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Reading Challenge A book by a Maine author |
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Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive's own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life--sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.
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The one-in-a-million boy
by Monica Wood
When Quinn's young son suddenly dies, he seeks forgiveness for his shortcomings by completing one of his son's Boy Scout badges, where he forges a friendship with Ona, a 104-year-old woman.
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The islanders
by Lewis Robinson
Shaken by problems at home, confused by the motives of a new love, and reeling from a public meltdown, high school hockey star Walt McNamara joins an exclusive new leadership program controlled by the ultra-wealthy summer residents of Whaleback Island, a granite and spruce oasis off the coast of Maine. But this is no paradise; secrets lurk in its murky waters. As Walt and his fellow misfits, including the determined Aubrey and fierce Tess, are pushed physically and mentally by ex-military instructors, exposed truths from the island's past and present slowly reveal the reasons behind their intense training. With danger mounting, Walt, Aubrey, Tess, and the others must use their new skills to sort friend from foe and find a way to survive. In The Islanders, award-winning author Lewis Robinson has crafted his most irresistible book yet: a suspenseful reckoning of class conflict in America, with a vivid tale of friendship and family at its heart.
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The road to Dalton
by Shannon Bowring
In most small towns, the private is also public. In the town of Dalton, one local makes an unthinkable decision that leaves the community reeling. In the aftermath, their problems, both small and large, reveal a deeper understanding of the lives of their neighbors, and remind us all that no one is exactly who we think they are.
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Lobsters without borders
by Carol Chen
Welcome to Maine! Vacationland! Welcome to St. Frewin's Island, where rookie Officer Jane Roberts must solve the freakish suffocation of a female corpse. The State homicide team ferries over to prop up Jane's efforts. But the island's daily hiccups and Jane's own prickly psyche get in the way. Runaway cows, juvenile clams, and a DIY crematorium are piling up on her blotter. Matrimony baloney clutters her heart. And what about the homicidal disappointments? Everyone's alibi is sounding like a lullaby. Heavy rains have washed away all evidence from the crime scene. Surely there must be blood somewhere? Jane Roberts keeps digging, but she is far from cracking this case...until the killer stops her cold. May you find yourself happily trapped (and laughing!) in LOBSTERS WITHOUT BORDERS.
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Among the shadows : a Detective Byron mystery
by Bruce Robert Coffin
Fall in Portland, Maine usually arrives as a welcome respite from summer's sweltering temperatures and, with the tourists gone, a return to normal life?usually. But when a retired cop is murdered, things heat up quickly, setting the city on edge. Detective Sergeant John Byron, a second-generation cop, is tasked with investigating the case?at the very moment his life is unraveling. On the outs with his department's upper echelon, separated from his wife, and feeling the strong pull of the bottle, Byron remains all business as he tries to solve the murder of one of their own. And when another ex-Portland PD officer dies under suspicious circumstances, he quickly realizes there's much more to these cases than meets the eye. The closer Byron gets to the truth, the greater the danger for him and his fellow detectives.
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Landslide
by Susan Conley
A mother cares for her two sons while everything else--her marriage, the fishing industry her New England community relies on--threatens to crumble around her.
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Welcome home, stranger
by Kate Christensen
Can you ever truly go home again? An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she's a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall-until she's summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Then things really fall apart. Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters-an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister's best friend-Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is.
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The spy coast : a thriller
by Tess Gerritsen
Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she's living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement. But when a body turns up in Maggie's driveway, she knows it's a message from former foes who haven't forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends--all retirees from the CIA--to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why.
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The savage, noble death of Babs Dionne
by Ron Currie
In Waterville, Maine, crime matriarch Babs Dionne faces a drug kingpin’s enforcer and her youngest daughter’s mysterious death, unleashing her fierce determination to protect her family, her empire, and her town from the chaos threatening to consume them.
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The poacher's son
by Paul Doiron
Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before---and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty. Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack's brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack's mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret.The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer---which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.
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The Field house : a writer's life lost and found on an island in Maine
by Robin Clifford Wood
A compelling blend of biography and memoir, The Field House recounts the life of writer Rachel Field--whose works for adults and children were once wildly successful but are now largely forgotten--and how her chance meeting with the author through the whispers of an old, neglected island home in Maine sparked a startling friendship across time and impossible distance.
