Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
The Snow Child
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
An Inconvenient Woman
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
The Wives
The Book of Unknown Americans
Summertime
An American Marriage
Housekeeping
Deep Dark Night
The Stone Diaries
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Under the Rainbow
The Patron Saint of Liars
Delaney and So It Began
The Last House Guest
Redhead By The Side Of The Road
That Old Cape Magic
The Virgin Suicides
This Tender Land
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Sharp Objects 
A River Runs Through It
Eleanor and Park
Nevada Noir
The Weight of Water
Cape May
American Elsewhere
Where the Crawdads Sing
LaRose
Little Fires Everywhere
Kind of Kin
Riversong
One Perfect Morning
A Hundred Summers
The Secret Life of Bees
The Personal History of Rachel Dupree
How to Read the Air
An Ocean of Minutes
Desert Solitaire
The Devil in the Valley
Prodigal Summer
The Look of Love
A Killing in the Hills
Off the GridComing-of-age novel set in BORGARNES (Iceland)
Reading the USA – a book for every State
28th October 2020
Reading the USA – a book for each State
We have chosen a great book title for every State across the USA – classic and contemporary, giving voice to well known authors and also to some lesser known writers too – perhaps introducing you to new writers. Just click on a cover in the map above to be taken down to the State and a synopsis of the book. And of course amongst the choices are some of TripFiction’s favourite reads. It has been a really fun and challenging exercise to trawl through our database of thousands of books set in the country and choose just one book per State. So many authors, so many genres!
We have consciously chosen American authors who are familiar with their setting but also it can be quite illuminating when writers, based elsewhere in the world, look in on a country. So, expect a mix!
You will surely have your favourites, so tell us what they are in the Comments below. Which titles would you have chosen? We trust this post will ignite debate. Here goes, starting with a real classic:
Alabama
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flag
Set in the Great Depression and told retrospecitvely from the 1980s. Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison have opened the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the small town in Alabama became a home form home. You could get eggs, grits, bacon, ham, coffee and a smile for 25 cents. Ruth was just the and Idgie was a real character but how anybody could have thought she murdered that man ……
Alaska
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska and inspiration from a Russian fairytale
Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead ‘at the world’s edge’ in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before.
The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman – or rather a snow girl – together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can’t quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure – a child? – running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property?
Arizona
Did You See Melody by Sophie Hannah
Pushed to breaking point, Cara Burrows abandons her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can’t afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied – by a man and a teenage girl.
A simple mistake on the part of the hotel receptionist – but Cara’s fear intensifies when she works out that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can’t possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving life sentences for her murder.
Cara doesn’t know what to trust: everything she’s read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life?
Arkansas
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou’s six volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother’s lover.
California
An Inconvenient Woman by Stéphanie Buelens
When Claire Fontaine learns that her ex-husband Simon is marrying again, to a woman with a teenage daughter, her blood runs cold. She is sure that years ago Simon molested her own daughter and was responsible for her mysterious death. She can’t let him get away with it a second time. Vandalism, harassment; whatever it takes, Claire will expose him.
Simon doesn’t know where Claire got this delusion from; her daughter’s death was ruled a suicide, but she has always blamed herself – is she just lashing out? Wanting to protect his new fiancee, he hires Sloane Wilson, an ex-cop turned ‘sin-eater’, whose job it is to handle delicate cases without getting the police involved, to get Claire off his back.
Sloane must navigate the wreckage of Claire and Simon’s marriage to discover the truth. Two people with conflicting stories and a whole lot of reasons to want to hurt each other. Is she crazy or is he manipulative? And can Sloane stay clear-headed enough to figure it out?
Colorado
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
When a bookshop patron commits suicide, it’s his favorite store clerk who must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs―the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has inherited his meagre worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long-buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu.
Connecticut
The Wives by Lauren Weisberger
When Karolina Hartwell is arrested driving her son home, the headlines don’t tell the full story. It seems nothing will stand in the way of her husband Graham’s political ambition – not even his wife.
Miriam Kagan is convinced her husband Paul is hiding something. But if she digs too deeply, she’s afraid of what might tumble out of the closet.
Emily Charlton is new to Greenwich, but she soon discovers this is a small town built on big lies. And sometimes it takes an outsider to draw them out . .
Delaware
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.
