Maryland Books: The Best Books Set in the Free State

Book Summary

Georgeanne “Georgy” Woolsey was born into a rich world of lavish parties and demure women, but she does not fit in with this fancy lifestyle. When the Civil War begins, she and her sister Eliza join the war effort as nurses, eventually tending wounded soldiers at Gettysburg.

Jemma and her sister Patience are enslaved on neighboring plantations in Maryland, but Jemma has just been sold by her cruel plantation mistress, Anne-May. When the Union Army comes to town, she sees it as her only opportunity to escape.

When Anne-May’s husband joins the Union and her brother joins the Confederacy, she is left to run Peeler Plantation. When she follows her own ambitions, she’s drawn into a secret Southern network of spies, finally exposing herself to the fate she deserves.

Book Summary

Mary Jane tells the story of two very different family lifestyles and a 14-year-old girl trying to decide who she really is. Mary Jane is a quiet, book-loving girl from a traditional, conservative family in 1970s Baltimore. When she is offered a job as a nanny for a local doctor, her mom assumes their home is equally tidy and respectable.

However, the house is a huge mess, and it’s about to get crazier. The doctor has welcomed a rock star and his wife to stay at the house while he tries to get sober. Mary Jane has a lot to teach them about tidiness and schedules, and all the while, they are opening her eyes to the world outside her bubble. By the end of the summer, she’ll have a much better understanding of who she wants to be.

Book Summary

You know John Wilkes Booth as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. But did you know he was also an actor from one of the country’s leading theatrical families? John’s father, Junius, was an acclaimed Shakespearean actor in London before moving to the US. Junius lived a secluded life in a cabin near Baltimore, having ten kids over the course of the next 16 years. Eventually, he emerged and began acting once again, this time alongside his many children. But the family’s success on the stage was no match for the drama behind the curtains.

John Wilkes Booth is not the focus of this historical fiction novel; rather, this is a book about the Booth family’s many triumphs and scandals set against the backdrop of a country moving closer to the boiling point of civil war.

Book Summary

Andi Parker is a vibrant 70-year-old businesswoman who is easing her way out of the marketing business she founded and into retirement. She adores her grandchildren and her charming silver fox husband, Jed. Life as she knows it is golden.

But when something unsettling pops up on social media, Andi’s seemingly perfect marriage starts to unravel. With her world flipped upside down, she’s forced to confront the question of what comes next after decades of routine. Alongside her friends, Andi dives headfirst into healing through unexpected adventures that help her reinvent herself.

Book Summary

Sybil van Antwerp is a 72-year-old grandmother, wife, and distinguished lawyer. Three days a week, she sits down to write letters. And she sends most of them – whether to her brother, her best friend, or authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. But to one frequent recipient, the letters are never sent.

She expects the rest of her life to continue as normal, until letters arrive from someone tied to one of the most painful chapters of her past. Is it finally time to share the unsent letters she’s been writing all these years?

Book Summary

Recently divorced Libby has returned to her hometown and opened a yarn shop. For the opening, she snagged a hot young knitting designer to give a weekend of talks and classes at the shop. It’s been a massive success with every ticket sold, but when the designer arrives, she is murdered before the event can start.   

There are three very likely suspects with strong motives:  the designer’s fiancé, her publisher, and her nephew. Libby is determined to help find the killer while running her yarn store and fighting off her mother’s attempts to reunite her with her high school boyfriend.

Book Summary

Fourteen-year-old Joan spends her childhood on the family farm in Pennsylvania, and her mother encourages her education. However, after her mother’s death, her father insists she earn her keep and work on the farm instead. And perhaps even worse – he burned her books.

Instead of breaking under her father’s harsh rule, Joan finds a job as a parlor maid in a Baltimore, Maryland, society household. Now, she earns six dollars a week and can dream of a better future. But this is tricky, as she must learn how to fit in with the Jewish family and their older maid.

Book Summary

This dual-timeline book features two ground-breaking women. In 1918, Emmaline signed up as one of the volunteer librarians on the front lines in France. As she participates in a secret book club for censored books, a romance blooms. However, this leads to events that cause her to find the courage she needs to survive.

In 1976, Kathleen was accepted to the first co-ed class at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. But not everyone is welcoming to the women, and the Navy hasn’t prepared for them very well. After a tragedy, Kathleen becomes a target and must learn to trust others to make it through the Academy safely.

Book Summary

It all starts with a pair of jeans at a thrift shop. When everyone loves them, four friends decide to try on the jeans to see who they fit best. Somehow, the jeans fit everyone perfectly, so the friends decide to form the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Throughout the summer, the pants see all and keep the friends connected as they each experience the most memorable summer of their lives. While the pants travel to different locations with the friends, they all live in Bethesda, Maryland.

Book Summary

Julia dreamt of restoring her family’s home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but she passed away before it could happen. Her daughter, Grace, an attorney in Washington, DC, decides to fulfill her mother’s dying wish and bring the decaying Chesapeake Bay mansion back to life.

Before Grace can even buy a can of paint, she’s uncovered a grave, a decades-old murder, and clues to her own hidden past. She still has some family in the area, but they aren’t pleased with her return to town. There are multiple mysteries for her to unravel as she tries to return the home to its former glory.