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A house to die for : a Darby Farr mystery
by Vicki Doudera
Red-hot real estate agent Darby Farr has spent years trying to forget her hometown of Hurricane Harbor, Maine--especially the painful memories of being raised by her controlling aunt following her parents' tragic deaths. Then one morning, she learns her aunt is dying, and the calculating woman has one final demand: clinch the multimillion-dollar sale of Fairview, a breathtaking waterfront estate. The deal seems simple, but trouble is brewing on the rocky coast. Within hours of Darby's arrival, an obscure deed restriction scuttles the sale just as the backup buyer is found bludgeoned to death on the property's grounds. Assisted by handsome journalist Miles Porter, Darby uncovers dark secrets that reveal an ugly scandal ... and even uglier motives for murder. As a brutal storm surges up the coast, Darby must salvage the deal, find the killer--and somehow stay alive.
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The island's true child : a memoir of growing up on Criehaven
by Dot Simpson
Fortunately for us, Dot Simpson vividly remembered her early island life and wrote about it with moving simplicity. Her memoir is brightened with dry humor, and it tells of a time long lost but infused with values we still cherish, such as love of home and family. Even though it is a story tinged with considerable sadness, we can't help but wish we could have spent at least a few of our own growing-up years alongside Dot, as an island child.
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Lungfish
by Meghan Gilliss
Tuck is slow to understand the circumstances that have driven her family to an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine, the former home of her deceased grandmother where she once spent her childhood summers. Squatting there now, she must care for her spirited young daughter and scrape together enough money to leave before winter arrives-or before they are found out. Relying on the island for sustenance and answers-bladderwrack, rosehips, tenacious little green crabs; smells held by the damp walls of the house, field guides and religious texts, a failed invention left behind by her missing father--Tuck lives moment-by-moment through the absurdity, beauty, paranoia, and hunger that shoots through her life, as her husband struggles to detox. Exquisitely written and formally daring, Lungfish tells the story of a woman grappling through the lies she has been told-and those she has told herself-to arrive at the truth of who she is and where she must go.
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The lobster chronicles : life on a very small island
by Linda Greenlaw
The author details her return to Isle au Haut, a tiny Maine island with a population of seventy year-round residents, many of whom are her relatives, to describe small-town life in a lobster-fishing village. Declared a triumph by the New York Times Book Review, Linda Greenlaw's first book, The Hungry Ocean, appeared on nearly every major bestseller list in the country. Now, taking a break from the swordfishing career that earned her a major role in The Perfect Storm, Greenlaw returns to Isle au Haut, a tiny Maine island with a population of 70 year-round residents, 30 of whom are Greenlaw's relatives. With a Clancy-esque talent for fascinating technical detail and a Keillor-esque eye for the drama of small-town life, Greenlaw offers her take on everything from rediscovering home, love, and family to island characters and the best way to cook and serve a lobster. But Greenlaw also explores the island's darker side, including a tragic boating accident and a century-old conflict with a neighboring community.
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How it happened
by Michael Koryta
After a troubled teen, no stranger to the law, admits to her involvement in a brutal murder, Rob Barrett, an FBI investigator and interrogator stakes his reputation on her confession only to have the information she provided prove false.
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Pet sematary
by Stephen King
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow's tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed's beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing...as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there--one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself sometimes, dead is better...
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Islands of time
by Barbara Kent Lawrence
Being from "away" means falling in love with a local is not a good idea, but it happens for 14 year old Rebecca Granger.
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Remembering Camden : stories from an old Maine harbor
by Barbara F. Dyer
Tracing the town's history from its early days as a thriving shipbuilding center to its present status as a well-loved tourist destination, author and lifelong Camden resident Barbara F. Dyer offers a series of poignant and entertaining recollections of bygone days in old Camden and nearby Rockport. From Prohibition and the 1935 Waterfront Fire to Maine's notorious Great Imposter, Dyer weaves a richly nostalgic record of Camden life prior to the tourism boom. Read Remembering Camden to discover the quirks, charms and forgotten lore of a storied coastal Maine community.
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Inn mates : an innkeeper's memoir
by Teri Anderholm
A chronicle of two Boston corporate escapees who dreamt of owning a luxury inn in Bar Harbor, Maine. The inn was a passion, sometimes a prison, while serving five-star hospitality to a parade of guests who taught them lessons of gratitude, humility, love, and laughter in the midst of life's hurricanes.
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Into woods
by Bill Roorbach
Into Woods is an exuberant, profound, and often wonderfully funny account of ten years in the life of author Bill Roorbach. A paean to nature, love, family, and place, it begins with his honeymoon on a wine farm in France's Loire Valley and closes with the birth of his daughter.
