Our Top Picks for a Perfect Summer Reading List

The Houseboat Veronica by Josh Bell is a mythopoetic journey to the edge of the world and to the edges of reason, horror, and beauty with a witch and her young ward.

Distracted by Alabama by Jim Brown is a collection of twelve captivating essays about Alabama and the South by Samford University writer and scholar Jim Brown, a former president of the Alabama Folklife Association.

Southern Rivers by R. Scot Duncan explores the southeast’s imperiled river systems and solutions for preserving them in the face of habitat loss, climate change, and extinction.

Southern Wonder by R. Scot Duncan explores Alabama’s amazing biological diversity, the reasons for the large number of species in the state, and the importance of their preservation.

Tannery Bay by Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle is a captivating tale of Black Joy and Queer Joy and the ways in which family is both biological and chosen, where love transcends boundaries, and where art is a vehicle for change.

Salleyland by J. Whitfield Gibbons is an exercise in learning about a patch of nature, thereby reminding us to open our eyes to the complexity and wonder of the natural world.

Turtles of Alabama by Craig Guyer, Mark A. Bailey and Robert H. Mount pulls together new discoveries, research, and taxonomic changes that have occurred in herpetology within the state of Alabama since the 1975 publication of the now-classic volume Reptiles and Amphibians of Alabama by Robert H. Mount.

Smothered and Covered by Ty Matejowky is a critical meditation of the iconic 24-7 roadside chain and its place in the southern imaginary.

Barbecue by Robert F. Moss is the definitive history of an iconic American food, with new chapters, sidebars, and updated historical accounts.

Butterflies of Alabama by Paulette Haywood Ogard and Sara Cunningham Bright is a full-color, richly illustrated guide to the 84 known species of “true” butterflies (Papilionoidea) found within the state’s borders.

In China Marine, E. B. Sledge provides emotional closure to the searing events detailed in his first memoir, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. He speaks frankly about the real costs of war, emotional and psychological as well as physical, and explains the lifetime loyalties that develop between men who face fear, loss, and horror together. That bond becomes one of the newfound treasures of life after battle.

Selma, Lord, Selma by Sheyann Webb, Rachel West Nelson, and Frank Sikora is a moving firsthand account that puts the 1965 struggle for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, in very human terms.

Apalachicola Valley Archaeology: Prehistory through the Middle Woodland Period, Volume 1 by Nancy Marie White is the definitive archaeological record and what is known or speculated about the ancient Apalachicola and lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia.

Apalachicola Valley Archaeology: The Late Woodland Period through Recent History, Volume 2 by Nancy Marie White synthesizes the archaeology and history of the Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro-Americans of the Apalachicola–lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia from about 1300 years ago until the present.

Exploring Wild Alabama by Kenneth M. Wills and L. J. Davenport is an exceptionally detailed guide to the most beautiful natural destinations in the state. From the rocky outcrops of the Appalachian plateaus to the sugar-white beaches of the Gulf Coast’s Orange Beach and Dauphin Island, Alabama offers a wealth of remarkable sites to explore by car or canoe, bicycle or motorcycle, or on foot.

Plant Foods of Greece by Soultana Maria Valamoti is a synthesis of culinary practices of prehistoric Greece based on plant food ingredients.