Books Set in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont

Book Summary

Agnes and Polly have been best friends for generations. They are also part owners of a land trust for a peninsula of land on the Maine coast known as Fellowship Point.

The two friends have led very different lives. Agnes is a celebrated author of children’s books. Additionally, she wrote a series of novels under a pseudonym. Polly has three adult sons and is married to a professor with an inflated sense of ego.

Now in her eighties, Agnes wants to ensure that Fellowship Point will be permanently protected by donating the land to a trust. But doing so requires dissolving the generations-old partnership among the shareholders. Polly finds herself torn between the wishes of Anges and those of her sons.

When a book editor tries to convince Agnes to write her memoirs, long-buried secrets have repercussions for all of them.

Book Summary

This short (235-page) non-fiction is a memoir with a strong focus on the town of Mexico, Maine. In the early 1950s, the Oxford Paper factory was a primary employer of the resistents, who were mostly Catholic immigrants. The father of the Wood family provided a good life for his wife and four daughters through his job as a foreman at the paper mill, so when he suddenly passes away, the girls are set adrift.

A few months later, the nation also suffered the loss of its handsome Catholic leader, John F. Kennedy, echoing the personal loss felt in the Wood home.

Book Summary

This atmospheric novel takes place in a small coastal town in Maine, and is inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting, Christina’s World.

Christina Olson was born at the austere home on a barren hill in Cushing, Maine, that her family had inhabited for generations. After nearly dying as a child and being incapacitated by ongoing illness, Christina could never venture beyond her small community, an austere house on a barren hill in Cushing, Maine.

For twenty years, the farm hosted painter Andrew Wyeth during the summers. Many of his paintings feature the family’s farm, but Christina herself would inspire his most iconic painting.

While Wyeth makes some appearances in the novel, this historical fiction focuses on Christina as it vividly imagines her life on the farm through the changing Maine seasons.

Book Summary

Shirley lives in Maine and is frustrated by her limited ability to assist the war effort. When she learns about an opportunity for single women to join SPARs, the first female branch of the Coast Guard, she rushes to sign up despite objections by her father.

After rigorous training, she’s singled out for a special mission back home in Maine. The intelligence community has uncovered a plot against the first lady, and they need Shirley’s help to stop it.

Book Summary

Meena prefers to observe the world at a distance through her camera lens. She’s a photojournalist with a major case of wanderlust. She has no family, no permanent address, and no long-term attachments.

Meena has no intentions of settling down, so when she unexpectedly inherits a Victorian brownstone apartment in historic Back Bay, Boston, her immediate plan is to simply sell it and keep moving.

But her journalistic instinct kicks in and Meena finds herself drawn to the mystery of how she wound up with the home of a stranger. The mystery comes witha series of hidden clues, as well as a trio of nosey Indian aunties and a handsome neighbor.

Meena discovers more than she bargained for, including not only new found friendships and community, but also a window into her own past.

Book Summary

If winter has you dreaming of relaxing days summering on Nantucket, you can grab any of Elin Hilderbrand’s books. But for this list, we selected The Hotel Nantucket because the back of the novel includes a detailed travel guide to Nantucket with hotel and restaurant recommendations.

The story takes place at a recently restored hotel with quite a history. In 1922, the hotel had a tragic fire, which killed a 19-year-old chambermaid, Grace. It degraded from a gilded gem to an abandoned eyesore in the following years. Thankfully, it has finally been restored by a billionaire from London.

He hires Nantucket native Lizbet as the general manager. She’s in charge of restoring the reputation of the hotel. This job can be complicated since it involves ensuring the staff gets along with each other, the guests, and the ghost of Grace. Grace is determined to keep up her shenanigans until someone acknowledges that her death in 1922 wasn’t an accident.

Book Summary

This novel reimagines the story of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter.

In the early 1800s, young seamstress Isobel sailed to the New World from Scotland. Her husband, Edward, has become addicted to opium, so they are trying to leave their secrets and debts behind. However, shortly after arriving in Salem, Edward leaves Isobel alone when he joins a ship as a medic.

When Isobel meets Nathaniel Hawthorne, they grow close. One is a muse, and one is a dark storyteller, but which is which?

Book Summary

In this novel, the author has spun a vivid tale based on a true historical event. In 1665, a young man from Martha’s Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College.

