Few things compare to the comfort of cozying up and getting lost in a great book. And what’s better - when that book takes you to New Orleans.We rounded up a list of books - both old and new - to take you deep into the incomparable experiences of New Orleans. Some recount the city’s rich and complex history while others bring you directly into the homes and hearts of current day New Orleans natives. If you want to add a few to your reading list, or grab a few already on your list, consider checking in with local booksellers, like Garden District Book Shop, Blue Cypress, Baldwin & Co., and Octavia Books. And mark your calendars for New Orleans Book Fest, which features an all-star lineup of authors in a festival held every spring at Tulane University. 

Editor’s Note: The descriptions for the books below were provided by Amazon/Goodreads and have been condensed.

Newer Reads

The Vanishing Half 

by Brit Bennett 

For readers fans of “Passing” by Nella Larsen and “Caucasia” by Danzy Senna. 

A sweeping work of historical fiction partially set in New Orleans, “The Vanishing Half” is a multi-generational family saga set from the 1940s–1990s that centers on identical twin sisters Desiree and Estelle "Stella" Vignes and their daughters Jude and Kennedy, respectively.   

Let Us Descend 

by Jesmyn Ward 

For readers looking for a book that they just can’t put down. 

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. 

The Yellow House

by Sarah Broom

For those who want to explore a lesser known but equally interesting neighborhood known by locals.

The Yellow House tells of a hundred years of Broom’s family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser-known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the “Big Easy” of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

A Kind of Freedom

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

For readers who want to go along the journey of three generations of a Creole family in New Orleans.

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Jackie’s son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn’t survive the storm. For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s critically acclaimed debut is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.

Older Reads

The World That Made New Orleans

by Ned Sublette 

For history buffs who want to dig deep into the many facets of New Orleans’ complex history.

The World That Made New Orleans tells the remarkable story of New Orleans’s first century - a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana’s statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp - especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, “rock the city.” 

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

For feminists who wish to rejoice in an old classic that was ahead of its time and set in New Orleans.

When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation.

Zeitoun

by Dave Eggers

For readers who want to better understand some of the many struggles faced by New Orleans natives during hurricane Katrina.

Zeitoun is the true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.

Interview with the Vampire

by Anne Rice

For readers who want to rediscover one of the dark and mysterious sides of the French Quarter.

Anne Rice’s first book in her popular series offers the confessions of a vampire and tells the story of Louis, as told in his own words, and his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans. Originally begun as a short story, the book took off, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul. As well as the struggles of its characters, Interview captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, sexuality, and power.

Older Reads (continued)

A Streetcar Named Desire 

By Tennessee Williams 

For readers who want a tragic story of a Southern Belle, with themes of class, gender, sexuality, and delusion. 

Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella''s crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche''s fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness. 

A Confederacy of Dunces 

By John Kennedy Toole 

For readers looking for a book that paints a picture of New Orleans, in all its silliness. 

The little novel that could, published posthumously by John Kennedy Toole, has quickly become a local classic. Ignatius is an overweight, thirty-year-old, unemployed scholar who lives with his mother. He launches a crusade against modernity—which he thinks is the downfall of humankind.