Did you know that the book list below isn’t the only way that you can find books relating to your City/State. If you go to our catalog at the top of the page is a drop down menu that defaults to ‘Keyword’. If you change it to ‘Subject’ then if there are books set in Methuen, Haverhill, Lawrence, etc. they will show up there. Also, at the very bottom of the menu is something called ‘Subject Browse’. If you again put in ‘Massachusetts’ or ‘Methuen’ it will bring up a page that has all the Subjects with that in them somewhere.
Fiction
Caleb’s Crossing
Geraldine Brooks
Growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans, Bethia Mayfield yearns for an education that is closed to her due to her gender. As soon as she can, she slips away to explore the island’s glistening beaches and observes its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. (Martha’s Vineyard)
Daring Ladies of Lowell
Kate Alcott
Moving to the mill city of Lowell in 1832 to escape farm life, young Alice is disillusioned by the local factory’s harsh working conditions and struggles to advocate on their behalf while recklessly falling in love with the mill owner’s son, a situation that is complicated by a murder and sensational trial. (Lowell)
The Last Days of Dogtown
Anita Diamant
Set on the high ground at the heart of Cape Ann, the village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and “witches.” At the center of it all is Judy Rhines, a fiercely independent soul, deeply lonely, who nonetheless builds a life for herself against all imaginable odds. (Cape Ann)
Mystic River
Dennis Lehane
Reluctantly, Sean Devine confronts the world of violence and pain when his childhood friend’s daughter is murdered and the investigation brings him face-to-face with a vigilante killer and a man with a dangerous secret. (Boston)
The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri
Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world—conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. (Cambridge)
On Beauty
Zadie Smith
On Beauty centres around two families and their different yet increasingly intertwined lives. The Belsey family consists of university professor Howard, a white Englishman and a scholar of Rembrandt; his African-American wife Kiki; and their children, Jerome, Zora and Levi. They live in the fictional university town of Wellington, outside Boston. Howard’s professional nemesis is Monty Kipps, a Trinidadian living in Britain with his wife Carlene and children Victoria and Michael. (“Wellington”/Boston)
La Salvaje de Boston
Gloria Casañas
Livia Cañumil, discípula de las maestras que llegaron al país de la mano del presidente Sarmiento, decide viajar a Norteamérica para especializarse en la enseñanza de los jardines de infancia. Lleva en su sangre el estigma de ser mestiza. Con la determinación que le permitió superar la pobreza en su tierra, está dispuesta a enfrentar cualquier obstáculo que la vida le depare. (Boston)
A Summer Affair
Elin Hilderbrand
Sheila Crispin Cook, mother of four young children and nationally renowned glassblower, bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair the Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala. Sheila is asked to chair the benefit, in part, because she is the former high school sweetheart of rock star Max West. Max agrees to play the gala and it looks like smooth sailing for Sheila-until she promises a “museum-quality” piece of glass for the auction, offers her best friend the catering job, goes nose-to-nose with her Manhattan socialite co-chair, and begins a “good-hearted” affair with the charity’s Executive Director, Lockhart Dixon. (Nantucket)
The Surgeon
Tess Gerritsen
A killer who targets lone women, who breaks into their apartments and performs terrifying ritualistic acts of torture on them before finishing them off. His surgical skills lead police to suspect he is a physician – a physician who, instead of saving lives, takes them. But as homicide detective Thomas Moore and his partner Jane Rizzoli begin their investigation, they make a startling discovery that changes everything. (Boston)
Non-Fiction
On January 12, 1912, an army of textile workers stormed out of the mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, commencing what has since become known as the “Bread and Roses” strike. This is a rousing look at a seminal and overlooked chapter of the past, Bread and Roses is indispensable reading. (Lawrence)
A Civil Action
Jonathan Harr
The true story of one man so determined to take down two of the nation’s largest corporations accused of killing children from water contamination that he risks losing everything. (Woburn)
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Stephen Puleo
Shortly after noon on January 15, 1919, a fifty-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents as a fifteen-foot-high wave of molasses that briefly traveled at thirty-five miles an hour. Dark Tide tells the compelling story of this man-made disaster that claimed the lives of twenty-one people and scores of animals and caused widespread destruction. (Boston)
This evenhanded and insightful history illuminates this horrifying episode with visceral clarity, from the opportunistic Putnam clan, who fanned the crisis to satisfy personal vendettas and greed, to four-year-old “witch” Dorcas Good, chained to a dank prison wall in darkness till she went mad. By placing the distant period of the Salem witch trials in the larger context of more contemporary eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance, the author has created a work as thought-provoking as it is emotionally powerful. (Salem & Danvers)
Twenty-five years after he played for the Rangers, Atkinson returns to his high school team as a volunteer assistant. Ice Time tells the team’s story as he follows the temperamental star, the fiery but troubled winger, the lovesick goalie, the rookie whose father is battling cancer, and the “old school”… (Methuen)
The Perfect Storm
Sebastian Junger
In October 1991, three weather systems collided off the coast of Nova Scotia to create a storm of singular fury, boasting waves over one hundred feet high. Among its victims was the Gloucester, Massachusetts-based swordfishing boat the Andrea Gail, which vanished with all six crew members aboard. (Gloucester)
Dive into a true crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard, of obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men. (Cambridge)
A Year by the Sea
Joan Anderson
An entrancing memoir of how one woman’s journey of self-discovery gave her the courage to persevere in re-creating her life. (Cape Cod)