Fiction Set in Maine
The books listed here are set completely or partially in real or imaginary places in the state of Maine. They're in alphabetical order by author, with links to author entries on the Maine Writers Index at the Maine State Library, if applicable (not all books set in Maine are written by Maine authors). To suggest a book for the list, please contact me.
Many thanks to Dennis Lien and Allen J. Hubin for help. Special thanks to Bill Bauer for access to his well-annotated finding list of books with Maine settings; this list would be much smaller without his help.
- Adult Fiction Index
Click on letter of author's last name to go straight to that section:
A-B / C-D / E-F / G-H / I-J-K / L-M / N-O-P / Q-R-S / T-U-V / W-X-Y-Z
- Juvenile and Young Adult Fiction
A-B
AARONS, Edward S.
See also Edward Ronns- Assignment Unicorn (1976): One of a series of 'Assignment' novels, CIA adventure stories featuring Sam Durrell. Sam must destroy a strange drug and a madman who wants to control the world.
ABBOTT, Sandra
- Whispering Gables (1968): Suspense. Death by suicide to one woman in each generation -- this is the ancient curse that Eleanor Lawrence hears about for the first time while visiting her aunt at Whispering Gables. At first she scoffs at the old wives' tale. Set in Maine.
AEBI, Will
- The Wedding Day: A Mystery (2002): Story of a Nebraska woman's move to Maine and the mystery that unfolds on her wedding day. Aebi lives in Steep Falls.
AGORI, Ken (aka Robert Koenig?)
- Defenders of the Holy Grail (2000): Action/thriller. While vacationing on Nantucket, Elise, a woman from Maine, discovers ancient manuscripts that question the accuracy of Biblical events. The Crusades are relived through psychic flashbacks. Plot moves up and down the New England Coast. 160 pp.
ALBERT, Marvin H.
- That Jane From Maine (1959): Novelisation of film titled 'It Happened To Jane,' a breezy 1959 film starring Doris Day, Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs. About a woman who runs Maine lobstery taking on an ultracheap villain.
ALEXANDER, Betsy
- Path Through Deep Waters (1998): An old-fashioned tale told in the vernacular of early Maine. Julia's story is interwoven with those of the people she meets as she comes for healing and rest to a small Maine island town. 349 pp.
ALLEN, Elizabeth Akers
- The Triangular Society: Leaves from the Life of a Portland Family (1886): Allen's only novel. A rather autobiographical and humorous domestic novel, interspersed with verses.
ALLEN, Rebecca Grace
The Portland Rebels series -- spicy, sexy romance -- is set in Portland, Maine:
- The Duality Principle (2014): Nerdy girl Gabriella Evans is holed up in Portland, Maine, for the summer to work on her PhD thesis. When her best friend talks her into a blind date, she finds herself out with the opposite of her fantasy: He’s polite and well-mannered, yet something behind his crisply tailored shirt doesn’t add up — a rebellious gleam in his eye that piques her curiosity. Features downtown Portland and Bug Light Park.
- The Hierarchy of Needs (2015): Jamie Matthews, back in her hometown of Portland ME, is stuck in a rut, until she runs into Dean Trescott, the playboy friend she had one hot night with back in high school. Set partly in a house on the Promenade, the Portland Country Club, and the Inn and Spa at Mills Falls
- The Theory of Deviance (2016): Mikey Pelletier, 25-year-old virgin, has hidden his bisexuality from everyone, even himself. Now he's ready to lose his virginity to Krissy Porter, whose "hetero-flexible" roommate Rafe also gets in on the action. Set in winter partly at the Fore Street restaurant, Portland Ice Arena, Portland Stage in Portland, and in Kennebunkport, Maine.
- The Punishment Doctrine (2017?), a sequel to The Theory of Deviance. After a week of pure deviance in Maine, Rafe, Krissy, and Mikey committed to giving this crazy triad thing a shot. Rafe has fallen harder than he ever believed possible, yet he can’t fully be with his lovers. Not with the hundreds of miles separating them, or the doubts clamoring ever louder in his mind.
ALSOBROOK, Rosalyn
See entries for Victoria Barrett for others in this collaborative series.
- The Perfect Stranger (1996): Paranormal romance. 2nd in the Seascape series. High-powered business executive Nicolle Stone wants nothing more than to be left alone and to escape the pressure to marry fellow executive Willett Porterfield. A vacation at the Seascape Inn seems like just the ticket. Unfortunately, before Nicolle even finishes unpacking, she spies Willett. Desperate to make him leave, she convinces fellow vacationer Joel Brandon to pretend to be her lover for the few minutes it will take to drive Willett away; but when the persistent Willett flatly refuses to go, Nicolle and Joel must continue the charade. 324 pp.
- For the Love of Pete (1997): Paranormal romance. Ghosts, an intuitive eight-year old boy (Pete), and an unrequited love are the ingredients in this, the fourth book in the Seascape series. The Seascape Inn, a mystical bed and breakfast in Maine, plays a major role. 298 pp.
- Tomorrow's Treasures: A Seascape Romance (1997): Paranormal romance. #6 in the Seascape series. Damon Adams doesn't want to get married, and his daughter, Jeri, doesn't want another female around, but Damon does want the contract that will keep the business he inherited from his father afloat. In order to get the contract, he agrees to his friend Blair's proposal to have her younger sister, Paige Brockway, accompany Damon and Jeri for their stay at Seascape Inn, a magical bed-and- breakfast in Maine. 342 pp.
AMOS, Diane
- Getting Personal (2003): Romance novel that features Monique St. Cyr, an impulsive obituary writer in Maine whose erotic-fiction-writing mother gets her involved in a research project meeting men online.
- Mixed Blessings (2004): Sequel to Getting Personal. Follows Monique's relationship with her old-fashioned Aunt Lily, who moves in next door after Monique's mother leaves on a 3-month honeymoon.
- Winner Takes All (2005) : Set in Maine. When a computer spits out 2 winning tickets, Thomas and Karen each attempt to win a contest to settle the matter.
- A Long Walk Home (2005): Annie agrees to have her sister's 13-year-old daughter come live with her in Maine, but is unprepared for the wild girl in black and body piercings who drives a wedge between Annie, her lover, and her friends.
- Outlaw Hearts (2007): Historical fiction. 24-yr-old Rebekah travels from England to find out more about her deceased parents, who were once missionaries in Maine.
ANASTAS, Peter
- No Fortunes (2005) The story of four friends on the campus of a small Maine college during the winter and spring of 1959.
ANDREW, Mark
- Falling Bodies (1999): Tear-jerker. In Illinois, physics professor Jackson Tate cannot grasp the random act of a drunken driver killing his spouse and children. Unable to cope with the trauma, he runs away from his grief by hitting the highway, eventually ending up in Maine where he meets a fellow sufferer, whose husband has been lost to Alzheimer's.
ANDREWS, Donna
- Murder with Puffins (2000): Second book in Meg Langslow series (after Murder with Peacocks). Set on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, not in the heroine's small Virginia home town.
ANDREWS, William D.
- Stealing History (A Julie Williamson mystery) (2006): Mystery. Julie Williamson moves from Delaware to quaint Ryland, Maine, to take a new job as director of a busy historical society and museum. But her dream job is more of a nightmare. Besides interpersonal issues, some of the museum’s most valuable artifacts, including a letter from Abraham Lincoln to Hannibal Hamlin, quickly turn up missing. Then a murder hits especially close to home.
- Breaking Ground (A Julie Williamson mystery) (2011): A well-known benefactor of the historical society is murdered on the morning of the ceremony to celebrate construction of an important new building.
APPLETON, Jane Sophia and Cornelia Crosby Barrett
- Voices from the Kenduskeag (1848): Anthology of anonymous work by Bangor authors, published to raise money for the Bangor Female Orphan Asylum. Includes utopian short story of an idealised Bangor where there's no slavery, good transportation, worldwide communication, and women remain tied to their households. 286 pp.
ARENSBERG, Ann
- Incubus (1999): During a killing heat wave and drought in Dry Falls, Maine, a mysterious supernatural entity, with a drive beyond mere sexual desire, stalks the tiny spellbound town.
ARMSTRONG, Kelley
- Stolen (2003): Horror. In the Maine woods, wealthy computer guru Ty Winsloe keeps 'mythological' creatures in a glass prison, employing witches and a shaman to help him find his prey.
ARSENAULT, Kerri
- Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (2020): Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe. (Memoir rather than fiction.)
ASHBAUGH, Regan
- Downtick (1988): Financial thriller revolving around a major player on Wall Street who moves to Maine seeking refuge from a psychopath who's pursuing him.
ASKARI, Brent
- Not Ready for Prime Time (1999): Justine Nichols, a young vocalist for an all-female band in Portland, Maine, has five secrets that even her closest friends don't know. This is a tale about remembering, forgetting, growing up, and, most importantly, surviving.
ATHOL, Dickson
- Winter Haven (2008): Vera returns to Winter Haven, Maine, to identify her brother Siggy's body. Siggy disappeared 13 years ago, but his body has not aged.
AUGER, Alas Ellis
- The Sagamore of Old Orchard (1943): Historical fiction. Fictionalized account told in the first person of the life of John Bonython, one of the original settlers of the portion of the Southern Maine Coast now known as Old Orchard. The narrative is based on fact and includes description of life in the mid 1600s and relations with the Indians at that time.
AXLER, James
- Deathlands #7: Dectra Chain (1988): Sci-Fi. The world blew out in 2001, but there were survivors, struggling to overcome a dark new age of plague, radiation sickness, barbarism and madness. Out of the ruins comes Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors. Emerging from a gateway in Maine, Ryan confronts a ruthless and brutal sea captain, a woman prepared to go to any lengths to get what she wants.
- Deathlands #25: Genesis Echo (1995): Sci-Fi. The warrior survivalists are reluctant guests in a reactivated twentieth-century medical institute in Maine. Here scientists still pursue their abstract theories, oblivious to the realities of a world gone mad. But when they take an unhealthy interest in Krysty Wroth, the pressure is on to find a way out of this guarded enclave.
AZZOLINA, Ronald
- Suicide, Inc. (1999): E-book/Print-on-Demand. Thriller. Dan Antinori, management consultant, has moved to Maine to distance himself from a violence-plagued past. As a favor to his girlfriend, he agrees to assist her old college roommate, whose estranged husband, Howard, recently killed himself for no apparent reason. Sparked by a tip that Howard's death was not a suicide, Dan gradually uncovers a chilling conspiracy. Working in complicity with the health care czars of three New England states, a national medical services company is promoting and offering assisted suicide to non cost-effective patients.
BACHMAN, Richard (aka Stephen King)
- Thinner (1984): Horror. Billy Halleck -- 50 lbs. overweight, good husband, loving father, practices law in New York City -- sideswipes an old Gypsy woman as she's crossing the street in their quiet little southern Connecticut town of Fairview, and suddenly everything in his pleasant, upwardly mobile life changes, including his size. He's pleased when he begins to lose weight, and then terrified when he can't stop, no matter how much he eats Denoument occurs in rural Maine.
