"Around these parts, the publication of a new George Dawes Green novel
is an event. ... Green leans all the way into Southern Gothic, but the
main grotesquerie is the city's history, built on the backs of enslaved
people. His prose is languid, even luxurious, but at critical moments of
suspense, he pares it back to ramp up the terror."
**--New York Times Book Review
Savannah may appear to be "some town out of a fable," with its vine
flowers, turreted mansions, and ghost tours that romanticize the city's
history. But look deeper and you'll uncover secrets, past and present,
that tell a more sinister tale. It's the story at the heart of George
Dawes Green's chilling new novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah.
It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo
Peep's, one of the town's favorite watering holes. Within an hour,
however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be "disappeared."
An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is
called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an
imperious, demanding, and conniving woman, whose four grown children are
weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping
with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying
truths--truths that will rock Savannah's power structure to its core.
Moving from the homeless encampments that ring the city to the stately
homes of Savannah's elite, Green's novel brilliantly depicts the
underbelly of a city with a dark history and the strangely mesmerizing
dysfunction of a complex family.