Florida
Summertime by Vanessa Lafaye
Florida, 1935. Heron Key is a small town where the relationships are as tangled as the mangrove roots in the swamp. Everyone is preparing for the 4th of July barbecue, unaware that their world is about to change for ever. Missy, the Kincaid family’s maid and nanny, feels that she has wasted her life pining for Henry, whom she has not seen since he went to fight on the battlefields of France in WWI. Now he has returned with a group of other desperate, destitute veterans on a government works project, unsure of his future, ashamed of his past.
When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death in the early hours, suspicion falls on Henry. Old grievances and prejudices threaten to derail the investigation. As the tensions rise, the barometer starts to plummet. The residents think they’re ready, and so do the soldiers. They are wrong. Nothing in their experience could prepare them for what is coming. For far out over the Atlantic, the greatest storm ever to strike North America is heading their way…
Georgia
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
The author of Silver Sparrow returns with a stunning novel about race, loyalty, and love that endures.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward–with hope and pain–into the future.
Hawaii
I Heart Hawaii by Lindsey Kelk
When Angela Clark’s best friend Jenny invites her to join a press trip to Hawaii, three days of sun, sea and sleep sounds like the perfect antidote to her crazed life.
At work in New York, she’s supposed to be the face of Having It All. But the only thing Angela feels she excels at is hiding in the printer cupboard, eating Mini Cheddars and watching Netflix on her phone and if this is living the dream, she’s more than ready to wake up.
A few days away with Jenny sounds like exactly what she needs but Angela’s talent for getting into a scrape guarantees nothing goes to plan – and not even the most beautiful beaches, blue skies and daiquiris will get her off the hook…
Idaho
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robson
Acclaimed on publication as a contemporary classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, orphansgrowing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America.
Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother. Steeped in imagery of the bleak wintry landscape around them, the sisters’ struggle towards adulthood is powerfully portrayed in a novel about loss, loneliness and transience.
Illinois
Deep Dark Night by Steph Broadribb
A city in darkness. A building in lockdown. A score that can only be settled in blood…
Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection.
An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces, one by one. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare.
When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn’t an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren’t all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die.
And that’s just the beginning…
Indiana
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood and old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her own role, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her own story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
Iowa
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katerina Bivald
Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy’s funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor-there’s not much else to do in a dying small town that’s almost beyond repair.
You certainly wouldn’t open a bookstore. And definitely not with the tourist in charge. You’d need a vacant storefront (Main Street is full of them), books (Amy’s house is full of them), and…customers.
The bookstore might be a little quirky. Then again, so is Sara. But Broken Wheel’s own story might be more eccentric and surprising than she thought.
Kansas
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey
When a group of social activists arrive in a small town, the lives and beliefs of residents and outsiders alike are upended, in this wry, embracing novel.
Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values-or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr “the most homophobic town in the US” and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment-they’ll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds-no one is truly prepared for what will ensue.
Furious at being uprooted from her life in Los Angeles and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it’s only a matter of time before her “gay crusader” mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we’d like to admit.
Kentucky
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
Winner of the 2002 Orange Prize for her novel ‘Bel Canto’, Ann Patchett’s stunning first novel is about ‘pilgrimage and healing…A fairytale. A delight’.
It is 1968. Rose Clinton arrives at St Elizabeth’s, a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky. Rose has fled her dull but loving husband without telling him she is pregnant and has decided to be ‘a liar for the rest of my life’. As penance, she has also abandoned her widowed and much loved mother, with no mention of her condition.
Rose plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth’s is home to a healing spring, and when Rose’s time draws near, she realises that she cannot go through with her plans. Nor can she remain untouched by those she has left behind; by the ever-watchful Sister Evangeline; by the love of Son, the handyman at St. Elizabeth; or later by the birth of her daughter Cecilia.
Enchantingly graceful, Ann Patchett’s first novel is about sanctuary and pilgrimage, pain and healing and the helping hand of chance.
Louisiana
Delaney and So It Began by Owen Mullen
PI Vincent Delaney thought he was done with the NOPD until a string of seemingly unrelated child murders brings an unexpected invitation from the FBI, and his old boss.
A serial killer is roaming the South, preying on children appearing in pageants, and the police want him to go undercover using his own family. Accepting would mean lying to people he loves and maybe even putting them in harm’s way.
In Baton Rouge, a violent criminal has escaped and is seeking revenge for the brother Delaney shot dead. But Delaney isn’t going anywhere. He has unfinished business.
