The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003) — A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in antebellum Virginia about a Black plantation owner who himself owned slaves. It illuminates the moral complexity of the Virginia slave economy more vividly than any history book.
To Kill a Mockingbird is not set in Richmond, but The Color of Water by James McBride (1996) is: a memoir of growing up mixed-race in the American South, partly set in the Richmond area, that captures the social geography of the Virginia Black experience through the 20th century.
Confederate Reckoning by Stephanie McCurry (2010) — A revisionist history of the Confederacy that focuses on poor white women and enslaved people rather than generals and politicians, fundamentally changing how you see the city that was its capital.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010) — The definitive account of the Great Migration, in which millions of Black Southerners (including many from Virginia) left for the North. Essential reading for understanding why Monument Avenue's statues became so contested.
Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz (1998) — A journalist's journey through the contemporary American South in search of Civil War re-enactors and memory. The Richmond and Virginia sections are among the sharpest.