Novels Set in Nashville: 6 Books That Get Music City Right

By Paul Whitten

I read a lot of books that claim to be about Nashville. Yeah, I know... it's weird. I spend all my time reading and learning about Nashville. It's a problem, but that's enough about my nerdiness... let me tell you what's wrong with these books. Most of them get the neon right and the soul wrong. But every so often a writer nails the thing I spend two hours trying to show people on a walking tour... the way this city hums under your feet. These are the novels set in Nashville that actually feel like Nashville, not a postcard of it. They are a perfect read before you come down to Broadway on vacation. Here are six best novels in Nashville.

1. Taft by Ann Patchett

If you only read one of these, make it this one. Taft follows John Nickel, a former drummer who now manages a bar off Lower Broadway and watches the music world he loved go on without him.

Patchett knows this city in her bones. She lives here and owns the bookstore I'll get to in a minute. The Nashville in Taft isn't the bachelorette-party version... it's the working one, the late shift, the regulars, the kid who walks in looking for a job and changes everything. Quiet, aching, and true.

2. Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson

You cannot write about books set in Nashville and leave out the one Dolly herself helped write. Run, Rose, Run follows AnnieLee Keyes, who hitchhikes into town with a guitar, a dangerous past, and a stubborn dream of country stardom.

Is it a thriller? A love letter to Music Row? Both, honestly. Dolly even recorded a companion album to go with it. I've sent more reluctant readers home with this book than any other, and they always text me from the airport saying they couldn't put it down.

3. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Tennessee author Kevin Wilson wrote one of the strangest, warmest novels I've read in years. The premise sounds like a fever dream: a down-on-her-luck woman gets hired to care for two kids who literally burst into flames when they get upset. The catch... they belong to the family of an ambitious Tennessee senator angling for Washington.

It's set in the moneyed world just outside the city, the part of middle Tennessee most tourists never see. Nothing to See Here is funny and tender and a little bit feral. My kind of book.

4. All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

This one takes you into Nashville's old-money world, the leafy streets and private schools where reputation is currency. All We Ever Wanted opens when a photo from a high school party threatens to unravel two very different families on opposite ends of the city's class divide.

Giffin writes the kind of book you finish in a weekend and argue about with your friends for a week. It's also a sharp look at a Nashville that exists a few miles and a few tax brackets from the honky-tonks. The South knows how to keep up appearances. This book peels them back.

5. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Time for something fun. The hero is Gavin Scott, second baseman for the fictional Nashville Legends, whose marriage is falling apart. His teammates' solution? A secret club of macho men who read romance novels to learn how to actually understand their partners.

The Bromance Book Club is charming, smart, and set squarely in our city. It kicked off a whole series, so if you fall for it, you've got more waiting. I recommend it to couples who want a Nashville read that won't weigh down a beach bag.

6. The Taylor Jackson Series by J.T. Ellison

For the readers who like a body in the first chapter, Nashville author J.T. Ellison built a whole crime world right here. Start with All the Pretty Girls, where Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson hunts a killer across a city Ellison clearly knows street by street.

What I love is that the geography is real. You'll recognize neighborhoods, you'll recognize the river, you'll recognize that particular Nashville mix of charm and grit. Half the fun is reading a chase scene down a road you walked that morning.

Where to Buy Them: Nashville's Best Bookstore

Here's a tip I give every tour guest who asks about reading. Skip the chain store. The best bookstore in Nashville sits a short stroll up Hillsboro Pike from the legendary Bluebird Cafe, in a Green Hills strip mall that hides a small wonder.

Parnassus Books was opened in 2011 by novelist Ann Patchett, the same Ann Patchett who wrote Taft. Inside you'll find rolling ladders, towering shelves, an "Ann Recommends" display, and usually a store dog wandering the aisles looking for a scratch. Their local-author section is the best in the city for tracking down every title on this list. If you catch live music at the Bluebird first, you can make a whole literary evening of it... songwriters, then shelves, the two things this city does best.

The Story Doesn't Stay on the Page When You Read Novels Set in Nashville

Reading about Nashville is one thing. Walking it is another. Every one of these novels set in Nashville borrows its power from real streets, real history, and real people who built this place... the same ground I cover on foot.

I spent years overseas, first with the Army in Afghanistan, then with the Peace Corps in Armenia, before I came home and fell in love with telling Nashville's story out loud. If these books light a spark, come let me show you the city behind them. Our Nashville walking tours stop on the very corners these authors wrote about, and there's always a story we save just for the sidewalk.

Bring a book. We'll give you a few more reasons to read it.