While Nashville might be best known for our music scene, lots of books are set in Music City, too! Here are 10 of the best novels set in Nashville, from romance to Southern gothic.
‘The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year’ by Margaret Renkl
This lovely collection of nature essays about Renkl’s Nashville backyard celebrates the joys found in observing nature, and the ways humans can alter it. Renkl writes about local nature in many of her books.
‘Lo Fi’ by Liz Riggs
Set during our early 2010s music scene, “Lo Fi” follows a young aspiring songwriter as she navigates feelings of inferiority while falling into messy relationships with guys in bands.
‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo
This queer Southern gothic explores toxic masculinity and local ghost stories against a backdrop of Vanderbilt’s graduate program and Nashville’s drag racing scene.
‘When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky’ by Margaret Verble
It’s 1926 Nashville, and Two Feathers is a Cherokee horse diver at the Glendale Park Zoo. She’s forced to temporarily give up diving after an accident leaves her injured, which makes her the perfect candidate to investigate a series of mysteries at the zoo.
‘Dynamite Nashville’ by Betsy Phillips
Local journalist Betsy Phillips tries to solve three race-related Nashville bombings that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement in her newest nonfiction. Thanks to this book, the investigation into the bombings was reopened, but nothing definitive was found.
‘Nothing To See Here’ by Kevin Wilson
A down-on-her-luck nanny travels to Nashville to care for a Tennessee senator’s two kids who spontaneously combust when they get agitated in this darkly funny literary fiction.
‘Run, Rose, Run’ by Dolly Parton & James Patterson
AnnieLee Keyes has escaped an abusive past and hitchhiked her way to Nashville with dreams of becoming a country music star. Everything finally seems to be going her way until her past catches up to her. I highly recommend the audiobook; Dolly Parton narrates one of the characters!
‘The Bromance Book Club’ by Lyssa Kay Adams
To save his failing marriage, a Nashville baseball player joins a secret romance book club for men. Can a Regency romance teach him the skills he needs to rescue his marriage?
‘The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane’ by Kate O'Shaughnessy
In this middle grade novel, eleven-year-old Maybelle Lane goes on a road trip from Louisiana to Nashville to participate in a singing competition judged by the father she’s never met.
‘Goodbye Days’ by Jeff Zentner
When Carver’s best friends at Nashville Academy for the Arts die in a car accident, Carter finds himself wracked with grief. It’s a lovely but emotionally draining young adult novel.