Book Summary

In Keepsake Cove, Maryland, all the shops sell collectibles of various sorts. Calliope “Callie” Reed has come to town to visit her aunt, Melody, the owner of a music box store. Unfortunately, Aunt Mel dies on the first night of the visit.  Callie wonders if her aunt was murdered, but no one else seems to consider the death anything but an accident. 

When Callie learns that Mel has left her the shop and cottage, she does not hesitate to leave behind her old dissatisfying relationship and life for the greener pastures of Keepsake Cove.  While she is welcomed by most of the community, she suspects that one of these charming people may have killed her aunt.

Book Summary

This now-classic work of fiction covers 400 years of Maryland history from the time Native Americans inhabited the land in the 1580s to the Revolutionary War and through the 1970s. The novel traces the lives of several families, from farmers and watermen to enslaved people and aristocrats, whose fates are tied to the tides of the Chesapeake Bay. These personal stories bring the sweeping history to life.

Book Summary

Aiden Valentine is the host of Baltimore’s radio romance hotline, but the truth is that he’s fallen out of love with love. When a tween calls into his show asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting his show into the spotlight.

As for Lucie Stone, she thought she was doing pretty well. She has a good job, a great family, and a very smart (if slightly devious) daughter. She’s too busy for anything more. But suddenly, her lack of a love life is the talk of Baltimore, leaving her to question if she’s really as happy as she thought.

The radio station creates a new segment aimed at helping her find love, co-hosted by Lucie and Aiden. All of Baltimore is invested in helping Lucie find her perfect match, but what if she’s already met him?

Book Summary

This Pulitzer finalist was initially published in 1985 and became a popular movie in 1988. The fact that it’s still easily accessible in print over 40 years later is telling!

Travel writer Macon Leary is not what you’d expect a travel writer to be. He hates anything outside the norm and away from his home, including travel. Things get even worse after his wife leaves him. Macon intends to remain isolated and alone at home. Then, a peculiar dog trainer works her way into his life and helps him re-engage with life.

Book Summary

This interconnected group of short stories takes you to the Palestinian American community in Baltimore and into the homes of three families – the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars. The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose family struggles financially. Marcus Salameh’s aunt has married into the Ammar family. Marcus is forced to confront his father to protect his younger sister when she “dishonors” the family.

Each of these stories is told from a different point of view and provides a slice-of-life look at what it’s like to be from an immigrant family in contemporary Baltimore. Many readers say they enjoy the stories more as the collection progresses.

Book Summary

Sloan is an officer with Maryland’s Natural Resources Police. She and her partner are returning from taking down three men who had been preying on hikers when she walks into a robbery in progress at a convenience store. She was shot and had to be shocked back to life during an operation.

To recover, she moved into her parents’ house in Heron’s Rest, Maryland. While she’s in bed recovering, she learns about a woman who has just vanished from a grocery store parking lot. Since she can’t work on the case in person, she turns to online detective work, which leads her to find similar instances spread across three states. But the victims have nothing in common. Luckily, there’s a new man in her life who is equally committed to solving this case.

Book Summary

Maggie is in her late 20s and still floundering, trying to figure out what she should do with her life. Her best friend seems to have it all, including a husband, a bookstore, and soon, a new baby. Maggie comes to Bell River to take over the bookshop during Rochelle’s maternity leave. Though Maggie is not a reader, Rochelle is sure she can handle it. 

However, Cobblestone Books has a co-owner who is less convinced of Maggie’s competence. The bookstore is connected to literary legend Edward Bell, and the co-owner insists that everything in the store remains authentic to Edward’s time. Only classics are sold, and the townspeople must leave town to buy contemporary books. But Maggie is NOT a rule-follower. Her good heart takes over, inspiring all kinds of secret ideas to improve profits at the store. Along the way, she finds some surprising allies.

Book Summary

Clara and Teddy first met at summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Both were homeschooled and found a connection through a shared love of literature and music. Over the years, their friendship grew into love, but they had a falling out ten years ago and haven’t spoken since.

Now, Clara, a history professor who has her dream job at a private liberal arts college in Maryland, is finally up for tenure. Her world is turned upside down when Theodore is brought on for the fall semester as a visiting scholar in her department.

He may have once been her best friend, but Professor Harrison seems like a total stranger to Clara. However, as the two spend evenings working on a shared project over drinks at a college bar, Clara quickly realizes how easily she could fall for him all over again.

Book Summary

This epic fiction starts in 1970s California, with Dana, a modern African American writer. One afternoon, she’s suddenly transported to the 19th-century antebellum Maryland to rescue a drowning young boy. 

She completes the task and returns to her normal life quickly, but each time the boy is in trouble, she’s returned to antebellum Maryland for longer and more complicated interactions. 

It’s a unique take on time travel, and the sci-fi element is secondary to the compelling storytelling.

Book Summary

If you’re looking for a light read, pick up this enemies-to-lovers novel set in the fictional small town of Willow Creek, Maryland. Emily has relocated to this quaint town to help her sister after an accident, and now she’s been roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenage niece.

She finds a new nemesis in the volunteer coordinator, Simon. The faire is his family’s legacy, and he doesn’t have time for quirky Emily. However, he treats her differently when she’s in her revealing wench costume in front of attendees. But is it just an act?