Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

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

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 7, 2020, 408 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2021, 424 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


"Amen," Marjorie said. "Patricia?"

Patricia's soul decided that it was no fool and ascended into the afterlife, leaving her at the mercy of the women surrounding her. There was Grace Cavanaugh, who lived two doors down from Patricia but whom she'd only met once when Grace rang her doorbell and said, "I'm sorry to bother you, but you've lived here for six months and I need to know: is this the way you intend for your yard to look?"

Slick Paley blinked rapidly, her sharp foxy face and tiny eyes glued to Patricia, her pen poised above her notebook. Louise Gibbes cleared her throat. Cuffy Williams blew her nose slowly into a Kleenex. Sadie Funche leaned forward, nibbling on a cheese straw, eyes boring into Patricia. The only person not looking at Patricia was Kitty Scruggs, who eyed the bottle of wine in the center of the coffee table that no one had dared open.

"Well ... ," Patricia began. "Didn't we all love Cry, the Beloved Country?"

Sadie, Slick, and Cuffy nodded. Patricia glanced at her watch and saw that seven seconds had passed. She could run out the clock. She let the silence linger hoping someone would jump in and say something, but the long pause only prompted Marjorie to say, "Patricia?"

"It's so sad that Alan Paton was cut down in the prime of his life before writing more novels like Cry, the Beloved Country," Patricia said, feeling her way forward, word by word, guided by the nods of the other women. "Because this book has so many timely and relevant things to say to us now, especially after the terrible events in Vander ... Vanderbill ... South Africa."

The nodding got stronger. Patricia felt her soul descending back into her body. She forged ahead.

"I wanted to tell you all about Alan Paton's life," she said. "And why he wrote this book, but all those facts don't express how powerful this story is, how much it moved me, the great cry of outrage I felt when I read it. This is a book you read with your heart, not with your mind. Did anyone else feel that way?"

The nods were general, all over the living room.

"Exactly." Slick Paley nodded. "Yes."

"I feel so strongly about South Africa," Patricia said, and then remembered that Mary Brasington's husband was in banking and Joanie Wieter's husband did something with the stock market and they might have investments there. "But I know there are many sides to the issue, and I wonder if anyone wanted to present another point of view. In the spirit of Mr. Paton's book, this should be a conversation, not a speech."

Everyone was nodding. Her soul settled back into her body. She had done it. She had survived. Marjorie cleared her throat.

"Patricia," Marjorie asked. "What did you think about what the book had to say about Nelson Mandela?"

"So inspirational," Patricia said. "He simply towers over everything, even though he's really just mentioned."

"I don't believe he is," Marjorie said, and Slick Paley stopped nodding. "Where did you see him mentioned? On which page?"

Patricia's soul began ascending into the light again. Good-bye, it said. Good-bye, Patricia. You're on your own now ...

"His spirit of freedom?" Patricia said. "It pervades every page?"

"When this book was written," Marjorie said. "Nelson Mandela was still a law student and a minor member of the ANC. I'm not sure how his spirit could be anywhere in this book, let alone pervading every page."

Marjorie drilled into Patricia's face with her ice-pick eyes.

"Well," Patricia croaked, because she was dead now and apparently death felt very, very dry. "What he was going to do. You could feel it building. In here. In this book. That we read."

"Patricia," Marjorie said. "You didn't read the book, did you?"

Time stopped. No one moved. Patricia wanted to lie, but a lifetime of breeding had made her a lady.

"Some of it," Patricia said.

Marjorie let out a soul-deep sigh that seemed to go on forever.

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.