- Blaze (2007): Written by King in 1973. Clayton Blaze Blaisdell has fallen into a life of delinquency ever since his father's brutal abuse rendered him feeble-minded. Chapters alternate recounting Blaze's past mistreatment at a series of Maine orphanages and foster homes with Blaze's current plans to follow through on a kidnapping scheme plotted by his recently murdered partner in crime, George Rackley.
BAIN, Donald
A few of Bain's books, based on the Jessica Fletcher 'Murder, She Wrote' series, are set in fictional Cabot Cove, Maine.
- Brandy and Bullets (1995) : Cabot Cove's posh retreat offers struggling artists a European spa, psychiatry and even hypnotism. But soon a suicide attempt and a brutal murder quickly arouse the sheriff's attention -- and Jessica's. And when an old friend mysteriously disappears, Jessica fears a twisted genius is at work writing a scenario for murder.
- A Little Yuletide Murder (1998): After years of traveling during the Christmas season, amateur detective Jessica Fletcher is happy to be at home in Cabot Cove, Maine for the holidays. But when the local farmer who portrayed Santa Claus for the past 15 years is murdered, Jessica has a killer to catch. With an innocent man's future at stake, will she deliver the murderer in time for Christmas?
- Trick Or Treachery (2000): This Halloween-themed installment returns to Cabot Cove for its setting. At the heart of the plot is a self-proclaimed medium claiming to be able to make contact with the spirit world, and the accusations that fly to and fro begin to shed a new light on a suspected arson-related death in the recent past.
BAKER, Nicholson
- A Box of Matches (2003) : Likely set in Maine (author lives in South Berwick). Thinly veiled non-fiction. During one January in rural New England, the 44-year old narrator Emmett rises early, lights a fire, and writes what comes to mind, generally about the minutiae of life. When he finishes the box of matches, the book is done. Meditative.
BALDACCI, David
- Total Control (1995): Legal/financial thriller. Takes place in Virginia, Seattle, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and Maine. Jason Archer is a rising young executive at the world's leading technology conglomerate. Determined to give his family the best of everything, Archer has secretly entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He is about to disappear in a plane crash -- leaving behind a wife who must sort out his lies from his truths.
BALLING, L. Christian
- Revelation (2000): John Reese takes matters into his own hands after his daughter is viciously stuck down in her Harvard laboratory by late-night intruders. While she lies in a coma, fighting for her life, Reese struggles to unravel a puzzle that hinges on a mummified relic stolen from the lab. Reese's search takes him to remote Miracle Isle off the coast of Maine, home base of a megalomaniacal southern preacher, where he uncovers a revelation that may shock the world.
BARBIERI, Heather
- The Cottage At Glass Beach (2012): After learning of her husband's infidelity, political wife Nora and her young children return to Burke Island, Maine, where she was born and from which her mother disappeared, and where answers to old mysteries and resolutions to newer problems will inevitably be found.
BARNETT, Jill
- Carried Away (1996): Historical Romance. The proud descendents of a Highland clan, Calum and Eachann MacLachlan now live in seclusion on an island off the coast of Maine. The brothers are as different in spirit as they are in looks, but they have one thing in common: they both need brides. Eachann finds the perfect brides while spying on a fancy society party: Georgina is basking in the light of her own ball, while Amy is valiantly struggling to conceal her first broken heart. Within moments, both women are swept away by a strange Scotsman. Kidnapped, captive and furious, they find themselves stranded on a misty island with two brothers and only each other for support. Although the two women were social enemies, their predicament forces them to work together.
BARRETT, Victoria (AKA Vicki Hinze)
[See Rosalyn Alsobrook entry for others in this collaborative series.]- Beyond the Misty Shore (1996): Paranormal romance set in Maine.
- Upon A Mystic Tide (1996): Paranormal romance. John and Bess Mystic are on the brink of a divorce after a long separation. Now, with Bess's job threatened, the judge handling her divorce ordering her arrested for contempt, Bess feels certain there's no way things can work out. She hadn't reckoned on the power of love to heal, or the aid of the magic of Maine's Seascape Inn!
- Beside a Dreamswept Sea (1997): Paranormal romance. To provide a change of scenery that he hopes will help his three distraught children cope with the pain felt from the recent death of their mother, a guilt-racked Bryce Richards takes his family to the Seascape Inn in Maine. His plan is to share in their healing alongside the misty Maine coast. Caline Tate is on her way to Nova Scotia when she hears the mystic call of the enchanted Inn. Upon arrival, Cally quickly realizes that she has found her destiny, but she carries scars from her past marriage. However, this is Seascape, where two people hurt by previous relationships can feel the magical healing of the place.
BARRINGTON, Robert
- Some Valiant Ones (1937): Historical fiction about Pittston, Maine. 217 pp.
BARRON, Marianne (pseudonym for Nina M. Osier)
- Second Chances (2001): In a Maine coastal community in 1967, a widowed preacher is doing his best to bring up two teenagers.
BARTLETT, Arthur C.
- The Runaway Dog Team (1929; ill. Harold Cue): Old-fashioned adventure novel of Prohibition Era rum running across the border from Canada into northern Maine. Lawless men use sled dogs to accomplish their ends, until those same dogs help bring them to justice. Also suitable for young adults. 306 pp.
BAYER, William
- Punish Me With Kisses (1980): Psycho-sexual thriller charged with eroticism and menace. This story of two sisters begins in Bar Harbor, Maine, where Suzie is murdered. It continues three years later as her sister Penny, now living in New York, finds Suzie's sex diary, propelling her toward a horrifying secret.
BEACH, Curtis
- Down East Parables: Stories From the Coast of Maine (1987): Booklet, 71 pp.
- Down East Sketches (1993): 66 pp.
BEALE, Will
- Frontier of the Deep: A Tale of the Great Northeast (1925): (RL: Juvenile) A fictional account of St. Anne's in Canada. Set from the sea country of Maine to Newfoundland. 320 pp.
BEAN, Miss Fannie
- Pudney & Walp, Two Millionaries of Maine: A novel (1893): 328 pp.
BEATTIE, Ann
- Perfect Recall (2001): Eleven short stories, set in Key West and Maine (including 'Hurricane Carleyville').
BECKHAM, Barry
- My Main Mother (1971): Novel about growing up black in Maine and in Harlem, examines what it feels like to be black in a predominantly white society.
BELISLE, Lisette
- Her Sister's Secret Son (2001): Silhouette Special Editions #1403. Romance. Though she'd spent a lifetime in her flamboyant twin's shadow, Rachel Hale adored selflessly, single-handedly raising her late sister's son. But with no time for dating, Rachel couldn't give her beloved nephew the daddy he deserved, until stubborn granite-eyed Jared Carlisle from Maine discovered little Dylan was his.
BELLEMARE, B.J.
- Freedom Bay (2002): Set in 1968 Maine. The members of the Lamont family are looking for personal fulfillment and freedom.
BEMIS, Michael E.
- Snow Waste (2003): Set in fictitious Cannon (near the real towns of Dixfield and Clifton), in western Maine, economically dependent on the White Woods Ski Resort. A story of ethical values, greed, and personal motivation, told through the perspectives of the chief of snowmaking for the White Woods Ski Resort, the owner of White Woods, and an environmental activist with a past.
BENJAMIN, Ruth
- Naked at Forty (1984): Set in New York City and Maine. Marian Bartolph, a 40-year-old Maine mother, housewife and would-be poet, runs into her first love, Myles, whom she has not seen or heard of since her youth, at a convention in New York. She is exposed to some of the seamy side of Greenwich Village and to sexual situations both wild and predictable. She also learns something about her parents' death many years ago, with which Myles was involved. She is convinced that when she returns home, nobody in Maine will know she has changed, and she will be free to begin exploring her life.
BENTLEY, Jennie
Cozy mystery series featuring New York textile designer Avery Baker, who inherits her aunt's old Maine cottage, moves to Maine to renovate it, and finds a new career path in home renovation. And mystery-solving.- Fatal Fixer-Upper (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery (2008): With help from hunky handyman Derek Ellis, Avery starts learning the ABCs of DIY. But when the designer-turned-renovator finds clues that lead to a missing professor, she wonders if she can finish the house without getting finished off herself in the process.
- Spackled and Spooked (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (2009): Avery Baker and her boyfriend, Derek Ellis, are flipping a seriously stigmatized house rumored to have ghosts.
- Plaster and Poison (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (2010): As Avery renovates an old carriage house on behalf of a soon-to-be wed friend, she stumbles across a lifeless body -- someone known all too well by the blushing bride.
- Mortar and Murder (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (2011): Avery finds a mystery behind the walls of a centuries-old house on an island that has more than its share of deadly secrets.
BERGREN, Lisa Tawn
- Torchlight (1994): Christian Romance. Full Circle series, #2. After inheriting her family's lighthouse and mansion, heiress Julia Rierdon, sister of Jake Rierdon (Refuge), travels to the coast of Maine to restore the estate and turn it into a lavish inn. Temporarily separated from her wealthy fiance, Julia turns to a mysterious stranger for assistance. Motorcycle-riding handyman Trevor Kenbridge is gorgeous, infuriating, and just the man she needs to help her prepare the inn. Could he also be the right man to claim her heart?
- The Captain's Bride (Northern Lights Series #1) (1998): Christian Historical Romance. Northern Lights series, #1. Leaving their home in Norway behind, Elsa and Peder embark on a new life with their closest friends. From the gentle hills of Bergen, Norway, to the rocky coast of Camden, Maine, and across the open sea, this is an epic saga of perseverance and passion, faith and fidelity,
BERRY, David
- The Whales of August: A Play in Two Acts (1984): Play set in an island on the Maine coast. 64 pages.
BIRD, Beverly
- With Every Breath (1996): Maddie Brogan, fleeing her deranged ex-husband, returns to a remote island off the coast of Maine where a childhood tragedy, which she does not remember, stirs up some of the islanders who want to make sure that she never remembers. 448 pp.
BISBEE, Ernest E.
- The State O' Maine Scrap Book of Stories & Legends of Way Down East (1940/1946): 56 pp.
BISHOP, Mary
- Hunter's Hill (1973): From the moment Eden Chase arrived at Hunter's Hill in Maine, the lovely young woman fell under the dark spell of the owner and master of the isolated old mansion, Tony Hunter. In this house of fear she was held captive by love. 303 pp.
BLACKINGTON, Alton H.
- Yankee Yarns (1954): New England tales from the rocky headlands of Maine to the surf swept shores of Cape Cod to the quiet villages of Connecticut. Blackington was an NBC Radio broadcaster and this is a collection of tales of Yankees accumulated over his career. 243 pp.
- More Yankee Yarns (1956)
BLAKE, Eleanor
- Death Down East (1940): Maine murder mystery. 241 pp.
BLAKE, Sarah
- The Guest Book (2019): Multi-generational historical fiction. After a tragedy befalls the Milton family, Ogden Milton tries to console his wife by purchasing an island in Maine. That island, and its house, come to define and burnish the Milton family for three generations.
