New England Book List

This list is a work in progress. A book’s presence on the list is not necessarily a recommendation — I have not read most of them! Nor is it an exhaustive catalog; many authors listed have written other books set in New England as well, so I hope you will use these suggestions as a basis for your own exploration. Additional recommendations are very welcome.

Unless otherwise indicated, books are contemporary (or near-contemporary) fiction. Abbreviations used are C=Children’s, D=Drama, HF=Historical Fiction, M=Mystery, NF=Nonfiction, SF=Speculative Fiction, YA=Young Adult. Links are to Goodreads (except for drama, which are mostly from Wikipedia).

New Hampshire

• A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
• Affliction – Russell Banks
• Peyton Place – Grace Metalious
• A Separate Peace – John Knowles
• Our Town – Thornton Wilder (D)
• Nineteen Minutes – Jodi Picoult
• Lake News – Barbara Delinsky
• Lake People – Abi Maxwell
• The Painted Drum – Louise Erdrich
• The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott – Kelly O’Connor McNees (HF)
• The Weight of Water – Anita Shreve
• White Peril – Tom Eslick (M)
• Not Without Peril – Nicholas Howe (NF)
• The Good Good Pig – Sy Montgomery (NF)
• Our Little Secret: The True Story of a Teenager Killer – Kevin Flynn (NF)
• Salinger: A Life – Kenneth Slawenski (NF)
• A Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony – ed. Carter Wiseman (NF)
• A Country Practice: Scenes from the Veterinary Life – Douglas Whynott (NF)
• Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton
• See You at Harry’s – Jo Knowles (YA)
• Amos Fortune, Free Man – Elizabeth Yates (C, HF)
• Absolutely Truly – Heather Vogel Frederick (C, M)
• The Heart of a Chief – Joseph Bruchac (C)
• A Gathering of Days – Joan Blos (C, HF)
• Nick of Time – Anne Lindbergh (C, SF)
• The Enormous Egg – Oliver Butterworth (C, SF)
• Roses and Rot – Kat Howard (SF)

Maine

• Empire Falls – Richard Russo
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
• Enchanted August – Brenda Bowen
• Carrie – Stephen King (SF)
• The Secret Life of Lobsters – Trevor Corson (NF)
• The Country of the Pointed Firs – Sarah Orne Jewett
• Orphan Train – Christina Baker Kline
• The State We’re In: Maine Stories – Ann Beattie
• Spoonhandle – Ruth Moore
• Windswept – Mary Ellen Chase
• High Tide at Noon – Elizabeth Ogilvie
• Onward and Upward in the Garden – Katharine White (NF)
• Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine – Henry Beston
• We Took to the Woods – Louise Rich (NF)
• Small as an Elephant – Jennifer Richards Jacobson (C)
• Bright Island – Mabel Louise Ward (C)
• Navigating Early – Clare Vanderpool (C)
• The Water Castle – Megan Frazer Blakemore (C, SF)
• The Canning Season – Polly Horvath (C)
• The Sign of the Beaver – Elizabeth George Speare (C, HF)
• One Morning in Maine – Robert McCloskey (C)
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin (C)
• Calico Bush – Rachel Field (C, HF)
• Almost, Maine – John Cariana (D)
• Icebound – Owen Davis (D)

