5 Great Books set in DELAWARE

21st January 2021

The latest in our 5 Great Books series – 5 Great Books set in Delaware

“So close to Washington DC, you can smell it”. Delaware is Joseph R Biden’s home state.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Meet Polly, which may or may not be her real name, this year’s most dangerous leading lady…

They meet by chance in a local bar in a small town in Delaware. Polly is heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through. Yet she stays and so does he – drawn to this mysterious redhead who unnerves and excites him.

Over the course of one hot summer, they abandon themselves to a steamy affair. But each holds back something from the other – dangerous, even lethal, secrets . . .

The Saint of Lost Things by Christopher Castellani

It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America: her mercurial husband, Antonio, has lost his opportunity to realize the American Dream: their new friend, Guilio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, has lost his beloved parents.

In the shadow of St. Anthony’s Church, named for the patron saint of lost things, the prayers of these troubled but determined people are heard, and fate and circumstances conspire to answer them in unforeseeable ways.

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

Set in modern day Delaware, in an apartment building populated by immigrants from Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, this powerful book tells the stories of these unknown people, most of whom are American citizens or legal immigrants with visas, who are treated like slaves, animals, and idiots because they are perceived as “wetbacks,” “illegals,” “lazy Mexicans,” and other insulting stereotypes.

The underlying story in The Book of Unknown Americans is deep and beautiful. Told from the points of view of several characters who live in the apartment building, the tale is of an outcast boy and a girl who would have been out of his league but for an accident that left her brain damaged and ostracized. Both rejected by their peers, they are the only ones who understand and appreciate each other. Her family worked two years to get the necessary paperwork to legally bring her to the US from Mexico so she could go to a special school, and The Book of Unknown Americans explores their struggle to pursue the American Dream.

Pretty As A Picture by Elizabeth Little

Marissa Dahl, a shy but successful film editor, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary – and legendarily demanding – director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline.

Some girl dies.

It’s not much to go on, but the specifics don’t concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She’ll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories.

But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it’s supposed to be or as it seems. There are rumours of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace.

Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie’s central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished.

A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunnit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction.

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos

The New York Times bestselling author revisits the characters from her beloved novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in this captivating, beautifully written drama involving family, friendship, secrets, sacrifice, courage, and true love for fans of Jojo Moyes, Elin Hilderbrand, and Nancy Thayer.

On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming—yet overly possessive—fiancé.

Three weeks later, Clare learns that Edith has died—and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare. Though the former guest house has been empty for years, Clare feels a deep connection to Edith inside its walls, which are decorated with old photographs taken by Edith and her beloved husband, Joseph.

Exploring the house, Clare finds two mysterious ledgers hidden beneath the kitchen sink. Edith, it seems, was no ordinary woman—and Blue Sky House no ordinary place. With the help of her mother, Viviana, her surrogate mother, Cornelia Brown, and her former boyfriend and best friend, Dev Tremain, Clare begins to piece together the story of Blue Sky House—a decades-old mystery more complex and tangled than she could have imagined. As she peels back the layers of Edith’s life, Clare discovers a story of dark secrets, passionate love, heartbreaking sacrifice, and incredible courage. She also makes startling discoveries about herself: where she’s come from, where she’s going, and what—and who—she loves.

Shifting between the 1950s and the present and told in the alternating voices of Edith and Clare, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is vintage Marisa de los Santos—an emotionally evocative novel that probes the deepest recesses of the human heart and illuminates the tender connections that bind our lives.

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