- Grange House (2000): Atmospheric novel of literary suspense and romance. Set 1898. The morning after When Maisie Thomas, 17, arrives to spend the summer with her parents at Grange House, a hotel off the coast of Maine, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: two drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms and clinging to the broken mast of their tiny boat. It's only the first in a series of events that cast a shadow of Maisie's summer. 375 pp.
BLANCHARD, Alice
- Darkness Peering (1999/2000): Thrilling debut novel of a writer who won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for a book of short stories. A young girl is murdered in the small town of Flowering Dogwood, Maine. Eighteen years later, the murderer's identity is still a mystery and a second killing has occurred. Rachel Storrow, the investigating officer, is the daughter of the police chief who held that office at the time of the first murder. His inability to solve the case, together with his suspicions, led to his suicide. As Rachel's investigation continues, it points in directions she'd rather not go. 240 pp.
BOORSTIN, Paul and Sharon
- The Glory Hand (1983): Horror. Cassie was coming to Camp Casmaran to fulfill her mother's dying wish, not knowing that she would be initiated into a hellish occult secret society! 289 pp. Set in Maine?
BORTHWICK, J.S.
Amateur sleuth Sarah Deane is an English Fellow at Maine's Bowmouth College during some of the books in this series.- The Down East Murders: A Mystery Set on the Coast of Maine (1985): Second in the series. Sarah Deane, the English teacher amateur detective, is on summer holiday on a small island off the coast of Maine and finds herself investigating the murder of a cranky local artist.
- The Student Body (1986): The tranquil flaculty life at a Maine college is shattered for Sarah Dean and Dr. Alex McKenzie when they find a campus ice sculpture of a Viking ship contains a well-frozen body of a girl super-student.
- Bodies of Water (1990): A luxury cruise along the beautiful Maine coast hits rough waters when someone plots a course for murder.
- The Bridled Groom (1994) : The author's sixth novel featuring English teacher Sarah Deane and internist Alex McKenzie who here are planning a wedding set on a Maine Farm.
- Dolly Is Dead (1995): Everybody loves Dolly Beaugard. At least that's what everybody thought until Dolly's bloated body washed ashore on the same spot as the drunken Gattling brothers the day before. Takes place Maine.
- Coup de Grace (2001) : 10th in the Sarah Deane series. Academic backstabbing and murder at a bucolic New England girls' boarding school. Sarah is hired to teach English at Miss Merritt's, only to land in the epicenter of legendary French professor Grace Carpentier's reign of terror. Her passion for excellence has inspired universal fear and loathing. A student discovers Carpentier's cloaked hanging effigy, then Sarah finds a bludgeoned body wearing Carpentier's trademark cape, but the victim is not Carpentier. Is it a case of mistaken identity?
- Murder in the Rough (2002): Takes place in Maine, partly on a golf course.
- Intensive Scare Unit (2004) : 12th in the series. Sarah's 74-year-old cantankerous aunt, Julia Clancy, proprietor of the High Hope horse farm, is in the hospital in Bowmouth, Maine, for open heart surgery. While she's recovering, she is the last person to see a patient alive before he's found strangled in the lavatory, and then a shadowy figure in hospital garb slips into her room and tries to strangle her.
- Foiled Again (2007) : 13th in series. During rehearsals at Bowmouth College (in Maine) of the gender-bending Romiette and Julio, student actors engaging in horseplay leave Todd Mancuso, the brilliant actor playing Mercutio, wounded. When Sarah stumbles on a badly injured student hidden away in a stockroom on Halloween night, events take a turn for the worse. By the time the production is finally staged, a member of the faculty has been badly injured and a student has been killed.
BOYLE, Gerry
Former New York Times reporter Jack McMorrow series- Deadline (1993): Soon after former New York Times metro reporter Jack McMorrow takes over the Androscoggin, Maine, newspaper, his staff photographer drowns in a river. When police don't seem to care, McMorrow investigates, only to learn his new home town is a haven for hidden alliances, secret pasts, and murderous intentions.
- Bloodline (1995): 2nd Jack McMorrow mystery. While researching an article on unwed teenage mothers for an upscale New England magazine, McMorrow discovers what he believes to be a success story in a teenage mother named Missy Hewitt. But when Missy is murdered soon after talking with McMorrow, he begins to investigate and finds that the facts just don't add up.
- Lifeline (1996): McMorrow's girlfriend takes a job in Portland, Maine, leaving behind an ultimatum. McMorrow rises to the challenge, signing on as the court reporter for the Kennebec Observer. What he doesn't realize is that he is about to become a suspect when a young woman is murdered.
- Potshot (1997): 4th in the Jack McMorrow series. McMorrow's search for the truth about some hemp-growing hippies in rural Maine leads him into the darkest side of the drug trade - and human nature.
- Borderline (1998): McMorrow travels to the sleepy town of Scanesett, Maine, when a man disappears from a tour bus. No one seems to care, except McMorrow, who knows there's a story too good to pass up.
- Cover Story (2000): Maine investigative reporter Jack McMorrow visits New York intending to work freelance for the New York Times. When news breaks of the mayor's murder and police arrest Jack's longtime friend, an ex-cop, Jack's plans quickly change. Set in New York City and in Maine.
- Pretty Dead (2003): McMorrow investigates the murder of a woman with ties to a very wealthy and prominent Boston family -- who might have buried their dirty secrets with the victim.
- Home Body (2004): McMorrow -- now working as a copywriter for the Bangor Clarion and living in a small town called Propsperity -- tries to help a runaway teen and ends up delving into the dark underworld of street teens.
- Damaged Goods (2010): Jack, his wife (a social worker), and their young daughter become the target of a deranged satanist after his wife's inquiry into a child abuse case; and, McMorrow pursues a story involving a woman whose newspaper ad offers companionship for hire.
- Port City Shakedown: A Brandon Blake Mystery (2009): First in a new series. Set in and around the dark waterfront of Portland, Maine. Blake is a loner who lives on his old wooden cruiser.
BRACE, Gerald W.
- The Islands (1936): Set in Maine.
BRADLEY, Mary Hastings
- Nice People Murder (1952): A steel magnate is murdered before he can cut his philandering wife out of his will. An astute young attorney and his friend, Korean War vet Capt. Cal Kent, look beyond the obvious to find the murderer. Set on the rocky coast of Maine.
BRAHMS, Ann
- The Burying Point (1991): Romantic suspense. A man watched Callie all evening long as if he knew her. That night her roommate was murdered and her nightmare began. She fled to a remote island to hide but it was also the perfect place for another murder.
- Cloak of Darkness (1992): Romantic suspense, set in Maine.
- Run for Your Life (1993): Romantic suspense, set in Maine.
BREAN, Herbert
- The Clock Strikes 13 (1952): Mystery/suspense, set Maine. When murder strikes amongst ten people trapped on an island that has been desolated by a weapon more fearful than the atom bomb, the threat of extinction hangs over them all. Experimental bacteriological warfare.
BRETTON, Barbara
- At Last (2000): Romance. Manhattan veterinarian Gracie Taylor returns to her hometown of Idle Point, Maine, only to find that the man she loved and left on the night of their planned elopment has returned, too. Highlights the destructive side of obsessive love on innocent future generations.
- A Soft Place to Fall (2001): Romance. To the tiny town of Shelter Rock Cove, Maine, Annie and Kevin Galloway seem to have the perfect marriage. But when Kevin dies suddenly, Annie is left with bittersweet memories, never-fulfilled dreams of children and artistic fame, and massive debt from Kevin's secret gambling addiction.
BROOKS, Noah
- Tales of the Maine Coast (1894): Short story collection. 271 pp.
BROWN, Amy Belden
- Island Summer Love (1992): Romance. Planning her high-society wedding, she meets a rugged lobsterman. A vacation from the pressures of her upcoming wedding brings Allison more entanglements than she's ever known.
BROWN, Gregory
- The Lowering Days (2021): Debut novel ("As a novelist, he's half Barry Lopez, half Louise Erdrich"). Growing up near the Penobscot River of 1980s Maine, three brothers from the Penobscot Nation find their childhood innocence shattered by a nearby paper mill fire that divides their community.
BROWN, Jason
- Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work (2007): A collection of haunting short stories set in fictional Vaughan, a small town on the Kennebec River in Maine.
BRYERS, Paul
- The Prayer of the Bone (1998): Jessica arrives in Bridgeport, Maine, from Oxford to collect the remains of her little sister, who had been tracing their family's native American roots, and to collect her nine-year-old daughter. What she finds is a police investigation that is finding its way through tribal traditions and shape-shifting shamans.
BULLARD, Laura Curtis
- Now-A-Day (1854): Tells the story of adolescent Esther Hastings who accepts a teaching position in the Aroostook County backwoods when her father's death leaves her and her stepmother in poverty. Another key part of the plot is set in Belfast.
- Christine, or Woman's Trials and Triumphs (1856): The first novel to promote every demand of the women's movement. Christine is a women's right's lecturer who founds a women's employment bureau. One of her trials is being duped by her father and aunt who imprison her in the Augusta Mental Asylum.
BURLEIGH, Donald Q.
- The Kristiana Killers (1937): Mystery. Set in Maine and Canada.
BURNHAM, Clara Louise
- The Opened Shutters (1906): The story of a summer romance on Casco Bay, Maine, espousing Christian Science teachings. Two films (in 1914 and 1921) were based on the book.
BURNHAM, R.P.
- On a Darkling Plain (2005): Samuel Jellerson, 56 and forced into early retirement, is walking in the woods behind the family farm in Maine one fall day when he witnesses a priest molesting a boy.
- Envious Shadows (2005): A novel dealing with the integration of mentally-ill halfway house residents back into society, racism, infidelity, and the struggle to survive economically in a small Maine town.
BUSHNELL, Adelyn
- Tide-Rode (1947): A sea-faring novel of Maine in the 1870s, by a Maine actor and author and playwright.
BUSHNELL, Agnes
The Wilson and Wilder mystery series is set in Portland, Maine.- Shadow Dance: A Womansleuth Mystery (1989): A simple job takes Johanna into life she's been trying to forget, peopled with Russian emigres and dissidents.
- Death by Crystal (1992): A Johannah Wilder mystery (lesbian sleuth). Well-plotted mystery, evokes the romance of Maine (Portland area) and addresses underlying serious issues of government power and individual freedom.
BUTLER, Marcia
- Oslo, Maine (2021): A pregnant moose walks into a rural Maine town called Oslo, looking for food and a place to deliver her calf. Just as when strangers run into each other on the street, the movement of the moose determines the fate of three families in the town as they grapple with trauma, marriage, ambition, and their fraught relationship with the natural world. A complicated page-turner of a story, and though the pace is breezy, the grappling with interpersonal and interspecies relationships is serious. "The land will break your heart and heal it" is the quote on the cover.
C-D
CALDWELL, Erskine
- Midsummer Passion & Other Tales of Maine Cussedness (1990): Introduction by Upton Birnie Brady; edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg.
CALIN, Anne
- A Multitude of Shadows (Terror and Violence in Maine) (1966): Gothic suspense. Alexandra, married to a famous painter, Phillip Barton, struggles to reclaim her new husband from the shadows of the past -- the tragic death of his first wife while walking a treacherous path.