Meanwhile, north of the French Quarter, shopkeepers are being extorted and ask for Delaney’s help. Extortion is a matter for the police.
But what do you do when those responsible are the police? Delaney has his work cut out and he’ll be lucky if he makes it out of this alive…
Maine
The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda
Never overstay your welcome…
Littleport, Maine is like two separate towns: a vacation paradise for wealthy holidaymakers and a simple harbour community for the residents who serve them. Friendships between locals and visitors are unheard of – but that’s just what happened with Avery Greer and Sadie Loman.
Each summer for a decade the girls are inseparable – until Sadie is found dead. When the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name before she’s branded a killer.
Maryland
Redhead By The Side Of The Road by Ann Tyler
Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work – his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car – maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life.
But then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a ‘girlfriend’) tells him she’s facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.
Massachusetts
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Jack and Joy Griffin are back on Cape Cod – where they spent their hope-filled honeymoon – for a wedding. Cracks are begining to show in Jack’s peaceful family life and thirty-four year marriage. He’s driving round with his father’s ashes in an urn in the boot of his car, haunted by memories of bittersweet family holidays spent at the Cape, while his acerbic mother is very much alive and always on his mobile. He’s spent a lifetime trying to be happier than his parents, but has he succeeded?
A year later, at a second wedding, Jack has a second urn in the car, and his life is starting to unravel.
Michigan
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Previously adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters – beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood.
The boys that once loved them from afar are now grown men, determined to understand a tragedy that has always defied explanation. For still, the question remains – why did all five of the Lisbon girls take their own lives?
This hypnotic and unforgettable novel treats adolescent love and death with haunting sensitivity and dark humour, and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time.
Minnesota
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the New York Times bestselling author of Ordinary Grace.
1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.
Mississippi
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds.
Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black and her children’s father is white. Embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.
Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America. It is a majestic new work from an extraordinary and singular author.
Missouri
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes.
Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family’s mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows – a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town.
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims – a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
Montana
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiences–the experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, “cats,” or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.
Nebraska
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor… Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough…Eleanor.
Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises…Park.
Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
Nevada
Nevada Noir by David Arrowsmith
In these three dark and brooding short stories, set in and around the US state of Nevada, a cast of disparate characters struggle with greed and temptation, and the cursed lure of easy money… an old man goes in search of his son in the aftermath of a terrible storm, a couple down on their luck make a life-changing discovery and an ex-cop has one last impossible decision to make…
New Hampshire
The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve
On Smuttynose Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, more than a century ago, two Norwegian immigrant women were brutally murdered. A third woman survived by hiding in a cave until dawn. In 1995, Jean, a photographer, is sent on an assignment to shoot a photo essay about the legendary crime. Taking her extended family with her, Jean stays in a sailboat anchored off the coast, and finds herself gradually becoming more and more engrossed in the bay’s mysterious and gruesome past. Wandering into a library one day, she unearths letters written by Maren, the sole survivor of the murder spree. Jean’s fear of losing all that she cares about is reflected in Maren’s poignant tale of love and loss, and her obsession with the ancient story drives her to wild impulsive action — with unrecoverable consequences.
New Jersey
Cape May by Chip Cheek
Henry and Effie, young newlyweds from Georgia, arrive in Cape May, New Jersey, for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and the town is deserted.
As they tentatively discover each other, they begin to realize that everyday married life might be disappointingly different from their happily-ever-after fantasy.
Just as they get ready to cut the trip short, a decadent and glamorous set suddenly sweep them up into their drama – Clara, a beautiful socialite who feels her youth slipping away; Max, a wealthy playboy and Clara’s lover; and Alma, Max’s aloof and mysterious half-sister.
The empty beach town becomes their playground, and as they sneak into abandoned summer homes, go sailing, walk naked under the stars, make love, and drink a great deal of gin, Henry and Effie slip from innocence into betrayal, with irrevocable consequences that reverberate through the rest of their lives…
New Mexico
American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett
Some places are too good to be true.
Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map.
In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things.
After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother’s home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother’s past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different…
From one of our most talented and original new literary voices comes the next great American supernatural novel: a work that explores the dark dimensions of the hometowns and the neighbours we thought we knew.
New York
The Pool House by Tasmina Perry
To Jem Chapman, it’s the chance of a lifetime. An invitation to join a group in an exclusive Hamptons house-share, who could say no? But when she discovers what happened last summer, Jem can’t help but feel a chill.