Vermont

• The Secret History – Donna Tartt
• Midwives – Chris Bohjalian
• The Inn at Lake Devine – Elinor Lipman
• Songs in Ordinary Time – Mary McGarry Morris
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson (M, sort of)
• Charm and Strange – Stephanie Kuehn (YA)
• Witness – Karen Hesse (YA)
• A Day No Pigs Would Die – Robert Newton Peck (YA)
• Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life – Dorothy Canfield Fisher (NF)
• Understood Betsy – Dorothy Canfield Fisher (C)
• Pollyanna – Eleanor Porter (C)
• The Game of Sunken Places – MT Anderson (C, SF)
• Faraway Summer – Johanna Hurwitz (C, HF)
• Justin Morgan Had a Horse – Marguerite Henry (C, HF)
• The Hollow Tree – Janet Lunn
• Maybe a Fox – Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee (C) March 2016
• If Wishes Were Horses – Natalie Kinsey-Warnock (C, HF)
• Living the Good Life – Helen and Scott Nearing (NF)
• Getting Schooled – Garrett Keizer (NF)
• Tasha Tudor’s Garden – Tovah Martin (NF)
• Wandering Home – Bill McKibben (NF)
• Flying Blind – Don Mitchell (NF)
• First Person Rural – Noel Perrin (NF)
• The Strength of the Hills – Nancy Price Graff (NF)
• Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves (NF)
• The Aliens – Annie Baker (D)

Massachusetts: Fiction

• Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
• Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
• Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
• The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Bostonians – Henry James
• Cape Cod Stories – Joseph C. Lincoln
• The Rise of Silas Lapham – William Dean Howells
• Looking Backward – Edward Bellamy (SF)
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle – George V. Higgins
• The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Connor
• The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Morgesons – Elizabeth Stoddard
• Practical Magic – Alice Hoffman (SF)
• Love Story – Erich Segal
• Jaws – Peter Benchley
• Mystic River – Dennis Lehane
• Strong Motion – Jonathan Franzen
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (SF)
• Boy, Snow, Bird – Helen Oyeyemi (SF, sort of)
• The Storied Life of AJ Fikry – Gabrielle Zevin
• Blanche Cleans Up – Barbara Neely (M)
• Murder at the Gardner – Jane Langton (M)
• Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
• The City Below – James Carroll
• Massachusetts – Nancy Zaroulis (HF)
• Caleb’s Crossing – Geraldine Brooks
• The Late George Apley – John Marquand
• Requiem, Mass – John Dufresne
• The Wapshot Chronicle – John Cheever
• What Came from the Stars – Gary Schmidt (C, SF)
• Trial by Fire – Josephine Angelini
• Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
• Harvard Yard – William Martin (HF, M)
• The Godwulf Manuscript – Robert B. Parker (M)
• Rest You Merry – Charlotte MacLeod (M)
• The Cape Cod Mystery – Phoebe Atwood Taylor (M)
• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – Katherine Howe (SF)
• The Boston Girl – Anita Diamant (HF)
• Spider in a Tree – Susan Stinson (HF)
• The Winthrop Woman – Anya Seton (HF)
• Folly – Susan Minot (HF)
• Miss Emily – Nuala O’Connor (HF)
• Amherst – William Nicholson (partly HF)
• The Penderwicks – Jeanne Birdsall (C, SF)
• Johnny Tremain – Esther Forbes (C, HF)
• Nightbirds on Nantucket – Joan Aiken (C, SF)
• Marked – Sarah Fine (SF)
• The Pox Party – MT Anderson (YA, HF)
• Lyddie – Katherine Paterson (C, HF)
• We Were Liars – E. Lockhart (YA)
• My Most Excellent Year – Steve Kluger (YA)
• Seabird – Holling Clancy Holling (C)
• Anastasia Krupnik – Lois Lowry (C)
• The Diamond in the Window – Jane Langton (C, SF, M)
• Witch Child – Celia Rees (C, SF, HF)
• Painting Churches – Tina Howe (D)
• The Late Christopher Bean – Sidney Howard (D)
• Something Cloudy, Something Clear – Tennessee Williams (D)
• The Crucible – Arthur Miller (D)
• A list of plays set in Boston from Boston University