CAMERON, Dana
- Site Unseen: An Emma Fielding Mystery (2002): Brilliant, dedicated, and driven, archaeologist Emma Fielding finds things that have been lost for hundreds of years, and she's very, very good at it. A soon-to-be-tenured professor of archaeology, she has recently unearthed evidence of a 17th-century coastal Maine settlement that predates Jamestown, one of the most significant archaeological finds in years. But the dead body that accompanies it -- a corpse washed ashore near the site -- has embroiled Emma and her students in a different kind of exploration. 352 pages
CAPUTO, Philip
- The Voyage (1999): Historical adventure/mystery. At the turn of the century, a Maine fisherman sends his three sons to sea in June, with orders not to return before September. A woman descendant of the family recounts the boys' adventure in their schooner -- storms, shipwreck, murder --as well as the father's motive and the mystery of the mother's absence. 415 pp.
CAREY, Lisa
- In the Country of the Young (2000): A haunting tale of a man, who while grieving the loss of his twin sister, is visited by the ghost of a young Irishwoman who died in a shipwreck off the coast of Maine in 1848. On All Hallows' Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into the home of tortured artist Oisin MacDara, who lives in self-imposed exile on Tiranogue Island, by a candle flickering in the window. It is the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended in a shipwreck on the island's shore more than a century earlier.
- Love in the Asylum (2004): A manic-depressive writer and a self-deluding junkie find love and salvation in a mental hospital. Set in small-town Maine.
CARPENTER, William
- The Wooden Nickel: A Novel (2002): Lucky Lunt is a third-generation lobsterman, but his world is changing too fast for him. His wife has begun selling sea-glass sculptures to tourists, his daughter is college-bound and his son has turned angry and lawless. Lucky's own heart is failing him, too, so much that he must hire a female deckhand, the not-quite-divorced wife of the local lobster wholesaler. In short order, Lucky is in a lobster war and has kicked over all the rules: family, health, finance, even the rules of the sea.
CARROLL, Gladys Hasty
- Few Foolish Ones (1935): Novel about four southern Maine families during the period 1870 to 1930.
- As the Earth Turns (1939): Portrayal of Maine rural life in the 1920s of one family, their children, and the decisions they make.
- Dunnybrook (1943): Fictional history and genealogy of the Emery's Bridge area of South Berwick.
- West of the Hill (1949): Heart-warming novel about Maine people two generations ago, simple Americans, the salt of the earth; and their experiences
- One White Star (1954): A novel concerned with the fundamental relationship that exists between man and God and which features a normal American woman, aged 39 in 1954. Set in Maine.
- Sing Out the Glory (1957): Romance of Althea and Owen, set in a Maine valley town.
- The Light Here Kindled (1967): A multigenerational story that starts and ends in an old Maine farmhouse.
CASEY, Dorothy
- Leaving Locke Horn (1986): North Carolina author's first novel, set in the town of Locke Horn, Maine, tells the story of Evelyn Hungerford, her gifted artist brother Forrest, Ruth Benson who is in love with Forrest, their parents, and their families and friends as they go about their lives.
CATES, Kimberly
- Lighthouse Cove (2002): On assignment, a photographer goes to the coast of Maine to photograph a lighthouse and is confronted with an old love.
CATHCART, Dwight
- Ceremonies (2002): Novel inspired by the 1984 murder of Charles Howard in Maine, and what took place in gay and lesbian communities after the crime.
CECLIIONE, Michael
- Muse (1998): When actress Johanna Brady goes to Maine, where her new love, novelist Matt Lang, is writing his next best-selling thriller, she finds herself playing the role of her life as he becomes a secretive, irritable stranger, and Johanna descends into a world of betrayal, madness, and cold-blooded murder.
CHAMBERS, Galen
- Lake Beatrice Factors (1998): Novel takes place at a bass fishing lake in Bridgton, Maine.
CHANLER, William
- Son of Terror: Frankenstein Continued (2017): Horror Romance. The ongoing story of Victor Frankenstein's immortal monster, focusing on his fascination with 21-year-old Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley's maiden name), an investigative journalist summering on an island in Maine. Though the story weaves through more than two centuries of the monster's life -- beginning where the original Frankenstein novel ended, with the monster drifting away on an iceberg in the Arctic -- most of the book is set in present-day Maine.
CHAPMAN, Janet
- Charming the Highlander (2003): First Highlander Time Travel Romance, set in fictional Pine Creek, Maine. When a plane crash strands brilliant scientist Grace Sutter on an icy mountaintop in Maine, she finds herself alone in the wilderness with the only other surviving passenger, Greylen MacKeage, a sexy, medieval warrior who's been tossed through time to find the woman he's destined to love.
- Loving the Highlander (2003): Second Highlander Time Travel Romance, set in Pine Creek, Maine. 'In 1200 AD during a clan battle in the Scottish Highlands, the Druid wizard Father Daar casts a spell that accidentally sends several MacBain and MacKeage warriors into the twenty-first century to include the MacKeage brothers Greylen and Morgan. During the chaos of time transformation, Daar lost his magical staff in a Maine pond. Since arriving and settling in their new century, Greylen, now known as Michael, has married his modern day lover.' [from Harriet Klausner review]
- Wedding the Highlander (2003): Third Highlander Time Travel Romance, set in fictional Pine Creek, Maine. Talented surgeon Libby Hart is fleeing to Pine Creek, Maine, when her car spins out of control and crashes into a pond. She is rescued by Michael MacBain, a medieval highlander trapped in the modern world by a wizard's spell.
- The Seductive Impostor (2004): The first in a dazzling duo of romances featuring two sisters from the ruggedly beautiful Maine coast (fictional Puffin Harbor) and the men who sweep them away. This one features Rachel Foster.
- Tempting the Highlander (2004): Fourth Highlander Time Travel Romance, set in fictional Pine Creek, Maine. Catherine Daniels arrives in Pine Creek at just the right time for Robbie MacBain. She is on the run from her ex-husband, and Robbie is a sexy, single foster parent who needs a housekeeper while he travels back in time to medieval Scotland.
- The Dangerous Protector (2005): Second in a duo of sister romances, set in fictional Puffin Harbor, Maine. Duncan Ross tries to wiggle his way into Willow Foster's heart -- assuming he can get past the granite wall she's erected around herself.
- Only With a Highlander (2005): Fifth Highlander Time Travel Romance, set in fictional Pine Creek, Maine. Features Winter MacKeage.
CHASE, Mary Ellen
- Uplands (1927): Set in Maine.
- Mary Peters (1934): Story of a Maine seafaring family.
- Silas Crockett (1935): The story of 4 generations of a Maine seafaring family, from young clipper captain to would-be physician who goes to work in herring factory during Great Depression.
- Windswept (1941): Three generations of family life on the Maine coast.
- Mary Peters (1945): A young Maine woman, reared aboard a ship, moves ashore and lives through the decline of the days of sail.
- The Edge of Darkness (1957): Set in Maine, the story develops around the death of Sarah Holt, the matriarch of a small coastal village.
- The Lovely Ambition (1960): A Wesleyan parson who at the turn of the century brings his wife and three children from England when he takes over a Methodist church in downeast Maine.
- A Journey to Boston (1965)
CHEE, Alexander
- Edinburgh (2001): Gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, a Korean-American child (Fee) growing up in Maine sings in a professional boys' choir. When the choir director molests several boys in the choir, Fee and his friends are consumed by grief, shame, and pain that endure long after the choir director is arrested and imprisoned for his crimes. Years later, as Fee tries to move forward in his life, he meets a student named Warden -- the choir director's son, who knows nothing of his father's heinous crimes -- and is left with no choice but to confront the demons and ghosts of his brutal past. Debut novel. Winner of the Michener/Copernicus Society Prize.
CHILD, Lee
- Persuader (2003): The seventh Jack Reacher novel, set at Richard Beck's home in Abbot, Maine.
CHUTE, Carolyn
The first four books are about the small rural town of Egypt, Maine:- The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1986): The author's first novel, she writes of the olden days and the poverty in Egypt, Maine.
- Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (1988): The main character runs the only going business around so by blood or money, he's pretty much got everybody by the neck. Novel examines the social climate of small town Maine.
- Merry Men (1994): Third in the series. Presents thirty years in the lives of four main characters: the town's gravedigger, its road commissioner, a nob photographer, and a teenage girl.
- Snow Man (1999): Novel about a senator's wife and daughter held hostage by a wounded ultra-right wing terrorist from Maine wanted for the murder of another senator.
- The Recipe for Revolution (2020): In rural Maine, Gordon St. Onge, known as "The Prophet,” presides over his controversial Settlement, a place rumored to be a cult, where his many wives and children live off the grid and off the land. Out in greater America, Bruce Hummer, the aging CEO of a multinational corporation, lays off workers by the thousands. Meanwhile, the newest member of the Settlement, fifteen-year-old Brianna, is fired up and ready for change. From Kirkus: "Chute makes it brutally clear that until the left gets over its distaste for 'rednecks' and poor whites who refuse to be manipulated by racists, the same people will keep running the world."
CHUTE, Patricia
- Castine (1987): Romance. After California's hectic trendiness palls on them, writer Cassie Randall and her boyfriend, pop psychologist Greg Wier, settle in quaint Castine, Maine, where she meets a Czechoslovakian chaplain of Castine's Maine Maritime Academy.
CHUTE, Virginia
- The Remembrances of Marietta Lufford (2008): Historical novel set in 17th century England and in the colonial province of Maine.
- A daughter of Francis Martin (2013): (Not sure whether this is set in Maine?)
CLAREY, Joanne
- Twisted Truth (2005): Set in Cumberland County, Maine, and starring forensic psychologist Christie McMorrow and detective Bill Drummond.
- Skinned (2007), based on her research into the child trafficking trade. Set in Cumberland County, Maine, and starring forensic psychologist Christie McMorrow and detective Bill Drummond.
CLARK, A(rley) Carman
- The Maine Mulch Murder (2001): While bagging sawdust for mulching her strawberries, Amy Creighton uncovers the body of a young man who had come to rural Granton, Maine to locate his birth parents.
CLARK, Bruce
- Tales of Maritime Maine: The Vanished Years of the Maine Coast Brought to Life in Three Absorbing Tales (1987): Includes Anthony's Luck; The Sisters' Song; and The Last of the Coastermen. Three dramatic stories, all set in a time when the waters off the coast of Maine were dotted with the sails of working vessels, worked by men whose lives depended on the sea, and of their struggles with its capriciousness and its ruthlessness. 165 pp.
CLARK, William M.
- Tales of Cedar River (1961): Short Stories set in fictional Cedar River, Maine.
- The Hills of Maine and Other Stories (1989): More stories of Cedar River folk.
CLEAVES, Charles Poole
- A Case of Sardines: A Story of the Maine Coast (1904)
CLEMENT, Bettye Taylor
- Second Chances (2007). Debut novel. Gwen ends an affair and moves to a Maine island with her widowed mother.