A young woman was found drowned in the house’s pool. The housemates said Alice was troubled. She’d been drinking. She couldn’t swim…
A Secret To Kill For
As Jem gets to know her glamorous new housemates, she realises each has something to hide. What really happened last summer? And who would go to any lengths to keep a person quiet?
North Carolina
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
For years, rumours of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.
Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
North Dakota
LaRose by Louise Erdrich
Late summer in North Dakota, 1999: Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence but only when he staggers closer does he realise he has killed his neighbour’s son. Dusty Ravich, the deceased boy, was best friends with Landreaux’s five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have been close for years and their children played together despite going to different schools. Landreaux is horrified at what he’s done; fighting off his longstanding alcoholism, he ensconces himself in a sweat lodge and prays for guidance. And there he discovers an old way of delivering justice for the wrong he’s done. The next day he and his wife Emmaline deliver LaRose to the bereaved Ravich parents. Standing on the threshold of the Ravich home, they say, ‘Our son will be your son now’. LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Gradually he’s allowed visits with his birth family, whose grief for the son and brother they gave away mirrors that of the Raviches. The years pass and LaRose becomes the linchpin that links both families. As the Irons and the Raviches grow ever more entwined, their pain begins to subside. But when a man who nurses a grudge against Landreaux fixates on the idea that there was a cover-up the day Landreaux killed Dusty – and decides to expose this secret – he threatens the fragile peace between the two families..
Ohio
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost…
Oklahoma
Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew
Your Grandpa is a felon and a Christian. He says he’s a felon because he’s a Christian. So says Aunt Sweet to her nephew Dustin, when her father, who has been raising Dustin, is arrested for hiding migrant workers. The law that makes harbouring ‘illegals’ an offence is the brainchild of the ferociously ambitious Oklahoma politician Monica Moorehouse. Aunt Sweet takes Dustin in, but Dustin is bullied by her son Carl Albert, and goes on the run, aided by an illegal the sheriffs didn’t find. Meanwhile, Sweet is asked by Dustin’s married sister to hide her husband, Juanito, a Mexican without papers. As Grandpa Brown holds fast to his beliefs and Dustin remains missing, Aunt Sweet fights to hold the family together, and to do what seems right. In a gripping and compelling narrative, Kind of Kin lays bare the consequences of a law that exiles workers, turns friends into informers, and tears apart families. It also shows how some – and ultimately a whole town – will unite to protect their own.”
Oregon
Riversong by Tess Thompson
a colorful cast of endearing small-town characters and takes you on a journey that will make you believe in the possibilities of life – even in the face of overwhelming adversity and unimaginable grief. Lee Tucker is the kind of woman you find yourself rooting for long after the last page is read. When her husband commits suicide,he leaves her pregnant and one million dollars in debt to a loan shark. Out of options, she escapes to her deceased mother’s dilapidated house located in a small Oregon town that, like her, is financially ruined, heartbroken and in desperate need of a fresh start. Lee’s resilience leads to a plan for a destination restaurant named Riversong, to new chances for passion and love, and to danger from her dead husband’s debt as her business blooms. A surprising mix of romance, humor, friendship, intrigue and gourmet food, Riversong entertains while reminding you of life’s greatest gifts.
Pennsylvania
One Perfect Morning by Pamela Crane
Mackenzie, Robin and Lily have been best friends since college. Twenty years on, they all live in the same neighbourhood with their perfect families, perfect houses, perfect lives…
It would seem that nothing could come between these three women.
Except for a betrayal.
Nothing could turn them against each other.
Except for a terrible past mistake.
Nothing could tear them apart.
Except for murder….
One dead husband. Three best friends who tell each other everything – apart from the truth…
Rhode Island
A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
Rhode Island, 1938. A sweltering summer of secrets, passion and betrayal…
Lily Dane has returned to Seaview, Rhode Island, where her family have summered for generations. She’s hoping for an escape from the city and from her heartbreak, but when Budgie and Nick Greenwald – her now-married former best friend and former fiancé – show up, she soon finds herself sucked back in by Budgie’s glamorous and enticing influence.
