pulled back to the Lowcountry town he fled, and into every old grievance he left there. Conroy’s longest and most sprawling novel, for readers who want to disappear into something for a month.
The Water Is Wide
Conroy’s memoir of 1969, teaching Black children on a Sea Island with no bridge to the mainland, and losing the job over it. Short, angry and funny, and the best place to start with him.
Edisto
A twelve-year-old on Edisto Island, the mother he calls the Duchess, and a stranger who moves into their lives. Told in one of the oddest, funniest voices in Southern fiction. Read it for the sentences.
Sea Islands and Gullah Geechee Country
The Sea Islands are where Gullah Geechee language, food and faith held on longest, and where the Lowcountry’s history is still being told by the people it belongs to. One novel, one history written by islanders, and a pointer to a memoir you have already met.
The Water Is Wide belongs here too. The year Conroy spent teaching on Daufuskie Island (Yamacraw in the book) is as much a Sea Islands story as a Lowcountry one. It is listed in the section above.
Daughters of the Dust
Julie Dash’s novel picks up after her 1991 film: a young woman raised up North comes back to the Sea Islands to learn about the family her mother left. Read it for the Gullah voices and the island itself, then watch the film.
Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge
The history of Hilton Head’s Gullah community from the Civil War to the 1956 bridge, written by islanders who grew up there. Not a quick read, but the most direct account on this page.
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Beach Reads for Folly and Sullivan’s
Books for a chair, a cooler and a long afternoon on Folly or Sullivan’s. Easy to pick up, easy to put down when the tide comes in, and set close enough to home that you will recognize the drive out.
Sullivan’s Island
A Charleston woman whose marriage has come apart goes back to her family’s house on Sullivan’s Island, and to the summers she grew up in. Frank’s first novel, and the one to pack for the beach.
Isle of Palms
Frank again, one island up, with the same mix of family trouble, Lowcountry humor and sharp-tongued women. If you liked Sullivan’s Island, read this next.
A Lowcountry Bride
A Lowcountry romance with a wedding at the center of it, written with warmth and a light touch. The easiest read on this page, which is what a beach day calls for.
Lowcountry Boil
A private investigator comes home to a small island off Charleston after her grandmother’s death, which was not the accident it looked like. First in the Liz Talbot series: a cozy mystery with a ghost in it.
Charleston History and Memoir
Two nonfiction books for the reader who wants the real version. One is the clearest account we know of how Charleston has told, and avoided telling, the story of slavery; the other is Conroy writing plainly about one losing basketball season at The Citadel.
Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
How Charleston has remembered slavery, from the end of the Civil War to the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel: the monuments, the tours, the fights over who gets a plaque. Read it before you take a walking tour.
My Losing Season
Conroy’s memoir of his senior year as point guard on a losing Citadel basketball team, and of his father. The most honest thing he wrote, and you do not need to care about basketball.
Questions we get about Charleston books
What books are set in Charleston, South Carolina?
Start with Pat Conroy’s South of Broad and The Lords of Discipline, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings and Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House, all set in Charleston itself. Josephine Humphreys’ Rich in Love is set across the harbor in Mount Pleasant. For nonfiction, Denmark Vesey’s Garden by Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts covers how the city has remembered slavery.
What should I read before visiting Charleston?
Read South of Broad for the feel of the city, and The Invention of Wings or Denmark Vesey’s Garden for the history you will walk past downtown. If you are headed to the beaches, Dorothea Benton Frank’s Sullivan’s Island is set on the island itself.
Where can I buy books set in the Lowcountry?
Every book on this page links to The Crescent Chapter’s shop on Bookshop.org, where each order supports independent bookstores. You can also browse our Books page or find us in person at our pop-up events around Charleston.
Want to talk about what you read? The Crescent Chapter book club meets once a month at Odyssey Bottle Shop in Charleston. It is free, seats are limited, and RSVP is required. See the book club