The narrator, Bethia Mayfield, is growing up in the settlement of Great Harbor amid pioneers and Puritans. She yearns for education and opportunities that are closed off to her as a woman in the 17th century. At every opportunity, she sneaks away to explore the island’s beaches and observe the native Wampanoag inhabitants.

This is where, at the age of 12, she meets Caleb, the son of a chieftain. The two form a secret friendship that introduces them to each other’s world. Bethia’s minister father begins guiding Caleb’s education, ultimately leading him to Cambridge to study Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. At the same time, Bethia is forced to work as a housekeeper in Cambridge. This puts her in a position to observe the convergence of cultures that Caleb is encountering.

Book Summary

Throughout the decade’s challenge, we’ve seen the role and treatment of women continually evolve. However, Things You Save in a Fire confronts some of the biases that have remained into the 2010s.

Cassie Hanwell was a firefighter in Austin and loved her job. But when her mother asks her to move to Boston despite their strained relationship, Cassie’s experience at the new fire house couldn’t be more different.

With a lack of funding, poor facilities, and an old-school hazing culture, the firehouse is not happy to have a woman join their crew.

Book Summary

Since 1920, the residents of New Hampshire have been the first to cast their votes in each presidential primary. History has shown that a successful presidential run must start with a win, or at least a strong showing, in New Hampshire. On the flip side, NH is also the graveyard of failed political ambitions when candidates can’t figure out how to win over the voters in this state.

For a year and a half leading up to the 2016 Primary Day, reporter Scott Conroy followed the 2016 campaigns throughout New Hampshire. He got up close and personal with the candidates and voters. As a result, this book is filled with local insights and entertaining anecdotes from far-flung towns like Dixville Notch to the “big cities” like Manchester and Portsmouth.

Book Summary

Amy Fox is a horror novelist with a major case of writer’s block. She’s heartbroken after recently calling off her fall wedding.

When she receives a call that her grandfather broke his wrist driving through a Dunkin Donuts (literally right through the front of the store), she has to return to her hometown of Autumnboro, New Hampshire, to care for him. But returning home runs the risk of bumping into Kit Parker – her childhood best friend and first love.

Book Summary

Ruth and Dana were born at the same small New Hampshire hospital on the same day. But the families they were born into couldn’t be more different, and neither feels they belong.

Ruth is an artist with an imaginative spirit. She’s the youngest of five girls in a farming family, but she yearns to break free from the confines of the farmland. Dana is a scientist and a realist, being raised by drifter parents. She yearns for stability that her family cannot offer.

This novel spans more than fifty years, and we see the ways that the lives of these “birthday sisters” parallel and intersect through the years, from childhood and adolescence to marriage, parenthood, and divorce.

Book Summary

Mary is lost in grief after the sudden loss of her only child, five year old, Stella. She’s shut out her husband, has a distant relationship with her mom, and feels like she’s drowning in sorrow alone.

Her mother has been nagging her to get out, and convinces her to try Big Alice’s Sit And Knit in Providence, Rhode Island. As she knits, she learns about the other attendees, who are each trying to overcome their own dark seasons of life. From terminal illness and a past sexual assault to those trying to heal from losing loved ones on 9/11, the knitters share their past. And as she bonds with them, Mary begins to process her own grief.

Book Summary

This true crime memoir paints a vivid portrait of Rhode Island, where the ghosts of mafia kingpins live alongside a community of stubborn people working hard every day to get by.

Leah Carroll’s story is that of a resilient young woman’s determination to learn the truth about the mother she never knew and the troubled father who raised her. Leah’s mother, a talented photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was just four years old. Her alcoholic father – a man she describes as “both my greatest champion and biggest obstacle” – died when Leah was just eighteen.

This memoir documents Leah’s life from her earlier years in the 1980s through the age of 32.

Book Summary

Anthony is a rising literary star, but he’s struggling. He borrows a friend’s crumbling beach house on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island, hoping that the quiet solitude will be just what he needs.

Joy came to Block Island a decade ago after her divorce to build a new life for herself and her young daughter. She now owns the island’s beloved whoopie pie cafe, but a new-to-town food truck is threatening her business.

Lu and her surgeon husband spend the summer on the island with their sons while he commutes to the mainland hospital. A former corporate lawyer turned stay-at-home mom, Lu, is quietly working on a new project that is increasingly demanding of her time.

Throughout one summer on Block Island, the lives of three strangers become intertwined through romance, well-meaning lies, and secrets – but as June turns to August, the truth will eventually come out.