Great Reads from Great Places

Every year the Library of Congress distributes the “Great Reads from Great Places”  list of books representing the literary heritage of the 56 affiliated Centers for the Book. Each center makes an adult and a youth “Great Reads from Great Places” selection. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage. The Library of Congress makes these lists available as part of the National Book Festival and most of the individual Centers’ websites include their current year selections, as well as past years’ selections.

2025 Great Reads from Great Places Selection

The South Carolina State Library's Center for the Book has chosen as 2025’s Great Reads from Great Places How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix and Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration by Natalie Daise.

Cover of How To Sell A Haunted House.
Adults

How To Sell A Haunted House

Grady Hendrix

New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a hilarious and terrifying new novel that explores the way your past-and your family-can haunt you like nothing else.... Louise's parents have passed away, and she's returning to the small Southern town where she grew up to get their house ready to sell. It means she'll have to spend time with her younger brother-and their old grudges make that a terrifying prospect. But childhood hurts pale in comparison to the dangers posed by what still lives inside the house.

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Cover of Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration
Kids

Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration

Natalie Daise

Papa has something special planned for tonight's family dinner-and Bobo can't wait! Excited to learn how to make okra stew like his ancestors, Bobo helps Papa pick veggies from the garden, catch shrimp from the creek, rain down rice in the pot, simmer the stew, and even make a tasty side of cornbread. When the stew begins to bubble and pop, Bobo and his family gather around for a mouthwatering feast.

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Past Annual Selections

2024

Cover of The Big Game is Every Night.
Adults

The Big Game is Every Night

Robert Maynor

Grady Hayes is a young high school football player being raised by his hard working single mother. His life revolves around football, until-in a game against cross-county rivals-he breaks his leg. Cut off from his teammates, Grady is lost. He takes prescription pills to dull the pain and pass the time. But when his leg finally heals and Grady tries to return to the team, his spot has been filled and he can't relate to his teammates anymore. Grady takes up with Hambone, a brooding older boy, and they start hunting together in the swamp at night. Their relationship is volatile, fueled by alcohol and pills, and their hunting ritual quickly turns dark and carelessly violent. Feeling helpless and out of ways to stop her son's downward spiral, Grady's mother asks his estranged father to pay them a visit to set Grady straight, leading to a tragic family reckoning. Told in the keen, honest voice of a young man growing up in the rural American South, The Big Game is Every Night is a literary novel that explores the cultural forces that shape contemporary blue-collar America.

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Cover of The Parker Inheritance
Kids

The Parker Inheritance

Varian Johnson

Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out to find the inheritance, exonerate her grandmother, and expose an injustice once committed against an African American family in Lambert.

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2023

Cover of The Blue Line Down.
Adults

The Blue Line Down

Maris Lawyer

From debut novelist Maris Lawyer, The Blue Line Down is a breakneck tale of betrayal, loyalty, and unexpected homecoming. Jude Washer wants to run: away from the coal mines where he is destined to work, away from his father's abuse of his little brother, away from the prison-like confines of his village. Whispers of unionizing ripple through the small West Virginia mining town. When the mines take Jude's brother away from him, Jude takes matters into his own hands. With nowhere else to go, Jude joins the Baldwin-Felts Agency, a band of violent men dedicated to stamping out unionizers across the mountains. It is 1922, and the Baldwin-Felts are poised to raid a mining town in Virginia. When the coal miners fight back against the agents, Jude, now twenty-four, and Harvey, a new recruit, take an opportunity to flee amid the bloodshed. With the Baldwin-Felts on their tail, Jude and an injured Harvey make their way down the mountains, where they are intercepted in South Carolina by a ragtag gang of bootleggers who put them to work to pay off a debt. Jude is desperate for a place to call home, but can he find it in these hardscrabble hills among strangers?

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Cover of Indigo Dreaming.
Kids

Indigo Dreaming

Dinah Johnson

A young girl living on the coast of South Carolina dreams of her distant relatives on the shores of Africa and beyond. Indigo Dreaming is a poetic meditation between two young girls--on different sides of the sea--who wonder about how they are intricately linked by culture, even though they are separated by location. The girls' reflections come together, creating a vision of home, as well as a celebration of the Black diaspora.

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2022

Cover of The Islanders.
Kids

The Islanders

Mary Alice Monroe

Jake's life has been turned upside down. His dad was wounded in Afghanistan, and his mom is going to help care for him. That means Jake's going to have to spend the summer on Dewees Island with his grandmother. Dewees is a nature sanctuary--no cars or paved roads, no stores or restaurants. To make matters worse, Jake's grandmother doesn't believe in cable or the internet. Which means Jake has no cell phone, no video games ... no friends. But then he meets two other kids - one is also visiting the small island, and the other lives there. Forced together by circumstance and loneliness, they become inseperable. but when they find what they think is an abandoned boat, their adventure lands them in hot water! Their punishment? Turtle duty. Daily beach patrols at dawn checking for loggerhead sea turtle tracks initially sound pretty boring, but then a nest is destroyed. The three friends are determined to protect "their" nest. Can they save the loggerhead eggs from predators? And can Jake's growing love for the island and its inhabitants (be they two-legged, four-legged, feathered, of finned) help his father get well?

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