Massachusetts: Nonfiction

• Walden – Henry David Thoreau (NF)
• Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families – J. Anthony Lukas (NF)
• All Souls: A Family Story from Southie – Michael Patrick MacDonald (NF)
• Paul Revere’s Ride – David Hackett Fisher (NF)
• Blues – John Hersey (NF)
• Boston Boy – Nat Hentoff (NF)
• Mayflower – Nathaniel Philbrick (NF)
• Death at an Early Age – Jonathan Kozol (NF)
• A Civil Action – Jonathan Harr (NF)
• One Boy’s Boston – Samuel Eliot Morison (NF)
• Among Schoolchildren – Tracy Kidder (NF)
• One L – Scott Turow (NF)
• Adventures in Yarn Farming – Barbara Perry (NF)
• The Rainborowes – Adrian Tinniswood (NF)
• Carry On, Mister Bowditch – Jean Lee Latham (C, NF)
• The Salt House – Cynthia Huntington (NF)

Rhode Island

• The Prince of Providence – Mike Stanton (NF)
• Theophilus North – Thornton Wilder
• What the Waves Know – Tamara Valentine
• Rhode Island Blues – Fay Weldon
• The Vineyard – Barbara Delinsky
• The Witches of Eastwick – John Updike (SF)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward – HP Lovecraft (SF)
• Lovecraft Country – Matt Ruff (SF)
• The Great Hurricane: 1938 – Cherie Burns (NF)
• A Hundred Summers – Beatriz Williams (HF)
• Newport – Jill Morrow (HF)
• I, Roger Williams – Mary Lee Settle (HF)
• Kate’s Story, 1914 – Adele Whitby (C, HF)
• The Art of Keeping Cool – Janet Taylor Lisle (C, HF)
• Something Upstairs – Avi (C, F)
• Murder at the Breakers – Alyssa Maxwell (M)
• Moonlight Becomes You – Mary Higgins Clark (M)
• A Gilded Grave – Shelley Freydont (M)
• Rogue’s Regatta – Thomas Briody (M)
• The Octette Bridge Club – PJ Barry (D)

Connecticut

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain (SF)
• Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House – Eric Hodgins
• Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
• I Know This Much Is True – Wally Lamb
• A History Lesson for Girls – Aurelie Sheehan
• The Passion of Reverend Nash – Rachel Basch
• A Miracle for St Cecilia’s – Katherine Valentine
• Mystic Summer – Hannah McKinnon
• The Heathen School – John Putnam Demos (NF)
• For Adam’s Sake – Allegra Di Bonaventura (NF)
• A Circle of Quiet – Madeleine L’Engle (NF)
• The Cold Blue Blood – David Handler (M)
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond – Elizabeth George Speare (C, HF)
• Twain’s End – Lynn Cullen (HF)
• A Study in Charlotte – Brittany Cavallero (YA, M)
• Magic or Not? – Edward Eager (C, SF)
• Centaur Rising – Jane Yolen (C, SF)
• Homecoming – Cynthia Voigt (C)
• 26 Fairmount Avenue – Tomie de Paola (C, NF)
• Strawberry Hill – Mary Ann Hoberman (C, HF)
• Long Day’s Journey into Night – Eugene O’Neill (D)

Multi-state/General

• The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay – Beverly Jensen (HF)
• The Good Thief – Hannah Tinti (HF)
• Jackaby – William Ritter (SF)
• The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell (NF)
• New England Bound – Wendy Warren (NF; to be published July 2016)
• Walking to Vermont – Christopher S. Wren (NF)
• Stone by Stone – Robert Thorson (NF)
• After Days – Scott Medbury (SF)
• The Wicked Cozy Authors group writes mysteries set in various New England locations

Poets

• Anne Bradstreet
• Phillis Wheatley
• James Russell Lowell
• Edwin Arlington Robinson
• Celia Thaxter
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Robert Frost
• Emily Dickinson
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Adrienne Rich
• Sylvia Plath
• Amy Lowell
• Robert Lowell
• Mark Doty
• Jane Kenyon
• Marge Piercy
• Stanley Kunitz
• Anne Sexton
• Mary Oliver
• Donald Hall
• Maxine Kumin