COATSWORTH, Elizabeth
- Here I Stay: A Maine Novel (1938): Set in the early 1800s. Story of courageous young Margaret Winslow, who chose to face life alone, against almost unbelievable odds, when she decided to stay at her home on Horn Pond in Maine rather than push westward to the Ohio country in the Western Reserve.
COLBERT, Jaimee Wriston
- Climbing the God Tree: A Novel in Stories (1998): Winner of the 1997 Willa Cather Fiction Prize. In a prison in Maine, a woman art therapist begins a relationship with a convict serving time for murder. Her marriage is strained because her husband is a womanizer and she welcomes the convict's attention, but what if he falls in love with her? 208 pp.
COLEMAN, Lynn A.
- Harbor Hopes (2010): Christian romance. The Squabbin Bay locals meet visitors to Maine: Wayne is intimidated by Dena, a world-traveling photographer. Randi is afraid to trust Jordan, an apprentice artist. Jess is being sued by Krispin, a tourist she hit with her boat. Will rocky beginnings lead to mayhem or romance?
COLWELL, Miriam
- Wind off the Water (1945): A realistic view of a coastal Maine village.
- Day of the Trumpet (1947): Novel based on Colwell's ancestors' experience as one of the first Maine lobster families.
- Young (1955/1998): Twenty-four hours in the lives of two young women who have just graduated from high school, set in a small Maine coastal town during the 1950s.
- Contentment Cove (2006): Novel set in a small coastal Maine town, during one summer, from the point of view of three women: : a somewhat naive and romantic native in her 20s who runs the local drugstore; a worldly and jaded artist in her 40s who was among the first outsiders to move to the island; and a snobby outsider in her early 60s, lately from Texas, who with her husband bought a summer house three years ago and immediately renovated it.
COMBE, Sharon
- Caly (1986): Horror. The mansion was cold and eerie, deliberately hidden by a thick forest and left to decay in darkness. But if they expected peace and quiet, they had come to the wrong place. In their dream house in Maine, their worst nightmates come true.
CONANT, Susan
- Black Ribbon (1995): Mystery. Detective Holly Winter thinks a week at Waggin' Tail, a camp for canines in the scenic Maine woods, will be a vacation in pet heaven. When a dog owner turns up dead in a freak accident, and the suspect is the victim's own dog, Holly suspects a frame-up.
- Creature Discomforts (2001): When Holly Winter awakens clinging to a boulder on the side of a cliff in Acadia National Park, she doesn't recognize her own beloved Malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi. She follows clues back to the guest house of a woman surrounded by an eccentric band of preservationists. Soon, Holly finds out that she is about to become a killer's next victim.
CONLEY, Susan
- Landslide: A Novel (2021): After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after her teenage boys alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight; her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day; her eldest, Charlie, is preoccupied with a new girlfriend; and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn't as stable as she once believed. How can she protect this life she loves, this household, this family? With poise and beauty, the novel ushers us into a modern household where, for a family at odds, Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales mingle to become a kind of love language.
CONNOLLY, John
- Dark Hollow (2001): Thriller. Charlie 'Bird' Parker returns in a moody thriller set in the beautifully evoked Maine woods where Bird has come to lick his wounds and recover from the murder of his wife and daughter explored in a previous book, Every Dead Thing.
- The Killing Kind (2001): Thriller. When a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of a religious community that disappeared almost forty years earlier, private detective Charlie Parker, hired to investigate the circumstances of her death, realises that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace Peltier are part of the same mystery, one that has its roots in her family history and the origins of the shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship.
- Bad Men (2004): Thriller set on an island ('Sanctuary') in Maine's Casco Bay. Elements are an ancient massacre, a clannish populace, a 7-foot 2-inch sheriff and a woman hoping to escape a hideous past, and revenge.
- The Black Angel (2005): Investigating the disappearance of a young prostitute, Charlie Parker encounters the myth of an object known as the Black Angel. Story partly set in Maine.
- The Unquiet: A Thriller (2007): Charlie Parker thriller set in Maine.
- The Whisperers: A Thriller (2010): Charlie Parker thriller, set on the border between Maine and Canada where a dangerous smuggling operation is taking place, run by a group of disenchanted former soldiers, newly returned from Iraq.
COOK, Thomas H.
- Places in the Dark (2001): Thriller. In autumn of 1937, a mysterious woman appears in the sleepy little seaside village of Port Alma, Maine, and changes the lives of two brothers forever.
COOLIDGE, Erwin L.
- A Maine Girl: A Realistic Romance of Down East (1892)
COOMER, Joe
- Pocketful of Names (2005): Set on a rocky Maine island, this novel features 34-year-old Hannah Bryant, a successful artist who relishes her seclusion and privacy, and her relationships with her great-uncle, half-sister, and others.
COONEY, Ellen
- Gun Ball Hill (2004): Historical fiction. In 1774, friends and relatives of the Mowlan family of Tibbetston, Maine, are shattered by a brutal murder that is rooted not only in personal animosity but also in the growing unrest in the American colonies.
COPELAND, Lori, and Angela Elwell Hunt
Heavenly Daze series set on a Maine island:
- The Island Of Heavenly Daze (2000): To a casual visitor, the island of Heavenly Daze is just like a dozen others off the coast of Maine. It is filled with graceful Victorian mansions, carpeted with grey cobblestones and bright wild flowers, and populated by sturdy, hard- working folks -- most of whom are unaware that the island is inhabited, according to divine decree, by angels. Unexpected hijinks and heart-warming results occur when mortals and immortals cross paths.
- Grace In Autumn (2001): As the townspeople prepare for winter, sacks of undeliverable mail are pouring in with different requests but the same salutation: Dear Angel. When news of the letters spread, the townspeople divide over what to do. Will the angels that watch over Heavenly Daze be able to help?
- A Warmth in Winter (2002): Heart-warming Christmas novel. Story centers on Vernie Bidderman, owner of Mooseleuk Mercantile, and Salt Gribbon, lighthouse operator, who despite the vast differences in their struggles are being taught about the ultimate failure and frustration of self-reliance.
COREY, Deborah Joy
- The Skating Pond (2003): Set in an island village off the Maine coast. A coming-of-age story of a young woman who is orphaned, has an affair with an older man, marries a local boy, and is faced with a difficult decision when her former lover reappears. Author lives in Castine.
COST, M. Langdon
- Mainely Power (2002): Mystery set in Brunswick, Maine. Concerns the murder of a security supervisor at a power plant. ebook.
COUGHLIN, Thomas E.
- Maggie May's Diary (1998): The discovery of a diary she wrote 18 years ago, when she was fifteen, leads Maggie May to a new awareness of who she is and what she values. Romance played out in Bedford and Manchester, New Hampshire, and in the beach communities (Wells) of Maine.
- Brian Kelly: Route 1 (2001): Coming-of-age novel. Brian Kelly is leading a normal teenage life in Lowell, Mass., when his mother suddenly uproots them both to live in the seaside communities of Wells and Kennebunkport, Maine. In the landscape of his new home, Brian falls in love for the first time with the clever, sharp-tongued Maggie May Keogh. Sequel to Maggie May's Diary.
- Miss O'Malley's Maine Summer (2007): A young Irish woman spends the summer working in a restaurant near Wells Beach.
COULTER, Catherine
- Riptide (2000): Rebecca Matlock is a speech writer for the governor of New York when she receives menacing phone calls from a stranger who refers to himself as her boyfriend and who warns her that he will kill the governor. When the police fail to protect her or even believe her, she seeks refuge in Riptide, an isolated community on the Maine coast, where her guardian angel appears, and this suspense thriller takes some dramatic twists and turns.
COURSEN, Herbert R.
- The Thirteen Greatest Love Songs (1999): Richard Croft, professor and poet at a small Maine college, is suspected of murder.
- Country Matters (2006): Ben Travers thinks about his past 'as he drives the potholed roads of Maine.'
CRAWFORD, F[rancis] Marion
- Love in Idleness: A Tale of Bar Harbour (1894): Classic of Mt. Desert Island in the Gilded Age.
CRONIN, Justin
- The Summer Guest (2004): A dying financier arrives at a remote Maine fishing camp with a wish for one last day of sport -- and an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him.
CROSSMAN, David A.
- A Show of Hands: A Maine Island Mystery (1997): Mystery. Retired Intelligence Agent Winston Crisp has forsaken adventure and is comfortably settled on peaceful Penobscot Island off the Maine Coast, that is until the body of a young woman turns up.
- The Dead of Winter (1999): A murder mystery set on Penobscot Island that rocks the peaceful Maine coastal community.
CUMMINGS, Rebecca
- Kaisa Kilponen (1985): Stories about Maine's Finnish community.
- Turnip Pie, and Other Stories (1986): Stories about Maine's Finnish community.
CURRIE Jr, Ron
- Everything Matters! (2009): A blend of alternative history, sci-fi, and family saga. Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows: The world will end when he is 36. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation.
DAILEY, Janet
- Summer Mahogany: Maine (1987): Romance. Harlequin Americana series.
DALY, Elizabeth
- Unexpected Night: A Henry Gamadge Mystery (1940): Mystery. First novel. It was to have been just a quiet few days of golf and rest for bibliophile Gamadge, but the script suddenly changed when young Amberly Cowden's body was found at the base of a cliff.
- Deadly Nightshade (1940): Mystery. Author's second novel. Urbane New Yorker Henry Gamadge, author and bibliophile, travels to Maine to help to solve children's deaths by poisoning caused by a wild flower.
DANIELS, Jan
- Bride for Arundel (1966): Mystery story of a young couple who move to the family home in Maine, published in Great Britain and written by a British author.
DANTZ, William R. (AKA W. Rodman Philbrick)
- Pulse (1990): Thriller In the remote frozen hills of Maine, a top group of scientists gather under a cloak of secrecy. A brilliant young female pathologist investigates the horrifying situation.
D'AVANZO, Charlene
- Cold Blood, Hot Sea (Mara Tusconi Mystery Series) (2016): "Charlene D'Avanzo is a marine ecologist who has written a first crime novel that makes her scientific specialty exciting. The central character, Mara Tusconi, is a Maine oceanographer who thinks there's something fishy ... about the death of a colleague on board a research ship" (from the Toronto Star)
DAVIS, Kathryn
- The Walking Tour (1999): Looking back on a fatal accident in Wales, a daughter in the 21st century pieces together the events leading up to her mother's death. Susan lives alone in her parents' ruined house near the coast of Maine, addressing us from a future in which nature itself has been drastically transformed, a future providing an unusual perspective on the way we live now. Assisted by court transcripts, her mother's letters, photographs, a notebook computer containing her mother's friend's journal, and a menacing young vagrant named Monkey, Susan ultimately identifies the moral predicament at the heart of her parents' lives and work.
DAVIS, Kathryn Ellen
- Polyester Pride (2002): Debut novel about Lisa Jones, a poor Washington County clam digger married to an abusive, unfaithful alcoholic. She finds a better life for herself, her own self-worth, and a stronger relationship with Debbie, an old friend whose love makes Lisa's bravery possible.
DAVIS, Mildred and Katherine Roome
- Murder in Maine: The Avenging of Nevah Wright (2006): First Murder in Maine novel.