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Bald eagles, bear cubs, and Hermit Bill : memories of a wildlife biologist in Maine
by Ronald Joseph
Ron Joseph, a passionate birder, grew up in rural Maine and spent more than thirty years working throughout the state as a wildlife biologist. Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill is a compilation of more than forty stories from his early years spanning his adult life working in the woods and along the coast. Among other adventures, Joseph learned to drive a hay truck at ten, was once rescued by a hermit, visited lumber camps, counted deer dung, and tracked the return of eagles to the state sky. The book includes an introduction by Paul Doiron, author of the Mike Bowditch series of Maine crime novels and former editor-in-chief of Down East magazine.
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The weir : a novel
by Ruth Moore
The Weir takes place in a small island fishing village during the years before World Ware II, and is set against a backdrop of hard work and struggle.
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Go by boat : stories of a Maine island doctor
by Chuck Radis
Fresh out of training, Dr. Chuck Radis moves with his wife and daughter to Peaks Island, Maine, to fulfill a Public Health scholarship obligation. Absent-minded and initially oblivious to island mores, Dr. Radis slowly adapts to a medical practice where x-rays and advanced lab.
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Night of the living rez
by Morgan Talty
Set in a Native community in Maine, this collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve stories, the author, with humor, compassion, and insight-breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance.
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Song of the wooden sparrow
by Isabel Tutaine
1894-Devastated by the deaths of her husband and son during an epidemic in Ghana, Dr. Leah Maays returns home to Edith's Bay, Maine. Hoping to continue her medical career, she discovers the community is hostile to female doctors.Enter Duncan Shay. After years of being ostracized for murdering a man while robbing a bank, he's developed a persona that can freeze a glass of water.Unaware Duncan is shunned, Leah tends to a gouge on his hand as if he's just another regular fellow, making Duncan realize the walls he's built to keep others out are too weak to contain his yearnings to belong.Though drawn to him, Leah resists Duncan's friendship because she can't establish a practice if she, too, is ostracized. To have Leah in his life, Duncan must convince everyone, including himself, that he's more than the worst thing he's ever done in his life. The novel explores the machinations of a small, rural community in Maine at the turn of the century just as women were beginning to step out of traditional roles.
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The northern reach
by W. S. Winslow
Frozen in grief after the loss of her son at sea, Edith Baines stares across the water at a schooner, under full sail yet motionless in the winter wind and surging tide of the Northern Reach. Edith seems to be hallucinating. Or is she? Edith's boat-watch opens The Northern Reach, set in the coastal town of Wellbridge, Maine, where townspeople squeeze a living from the perilous bay or scrape by on the largesse of the summer folk and whatever they can cobble together, salvage, or grab. At the center of town life is the Baines family, land-rich, cash-poor descendants of town founders, along with the ne'er-do-well Moody clan, the Martins of Skunk Pond, and the dirt farming, bootlegging Edgecombs. Over the course of the twentieth century, the families intersect, interact, and intermarry, grappling with secrets and prejudices that span generations, opening new wounds and reckoning with old ghosts.
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Deadly trespass : a mystery in Maine
by Sandra D. Neily
Searching for her wayward dog in Maine's dense woods, Cassandra finds her best friend Shannon crushed under a tree. Before she can absorb the loss of her friend, she is hired to guide a surly reporter who suspects extinct wolves have returned to the forests nearby. When gold wolf eyes issue a challenge at her door, she is drawn deeper into Shannon's mysterious murder, and the wolves' fate. To find her friend's killer, and save her dog, the wolves, and her own life, Cassandra must trust the pack, and embrace a wild world.
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Blue summer
by Jim Nichols
A riveting coming-of-age novel told in retrospect by a washed-out taxi-driving musician from Baxter, Maine, who must come to terms with his past by returning to Maine and confronting the secrets and violence in his family.
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High tide at noon
by Elisabeth Ogilvie
The struggles, hardship, and joy of one woman's life on a Maine island are brought to life in this haunting trilogy, the first three books of the Bennett's Island series. Elisabeth Ogilvie tells the story of Joanna Bennett and her colorful life on Bennett's Island with a sensitivity and truthfulness born of her own early years on isolated Criehaven, the real Bennett's Island.
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Love & lobsters
by Shannon M. Parker
Female lobsterman Charlie Pinkham leans on her knowledge of how lobsters display trust, commitment, mating rituals, and sexy time to decide if plunging into the uncharted waters of romantic love is worth the risk.
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Margreete's Harbor : a novel
by Eleanor Morse
Margreete's Harbor tells the story of ten years in the history of a family: a novel of small moments, intimate betrayals, arrivals and disappearances that coincide with America during the late 1950s through the turbulent 1960s.
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