Excerpt from The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant picked their books for that year in a very democratic process: Marjorie Fretwell invited them to select eleven books from a list of thirteen she found appropriate. She asked if there were other books anyone wanted to recommend, but everyone understood that wasn't a real question, except for Slick Paley, who seemed chronically unable to read social cues.

"I'd like to nominate Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Your Child and the Occult," Slick said. "With that crystal store on Coleman Boulevard and Shirley MacLaine on the cover of Time magazine talking about her past lives, we need a wake-up call."

"I've never heard of it," Marjorie Fretwell said. "So I imagine it falls outside our mandate of reading the great books of the Western world. Anyone else?"

"But—" Slick protested.

"Anyone else?" Marjorie repeated.

They selected the books Marjorie wrote down for them, assigned each book to the month Marjorie thought best, and picked the discussants Marjorie thought were most appropriate. The discussant would open the meeting by delivering a twenty-minute presentation on the book, its background, and the life of its author, then lead the group discussion. A discussant could not cancel or trade books with anyone else without paying a stiff fine because the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant was not fooling around. When it became clear she wasn't going to be able to finish Cry, the Beloved Country, Patricia called Marjorie.

"Marjorie," she said over the phone while putting a lid on the rice and turning it down from a boil. "It's Patricia Campbell. I need to talk to you about Cry, the Beloved Country."

"Such a powerful work," Marjorie said.

"Of course," Patricia said.

"I know you'll do it justice," Marjorie said.

"I'll do my best," Patricia said, realizing that this was the exact opposite of what she needed to say.

"And it's so timely with the situation in South Africa right now," Marjorie said.

A cold bolt of fear shot through Patricia: what was the situation in South Africa right now?

After she hung up, Patricia cursed herself for being a coward and a fool, and vowed to go to the library and look up Cry, the Beloved Country in the Directory of World Literature, but she had to do snacks for Korey's soccer team, and the babysitter had mono, and Carter had a sudden trip to Columbia and she had to help him pack, and then a snake came out of the toilet in the garage room and she had to beat it to death with a rake, and Blue drank a bottle of Wite-Out and she had to take him to the doctor to see if he would die (he wouldn't). She tried to look up Alan Paton, the author, in their World Book Encyclopedia but they were missing the P volume. She made a mental note that they needed new encyclopedias.

The doorbell rang.

"Mooooom," Korey called from the downstairs hall. "Pizza's here!"

She couldn't put it off any longer. It was time to face Marjorie.

Marjorie had handouts.

"These are just a few articles about current events in South Africa, including the recent unpleasantness in Vanderbijlpark," she said. "But I think Patricia will sum things up nicely for us in her discussion of Mr. Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country."

Everyone turned to stare at Patricia sitting on Marjorie's enormous pink-and-white sofa. Not being familiar with the design of Marjorie's home, she had put on a floral dress and felt like all anyone saw were her head and hands floating in midair. She wished she could pull them into her dress and disappear completely. She felt her soul exit her body and hover up by the ceiling.

"But before she begins," Marjorie said, and every head turned back her way, "let's have a moment of silence for Mr. Alan Paton. His passing earlier this year has shaken the literary world as much as it's shaken me."

Patricia's brain chased itself in circles: the author was dead? Recently? She hadn't seen anything in the paper. What could she say? How had he died? Was he murdered? Torn apart by wild dogs? Heart attack?

Excerpted from The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. Copyright © 2020 by Grady Hendrix. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.