- Murder in Maine: The Fly Man Murders (2007): The story of a small Maine community terrorized by a serial child murderer. Told by three narrators: An abandoned three-year-old child, a homeless amnesiac; and an abused boy.
- Murder in Maine: The Butterfly Effect (2008): As friends gather for a holiday weekend party, they are haunted by the memory of a child's death twenty years earlier.
DAVIS, Owen
- Icebound (1923): A comedic play of Maine family life in Veazie. Won Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
DAVIS, Susan Page and Megan Elaine
- Mainely Mysteries: Homicide at Blue Heron Lake/Treasure at Blue Heron Lake/Impostors at Blue Heron Lake (2010): Christian romance and mystery fiction - 3 stories set at fictional Blue Heron Lake in Maine. When journalist Emily Gray returns to the lakeside town of Baxter, Maine, to prepare her family’s island cottage for sale, she soon finds herself reporting on, and trying to solve, a trio of murders in the deceptively quiet little town.
DAY, Holman F.
- The Red Lane, a Romance of the Border (1912): Historical novel of the border area between Maine and Canada.
- Leadbetter's Luck (1923): Lumbering in Misery Gore. This is one of many novels with Maine background by this author.
DEAN, Robert George
- Affair at Lover's Leap (1953; also as Death at Lover's Leap): Mystery featuring New York hard-boiled detective Tony Hunter in Maine.
DE BLASIS, Celeste
- The Night Child (1975): Suspense. When Brandy accepts a teaching job with a psychologically disturbed child, strange things begin happening in the huge Grey Mansion in Maine.
DEARBORN, Dawn A.
- Manchester (1999): Romantic murder mystery. Romance blossoms when Carrie Blake hires Jake to do some repairs on her new home in small town Manchester, Maine, where she moves from Massachusetts after her long-term engagement to Robert is broken. Her sudden move adds spice to her life, in the form of fulfillment, romance and even intrigue. Could it now include murder? 266 pp.
DELILLO, Don
- Players (1978): Lyle and Pammy Wynant were bored with their lives until Lyle witnesses a Wall Steet murder and decides to play urban guerrilla and Pammy runs off to Maine with her favorite odd couple.
DELINSKY, Barbara
- The Real Thing (1986): After breaking her leg, aerobics instructor Deirdre Joyce was fit company for no one. Especially not for equally disgruntled Neil Hersey, whose reputation as a lawyer had been unjustly tarnished. Craving solitude, both turned to Victoria Lesser -- friend, owner of a remote island, and cagey matchmaker. Finding themselves stranded together off the coast of Maine, the volatile couple vowed revenge. But t hen friction kindled a fire, and neither captive wanted to escape Victoria's tender trap.
- Montana Man (1989; Harlequin Temptation): Lily wanted more than the shallow life she'd been leading, so she packed up her baby daughter and headed off to safety and a new start -- until a blizzard stopped her and she had to ask a stranger for help. The man in the Stetson was their only chance for survival in the snowbound car. He offered refuge, but would this leave her wanting more? Set in Maine?
- Within Reach (1992): Spending time at their new Maine vacation home was supposed to rejuvenate their marriage. Instead Danica finds herself spending all of her time either alone or with her new neighbor, Michael, while her husband stays behind in Boston, tending to his career.
- For My Daughters (1995): Caroline, Annette, and Leah St. Clair have spent their lives trying to escape the legacy of their wealthy, social-climbing mother, Virginia, who had little time and even less feeling for her daughters.
- Flirting with Pete (2003): Set in the fictitious town of Little Falls, Maine, and in Boston. When Pete, the father Casey Ellis never knew, dies, he leaves Casey his townhouse on Boston's posh Beacon Hill. Casey plans to sell the townhouse until she visits and becomes intrigued by the spectacular hidden garden and its mysterious gardener, and by a journal in the desk detailing the harrowing tale of a young woman named Jenny Clyde.
- The Summer I Dared (2004): Set off the coast of Maine, this is the story of three lives irrevocably changed by a single tragic accident.
- Facets (2007): Setting ranges from the glitz of New York to the elitism of Boston to the nitty-gritty of the (fictional) small Maine mining town of Timiny Cove.
DEMARCO, Tom
- Dark Harbor House (2001): A simple little love story, woven with tantilizing details of an old mansion's not totally respectable history, and a hint of gentle satire added, create this novel which the author describes as a gentle coming-of-age story that takes place in the late 1940s on an island off the coast of Maine.
- Lieutenant America and Miss Apple Pie (2002): Twelve short stories, most set in Maine.
DENNISON, George
- Shawno (1984): Novella about the risks of bringing the city into the country and of exposing the domestic to the wild. The story of a wonderful and helpful dog as told through a human narrator. Set in Maine.
- Luisa Domic (1985): A novel of contemporary good and evil -- of family life and the nurturing spirit invaded by political terror and the specter of mass murder. The story is set against the golden days of October in rural Maine. To the home of a strong couple with three remarkable children come a composer and a political activist who is escorting a beautiful woman (Luisa Domic), a victim of Chilean terror.
DENT, Lester (AKA Kenneth Robeson)
- The Squeaking Goblins (1969): One of the Doc Savage series. This story first appeared in the August 1934 issue of Doc Savage Magazine. Doc and his aides become involved in Maine with the heirs of pirate treasure and a supposed ghost of a eighteenth-century backwoods sharpshooter.
- Up From Earth's Center (1990): Appeared in the last issue of Doc Savage Magazine (Summer 1949), and published as part of Doc Savage Omnibus #13. Doc and his aides investigate a Maine cave which supposedly leads into the earth to Hell itself, accompanied by a strange man who claims to be a minor demon who had escaped therefrom.
DEVERAUX, Jude
- The Summerhouse (2001): Three best friends, all with the same birthday, are about to turn forty. They plan to share this occasion together at a summerhouse in Maine, but none of them expects the gift that awaits them at the summerhouse: the chance for each of them to relive the past.
DEVEREUX, George H.
- Sam Shirk: A Tale of the Woods of Maine (1871)
DIBNER, Martin
- Ransom Run (1977): Deep in the wilds of the Maine woods, two young men are playing out a bizarre and deadly game. One of them is a reckless, unpredictable psychopath, bent on kidnaping, but capable of murder.
DICKSON, Athol
- The Cure (2007): Riley Keep, former missionary, now wanders the streets, a ghost of his former self. He lost his wife, daughter, and faith in the aftermath of a single act of wickedness, and forgiveness seems unattainable. But then, in desperation, he sets out for (fictional) Dublin, Maine, a small coastal town where, rumor has it, miracles are happening. Published by Bethany House.
- Winter Haven (2009): Christian fction. Thirteen years ago, Siggy Gamble ran away from home, never to be found -- until his body washes ashore on the tiny island of Winter Haven off the coast of Maine. Now his sister, Vera, travels north to claim the body, and finds herself tangled in the many secrets haunting the island: tales of lost colonies, of a witch bent on revenge, and of a towering forest where no creature dares to live.
DICKSON, Margaret
- Octavia's Hill (1985): Mystery. Octavia's Hill was their legacy. Here Luther Perry had brought the first Octavia as a bride. But there was a darker side to Luther. He would leave a brutal and indelible stamp on the second Octavia, his daughter, and on his great granddaughter, Tave. Set in rural Maine.
- Maddy's Song (1985): Tells the story of Maddy Dow, a brilliant pianist, her family, and their life in the small town of Freedom, Maine.
- Cliff Walk (1987): Marriage of a beautiful but insecure actress and brilliant mathematician is threatened by dark figures from the past.
DINSMORE, Elsie O'Dell
- Jerusha's Tree (2006): Mystery, partly set in 20th-century Trafton Harbor, Maine. Begins with the story of three orphans indentured from Christ's Hospital, London, to John Silas and his wife Prudence, all bound for 17th-century Massachusetts, and ends with that of their descendent, Content Cushing, in 20th-century Trafton Harbor, Maine.
DISNEY, Doris Miles
- Find the Woman (1962): A Jeff DiMarco mystery, set partly in Connecticut and partly in Maine.
- Voice from the Grave (1968): Set in the Maine backwoods. Adele, Howie's doting and indulgent mother, refused to believe her only son was dead - even when the wreckage of the canoe was found.
DOBYNS, Stephen
- A Boat Off the Coast (1987): Novel of Maine, lobstermen, a Vietnam veteran, and a cocaine deal off the coast.
DODD, Christina
- Danger in a Red Dress (2009): A riveting family drama unfolds in a gothic mansion on the coast of Maine and in Texas in this suspense novel of secrets and lies.
DODGE, Andrew Ian
- Mainely Romance (2001; iUniverse book): Romance. It was the romance Reginald had always dreamed about, only his dreams were getting darker and darker. His world of brew pubs and vats was suddenly invaded by Cora Cabott of Cabott Cove, Maine. Ale was never as complicated as this!
DOIRON, Paul
Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch mystery/thriller series- The Poacher's Son (2010): Rookie game warden Mike Bowditch has his hands full with fallout from the sale of forest land in Maine's North Woods to an out-of-state developer. His estranged alcoholic father is the prime suspect in the shooting murders of a cop and a timber company executive. Set on the coast and north woods, with 'vivid wilderness scenes.'
- Trespasser (2011): While on patrol one foggy March evening, Bowditch receives a call for help: a woman has reportedly struck a deer on a lonely coast road. But when he arrives, he finds blood in the road but no deer or driver, and the state trooper assigned to the accident appears strangely unconcerned.
- Bad Little Falls (2012): Bowditch has been sent into exile to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard descends, Bowditch is called to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving, half-frozen man has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lost in the storm. But what starts as a rescue mission in the wilderness soon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is a notorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it was his own friend who killed him. Bowditch isn't so sure.
- Massacre Pond (2013): Bowditch is handed a controversial case when five moose are found senselessly slaughtered on the property of animal rights activist Elizabeth Moore, who's been buying up timberland to create a new national park.
- The Bone Orchard (2014)
- The Bear Trap (2014)
- The Precipice (2015)
- Widowmaker (2016)
- Knife Creek (2017)
- Rabid (2018)
- Stay Hidden (2018)
- Backtrack (2019)
- Almost Midnight (2019)
- The Imposter (2020)
- One Last Lie (2020)
- The Caretaker (2021)
- Dead by Dawn: A Novel (2021): 12th in the series.
- Hatchet Island (2022): 13th in the series.
DOMINIC, Randolph
- Pyrrhus Venture (1983; with William Barry): Historical fiction, set in Maine in early 19th century. 406 pp.
DORMAN, Jessica Marie, and Cathy Lynn Bryant
- Lost Love and Shipwrecked (2012): Christian historical fiction/romance. The book begins in 1635 when the Angel Gabriel, which had set sail from Bristol, England, is destroyed in a hurricane just off the coast of Pemaquid, Maine. Madeline Pike, thrown into the sea, is rescued by a handsome young man, and the two develop feelings for each other. Historical figures are intermingled with fictional ones.