As the summer progresses, Lily and Budgie renew their friendship against the looming spectre of war in Europe and the prospect of a cataclysmic hurricane. As uneasy secrets are revealed, an emotional storm threatens to destroy everything…
South Carolina
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father’s account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily’s harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother
South Dakota
The Personal History of Rachel Dupree by Ann Weisgarber
It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands, and summer has been hard. Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to stake a claim in this unforgiving land. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn’t rained in months, the cattle bellow with thirst, and supplies are dwindling. Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband will never leave his ranch. Moving and majestic, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging. Above all, it is the story of one woman’s courage in the face of the most punishing adversity.
Tennessee
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Jonas, fresh from a failed marriage, is desperate to make sense of the ties that have forged him. How can he dream of a future when he can’t make sense of his past? He hits the road, tracing the route that his parents – young Ethiopians in search of an identity as an American couple – took thirty years earlier to Nashville, Tennessee.
In a stunning display of imagination he weaves together a history that takes him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents’ youth to a brighter vision of his own life in contemporary America, a story – real or invented- that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.
Texas
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
Polly and Frank are young and in love, a lifetime together before them. But one evening in 1980, as the Texas sun sets over their shoulders, the world is suddenly pulled apart by a deadly virus. Within months, Frank is dying. Polly can save him, but only if she agrees to a radical plan: to time travel to 1993 for a corporation who can fund his life-saving treatment. She can only go forward, she cannot go back. And she must leave everything she loves behind, including Frank.
All they have is the promise of a future together: they will find each other again in twelve years’ time, in Galveston, Texas, where the sea begins.
But when something goes wrong and Polly arrives late, Frank is nowhere to be found. Completely alone, Polly must navigate a terrifying new world to find him, and to discover if their love has endured. Turn of 21st Century
Utah
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again
Vermont
The Devil in the Valley by Castle Freeman
In his quiet Vermont home, a man named Taft sits and wonders what’s missing from his life. He’s at a loss until a strange voice startles him from the rocking chair, where a stranger has seemingly appeared out of nowhere: well-dressed and smooth-talking, this man offers Taft the chance to have anything he’s ever wanted-for a price. So begins The Devil in the Valley, the latest novel from critically acclaimed author Castle Freeman, Jr. Combining his deft hand for the supernatural with his classic setting of rural Vermont, Freeman gives us a story that touches on temptation and greed, and explores what we’re willing to trade to obtain the things we most desire. A modern fable that explores the supernatural while staying rooted deeply in our world, The Devil in the Valley is a powerful novel from a master at his craft.
Virginia
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer’s wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbours tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.
Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. Prodigal Summer demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama and ideas that is characteristic of Barbara Kingsolver’s finest work.
Washington
The Look of Love by Sara Jio
Jane is single, born on Christmas day, and she has inherited a flower shop in Pike Place, Seattle. As she is gearing up for the holidays she gets a card with a message saying that she has a special gift she must explore in the coming year – the gift of being able to see love. There are six types that she must identify, or she herself will never experience love. The story revolves around Jane’s family and friends.
West Virginia
A Killing in the Hills by Julia Keller
Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains,West Virginia, visitors see only its stunning natural beauty. But for those living there it’s a different story. The mountain roads harbour secret places, perfect for making the prescription drugs that tempt its desperately poor.
Bell Elkins left a broken teenager, savaged by a past she couldn’t forget. But, as prosecuting attorney for Raythune County, Bell is back and determined to help clean up the only home she has ever known.
As winter sets in and her daughter is witness to a shocking triple murder, Bell finds her family in danger. Can she uncover the truth before her world is destroyed again?
Wisconsin
Little Faith by Nickolas Butler
WINNER STANFORDS TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS, FICTION WITH A SENSE OF PLACE 2020
Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he’s also uneasy: in Shiloh’s absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick.
While reckoning with his own faith–or lack thereof–Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church’s radical belief system threatens Isaac’s safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover.
Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting intergenerational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.
Wyoming
Off the Grid by C J Box
There’s no hiding off the grid.
Joe Pickett’s old friend Nate Romanowski is off the grid, lying low while the FBI search for him. But they’re not the only ones looking. Nate finds himself confronted by agents who need his help assessing a potential terror threat in Wyoming’s Red Desert – in return they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear. Nate knows they can’t be trusted – but with his liberty at stake, he has to comply… for now.
Meanwhile, Joe’s heading south, under orders from State Governor Rulon to investigate a rash of crimes and an uptick in secretive federal activity along Interstate 80…
As they pursue their quarries, both men will be drawn deep into the Red Desert, 9,000 square miles of bleak, punishing terrain, home to a secret that could take them both down.
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