DOYLE, Richard
- Volcano (2007): Thriller. The people of La Palma are fighting for their lives as theie island volcano, Cumbre Vieja, erupts; soon ash and lava will annihilate everything, unless they can destroy the volcano first, by planting explosives on the fault line. Three thousand miles away, across the Atlantic Ocean, the peaceful seaport of Goodwill, Maine is getting ready for its annual summer festival, Founder's Day. Everyone is in a carnival mood, but all is not right - freak swells strike the coast, corpses are washed from cemeteries, whales disappear from the sea. A convoy of surfers arrive: their network tells them something big is going to happen in this town any day now....
DUBOIS, Brendan
- Betrayed (2003): Thriller written from left-wing conspiracy POV about an Air Force pilot who went MIA in Vietnam in 1972 but who visits his younger brother in Berwick, ME, in 2003, making his family and himself the targets of mercenaries whose employers need them dead before they reveal the secret behind what happened to the MIAs [adapted from Harriet Klausner review].
DUDLEY, Leroy
- Chimney Pond Tales: Yarns Told by Leroy Dudley (1997): Assembled by Clayton Hall, Jane Thomas, and Elisabeth Hall Harmon. Compilation of the yarns told by Leroy Dudley, guide and spinner of tales at Chimney Pond on Maine's Mount Katahdin, who during the first half of this century enchanted countless outdoor enthusiasts with his stories about Pamola, The Penobscot Indian God of Thunder who protected the mountain.
DULANY, Harris
- Falling (1971): A Vietnam veteran and small-time boxer living with his family's secrets. Set in a seacoast village in Maine in mid-winter.
DUNNETT, Kaitlyn
pseudonym for Kathy Lynn Emerson.
E-F
EASTON, Thomas A.
- Bigfoot Stalks the Coast of Maine and other twisted downeast tales (2000): Hilarious spoof of science fiction and the stereotype of a small Maine town.
EDWARDS, Cassie
- Bold Wolf (1998): Romance. Shanna Sewell was warned by her father to keep away from the Indians who shared the wildly beautiful Maine frontier. But fate brought her face-to-face with Bold Wolf, the proud, sensual son of the Bear People's chief (Penobscots). The encounter left her trembling, with something more than fear.
EDWARDS, Jean
- The Glove (2005): Novel about an Irish-American girl born in Appleton, Maine, who overcomes life's obstacles with her grit, determination, and optimism.
ELDER, Elizabeth
- Watching a River Freeze: Selections from Coastal Maine (2000): Set in the fictional town of Bogs Harbor, Maine, this book is a collection of short works including a novella, seven short stories, a short play, and two essays. Includes a short story about town meeting, 'What Counts in Bogs Harbor.'
ELDRIDGE, George Dyre
- The Millbank Case, a Maine Mystery of To-Day (1905): Turn-of-the-century detective novel set in Maine.
EMERSON, Kathy Lynn
- Kilt Dead (2007): Written under pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett. This is the first in a new series, set in the fictional town of Moosetookalook, Maine, in the present day. Liss MacCrimmon is a professional Scottish dancer sidelined by a knee injury who returns to her home town and walks straight into a murder.
ENDERS, Alexandra
- Bride Island (2007): First novel. Polly Birdwell, a recovering alcoholic, moves to a coastal Maine town and struggles to remake her life and regain custody of her young daughter. (Great Spruce Island is the inspiration for Bride Island.)
ERWIN, Page (pseudonym for Carolyn Page and Ross Erwin)
- Bloodsport at Hiram Bog (2007): First in the Maine Mystery Series. Set in contemporary rural Maine (mid-coast and hill country). When an old ice fisherman hooks the body of a gay philanthropist from beneath the ice on Hiram Bog, long-festering emotional tensions between the locals of Venice, Maine, and 'people from away' are exposed, and it's up to Sam Barrows, Thoreau County Sheriff, to sort things out.
EVANICK, Marcia
- Catch of the Day (2002): Romance. Gwen Fletcher is the only single girl in Misty Harbor, Maine, and is surrounded by potential suitors. However, she's got a restaurant to renovate and the carpenter she's hired seems bent on avoiding her. Gwen needs to convince Daniel Creighton that she's not trying to land a husband. But soon, small town gossip has them together -- and it dawns on Daniel he's fallen for Gwen!
FAHY, Christopher
- One Day in the Short Happy Life of Anna Banana and Other Maine Stories (1988)
- Limerock: Maine Stories (1999)
- Chasing the Sun (2005): Set in the small Maine town of Garfield, this novel focuses on an aging and dyspeptic poet who returns home to receive an honorary degree from Chamberlain College.
FAIRFIELD, Roy P.
- Amanda's Cove: A Maine Coastal Tale (1989): Set in Maine.
FAIRMAN, Paul
- That Girl (1971): A spinoff of the TV series of the same name, with a gothic twist. Anne Marie, thinking she's getting a part in a Maine-based production of Wuthering Heights, instead finds herself among brooding mysterious families who seem to be consciously reliving the lives and plot of the book.
FARR, Caroline (AKA Carter Brown)
- There are probably other gothic novels by Farr set in Maine but I haven't been able to verify their settings.
- Mansion of Evil (1966): Gothic suspense. Lapped by the icy waters of the Gulf of Maine, the mansion of Ravensnest brooded like a specter from the past over the fishing town of Tregoney. To the gloomy ruin of a house came beautiful Diane Montrose on a nursing assignment.
- Witch's Hammer (1967): Gothic suspense. An assignment any woman would envy: 21-year-old Samantha Crawford is sent to Maine to interview Peter Castellano for Secrets magazine. And moreover, the Valentino of the stage has specifically requested that she write his biography.
- Ravensnest (1977): Gothic suspense.
- House of Valhalla (1978): Gothic suspense. Valhalla is a secluded mansion in Maine, the home of the Richters, wealthy refuges from war-torn Germany. It is here that beautiful young Lorna Mitchell is summoned by Johann Richter to help.
FARROW, John Pendleton
- The Romantic Story of David Robertson: Among the Islands, Off and On the Coast of Maine (1898): 283 pp.
FENTON, Elizabeth, aka Elizabeth Fenton Lochner
- The Edge of the Water (2008): Shortly before her fortieth birthday, Molly receives a letter from a daughter she had given up for adoption when she was a teenager. At a point in her life where Molly needs to find answers about her own identity, she sets out across the country to meet her estranged daughter on Ridgeport Island, a small island in Maine.
FERENCIK, Erica
- The River at Night (2017): A high stakes drama set against the harsh beauty Maine's Allagash Wilderness, charting the journey of four female friends as they fight to survive the aftermath of a white water rafting accident, 304 pp.
FICKETT, David
- Nectar (2002): From rural Maine comes a story of love and sacrifice, of family tragedies and obligations, and of the mysterious healing power of bees. This novel crosses three generations of beekeepers to tell the story of Regina Merritt, a determined woman who is forced at a young age to choose between happiness and survival.
FIELD, Rachel
- Time Out of Mind (1947): Novel of the Maine coast as the shipping trade dwindled and the first summer people came. Follows four generations of a Maine shipbuilding family.
FIELD, Taffy
- Short Skirts (1989): Very short stories, some set in Maine in various locales including Portland and Monhegan.
FINDLEY, Timothy
- The Telling of Lies (1986): An iceberg is spotted floating off the coast of Maine on the shores of the beautiful old Aurora Sands Hotel, or ASH as it is fondly called by its aging and wealthy clientele. The ASH has been sold, and the chilling iceberg turns out to be a bad omen; one of the guests, Calder Maddox, an evil pharmaceutical mogul, dies, and foul play is suspected. Though it has all the trimmings of an ordinary mystery -- the discovery of a corpse, the search for clues, a complex plot and the kidnapping of a witness -- this multilayered novel transcends the genre (review from Publisher's Weekly).
FITZPATRICK, Janine
- Serena (1976): Gothic suspense. Serena came to Gresham Island in a violent storm, narrowly escaping drowning in the battering waves. This would be no peaceful haven, but the wild ocean was no more violent than the bitter hatred in the people. Set in Maine?
FLANAGAN, Mary
- Rose Reason (1991): Spans lives, continents and decades and reveals the force of a strictured upbringing and the traps and liberations inherent in obsessive love. Explores working-class Catholic Maine in the 1950s, NYC's Greenwich Village in the 60s, expatriate life on a Greek Island in the 70s, and London toward end of the 80s.
FLINT, Margaret
- That Old Ashburn Place (1936)
- Deacon's Road (1938)
- Breakneck Brook (1939)
- Back O' The Mountain (1940)
- Down the Road A Piece (1941)
- October Fires (1941)
- Enduring Riches (1942)
FLORA, Kate Clark
- Chosen For Death (1994): Mystery. 1st in the Thea Kozak series. Thea travels to Maine to track down the brutal murderer of her adopted sister, Carrie, by retracing Carrie's search for her birth mother.
- Silent Buddy (1995): Novel about drug smuggling and the hardscrabble life in a small Maine town. The hero is a high school biology teacher.
- Liberty or Death (2003): Mystery, 6th in the Thea Kozak series. Thea is literally left standing at the altar when her longtime love, state trooper Andre Lemieux, is kidnapped by a right-wing militia group in a small Maine town.
- Playing God (2006): First in the Portland (ME) Detective Joe Burgess series. "On an icy February night, the body of Steven Pleasant, a prominent Portland, Maine physician, grows cold in his parked Mercedes. All signs point to a john killed by a disgruntled hooker: his pants are unzipped, wallet is gone, and the good doctor has a reputation for entertaining girls in his car. But the deeper Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess digs, the muddier the case becomes. While juggling hookers, wives, ex-wives, fathers, stepfathers, dealers and doctors, a nurse on Pleasant's staff suggests another angle — disgruntled patients."
- The Angel of Knowlton Park (2008) , 2nd in the Joe Burgess series. "What happens when a child from a violent home is not safe in the hands of those assigned to protect him? For Timmy Watts, the answer is death. Timmy is found in a park, brutally stabbed yet carefully wrapped in a blanket. The case goes to DS Joe Burgess."
- Redemption (2012), 3rd in the Joe Burgess series. "Burgess's hopes for a calm Columbus Day picnic slam up against reality when two boys spot a dead body in the water. It's Reggie the Can Man-a damaged, alcoholic veteran who Burgess has tried to patch back together since they returned from Vietnam. Now, Reggie's fight for redemption is over. Then the ME questions Reggie's accidental drowning, giving Burgess one last chance."
- And Grant You Peace (2014), 4th in the Joe Burgess series. ". It began when a boy banged on Burgess's car window. He got a gasped‚ 'Fire at the mosque and someone's in there‚' and a frantic gesture toward the old commercial building that served as a mosque for Portland's Somali community. His dash into the building leads to a very young mother and tiny baby in a locked closet‚ and to his worst nightmare -- investigating the death of another child."
- Led Astray (2016), 5th in the Joe Burgess series. "Responding to a 'shots fired' call at an abandoned warehouse, Detective Joe Burgess realizes his worst nightmare when he finds one rookie officer shot dead and two other officers--one his lieutenant--gravely wounded. With two brother officers near death, Burgess must race the clock to find and arrest the one person angry enough to seek revenge against the Portland police, before the rookie officer's funeral turns into a killing field."
- Death Warmed Over (2017), 8th in the Thea Kozak series. "Arriving to view what will hopefully be her dream home, Thea Kozak finds her real estate agent, Ginger Stevens, tied to a chair, surrounded by fiery space heaters. Just before the woman dies, she utters the indistinct words: Bobby. So long. Safe. Sorry. Then a stranger, claiming to be Ginger's boyfriend, corners Thea, demanding a package that Ginger gave to her, a package Thea never received. Determined to get justice for Ginger, Thea begins her own investigation, ... [though] the Maine police have no idea who real-estate agent Ginger Stevens really is."
- A Child Shall Lead Them (2019), 6th in the Joe Burgess series. "When a jogger discovers the brutalized body of a young girl along a [Portland, Maine hiking] trail, the ever cranky and relentless, Detective Joe Burgess catches the case. With the body lacking head and hands, Burgess and his team face complex challenges as they follow a confusing trail leading to human traffickers exploiting children coming to America as asylum seekers."
FORD, Elaine
- Monkey Bay (1989): Set in a Maine coastal town, novel follows the actions of Marilla Pratt, who abandons her daughter and husband to resume a relationship with Tucker Burchard, causing dramatic changes in the lives of the other two. Years later, the daughter returns and created problems for her parents in this portrait of unhappy lives. Author is University of Maine English professor.
FOSTER, Elizabeth
- Singing Beach (1941): Fiction about Port Hard, Maine.
- Dirigo Point (1944)
FOX, Elaine
- Maybe Baby (2001): Romance. Feeling that Harp Cove, Maine, is the perfect place to live with her little daughter, especially since she had a magical encounter with a mystery man one summer night, single mother Dr. Delaney Poole decides to invent a husband to avoid smalltown gossip, but her plan goes awry when her mystery man materializes in the form of her new landlord. 384 pp.
- If the Slipper Fits (2003): Romance. Anne Sayer and wealthy heir Connor Emory fell in love on Candlewick Island, Maine, years ago, but when Anne broke up with Connor for no apparent reason, he fled, only returning now that his has father died, leaving him to manage the vast family business holdings, including the Sea Bluff Inn on Candlewick Island.
FOY, George
- Challenge (1988): Paul Briggs, once a promising boat designer, has fallen into despair over the disappearance of his wife and daughter. He and his cousin Jack have been contracted by a well-heeled corporate syndicate to design a yacht for the America's Cup competition. For Briggs, this is a chance to save the Maine boatyard that's been in his family for five generations, and the town of French Harbor, with its cast of curmudgeonly Downeast inhabitants. The project takes on even more urgency when Jack is murdered one night by an intruder clearly looking for the yacht plans and test results. Suddenly Paul Briggs is tossed into a maelstrom of murder, sabotage and treachery.
FRANCIS, Robin
- The Shocking Ms. Pilgrim (1989, Harlequin American Romance series): Romance. Libby Pilgrim, staid and sensible college archivist, wouldn't have kidnapped Joshua Noon without a very good reason. And what better reason could there be than the protection of her beloved Maine coastline?
FRAZIER, Amy
- The Secret Baby (1995): Silhouette Bachelors and Babies series. Rugged outdoorsman Dante Nichelini has loved Meg from afar for years and finally has the chance to show it when she returns town. But trouble looms, because the spunky single mom is convinced her that her son has a twin, a baby taken from Meg at birth. Dante is the only man who can help her, but past secrets threaten to shatter the happiness that he and Meg have found. Set in Maine. Author is Maine native.
FROESE, Robert
- The Hour of Blue (1990): A story of global environmental crisis set along the forested coast of Maine.
- The Forgotten Condition of Things (2002): Evelyn Moore, a clinical psychologist recently moved to Maine, and her patient, Sophie Davenport, are the two women at the center of the book, set in a mental hospital. Well-written. 299 pp.
G-H
GAGE, Elizabeth
- The Hourglass (1999): Three children, Kate, Lily and Jordan, forge a friendship based on loneliness and encroaching tragedy. On a moonlit night, the teenagers make a promise to meet at their favorite place, an abandoned golf course in a small Maine town, in fifteen years. When Kate (who narrates the story) returns to the town and the appointed spot, she sets in motion life-changing events.
GARRETT, Annie (pseudonym for Kelli Pryor)
- After You (1998): A man loses his memory in a car accident. All he remembers is the summer he spent in Maine when he was seventeen and the girl he spent it with.
GAUTREAU, Norman G.
- Sea Room (2002): Novel about three generations of a small, close family living on a saltwater farm near the coast of Maine around World War II.
- Island Of First Light (2004). Novel about the men and women of a fictional island off the coast of Maine in the present day, and the expulsion of Acadiens from Nova Scotia in 1754.
GEORGE, Alex
- Setting Free the Kites (2017): A coming-of-age novel set mostly at an amusement park on the coast of Maine, where two young boys find solace in friendship amid their own family tragedies.
GERRITSEN, Tess
- Bloodstream (1998): Lapped by he gentle waters of Locust Lake, the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr. Claire Elliot to shelter her adolescent son, Noah, from the distractions of the big city, and the lingering memory of his father's death. But when a teenaged boy under her care commits an appalling act of violence after Claire stops prescribing a controversial drug to the troubled boy, her plans are shattered. Before she can defend herself, a rash of new teenage violence erupts in Tranquility, forcing Claire to perform increasingly risky emergency procedures. And when one of her patients dies, the town's panic turns to fury. Shaken by accusations, and fearful that Noah is now at risk, Claire desperately searches for a medical cause behind the murderous epidemic. She begins to suspect that the placid waters of Locust lake conceal a disturbing history, and an even greater threat: a shocking conspiracy to manipulate nature, and turn innocents to slaughter.
- Body Double (2004): Fourth in the Jane Rizzoli series set in the Boston area; Maura Isles, a Boston medical examiner, travels to Fox Harbor, Maine, in this book.
GERSON, Noel B.
- The Highwayman (1955): A French spy stirs up all kinds of trouble in early Maine. Classic colonial romance and crime.
GIBSON, Walter
- Crime Over Casco (1946; The Shadow series): Short pulp novel. Involves storm-tossed secrets and a mysterious group of islands off the coast of Maine. A beautiful girl threatens a bewildered young man, against a colorful background of historic islands.
GILBERT, Elizabeth
- Stern Men (2000): The life of a small fishing village located on an island. The rugged coastline and the Penobscot Bay are as present as are the townsfolk in this tale of lobstering, love, and mystery.
GILLILAND, Norman
- Downeast Ledge (2013), a novel set in and around Eastport, ME, and on Mount Desert. "When Amber Waits crosses the river to take a job as a caregiver to dementia sufferer Walter Sterling, ...she finds herself thrown into the troubled lives of Walt, his distracted wife Geneva, and their resentful and reckless daughter Karen. And although he seems unaware of his surroundings, Walt begins to exert a strange influence on Amber and her friends." The author worked at the Jordan Pond House in Seal Harbor when in college.
GOODYEAR, Sarah
- View From A Burning Bridge (2006): Reporter Frances Treadwell moves into her ancestral farmhouse in Maine. After a meteorite crashes in the woods nearby local people suspect Frances might be trouble.
GORDON, Ethel
- Freer's Cove (1972): Gothic suspense. A spellbinding suspense novel set on the rockbound coast of Maine, Gordon's writing sometimes compared to that of Daphne du Maurier's. 249 pp.
GORDON, Lori A.
- Murder in Maine (2002): Returning home to Wyndham Manor, Anne tries to solve the puzzle of her uncle's apparent suicide.
GOULD, John
- No Other Place (1984): The setting for this novel is the area of Penobscot Bay around 1611, when Maine was claimed by both France and England. Jabez Knight stakes out a claim to 500 acres and builds a homestead at Morning River, where he lives with his family.
- Wines of Pentagoet (1986): Continues the saga of the friends and enemies of Elzada Knight, who live on Morning River in 'The Maine' before the American Revolution. Sequel to No Other Place.
- Our Croze Nest (1997): A Novel of Morning River Farm, far Downeast on the Coast of Maine, at a time when summer people have discovered the state.
GRANT, Richard
- Tex and Molly in the Afterlife (1996): Having survived the '60s, the Me Decade, Reaganomics and the Republican Revolution, aging hippies Tex and Molly of Dublin, Maine, refuse to abandon their principles for material comforts, making them more suited than most for that long, strange trip to the other side.
GRAVES, Sarah
- The Dead Cat Bounce (1998): Since she bought her rambling old fixer-upper of a house in Eastport, Maine, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick firmly planted in his cranium.
- Triple Witch (1999) : A crime wave is sweeping the quiet town of Eastport, Maine. After discovering the dead body of Kenny Mumford, the town's petty thief and ne'er-do-well, Jacobia Tiptree and her best friend set out to catch the killer.
- Wicked Fix (2000): For Jacobia Tiptree and her teenaged son, Sam, September promises tranquil days winter-proofing their rambling handyman's special of a home in Eastport, Maine, until someone slits the throat of vicious Reuben Tate and the police trace a bloodied scalpel to surgeon Victor Tiptree -- Jacobia's former husband.
- Repair to Her Grave: A Mainely Murder Mystery(2001) : Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its share of houseguests. This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer-upper into shape. But when the charming and mysterious Jonathan Raines appears on her doorstep, and then just as suddenly disappears, remodeling the house becomes the least of Jake's problems.
- Wreck the Halls (2001) : When Jake and Ellie arrive at Faye Anne Carmody's kitchen door, they knock and walk right in. But though Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood, and her no-good husband, the town butcher, nowhere in sight; until Jake discovers his body tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper. Takes place Eastport, Maine.
- Unhinged: A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery (2003)
- Mallets Aforethought (2004): A skeleton dressed in 1920s flapper chic pops out of a closet, putting Ellie's husband George in line for a murder conviction.
- Tool and Die (2005)
- Nail Biter (2006)
- Book of Old Houses (2007)
GRAY, T.M.
- Mr. Crisper (2004): Horror. Set in fictitious Kemperfield, Maine. Involves the mysterious Mr. Crisper and his sinister snack food manufacturing plant.
- The Ravenous (2004): Horror. A teenager discovers the truth about his rural Maine town -- where most of the adults belong to a human-sacrifice cult.
- Ghosts of Eden (2005): Horror. Set in 1947, about a young woman who returns to her childhood home of Bar Harbor after spending several years in a mental hospital.
GREEN, Norman
- Way Past Legal (2004): Crime novel. Manny Williams, a cat burglar, tries to become a good father (starting by kidnapping his 5-yr-old son, Nicky, from foster care) and ends up hiding in Eastport, Maine. Involves Russian mafia.
GREENLAW, Linda
- Slipknot (2007): Greenlaw's first published fiction, a murder mystery set in coastal Maine. When Jane moves back to the sleepy Maine fishing community where she was born, Green Haven, she's hoping to escape the crime and criminals of Miami. It's a bit of a shock, then, when Nick Dow, the town drunk, turns up dead, and it's not the simple accident that everyone assumes it to be.
GREENWOOD, David Valdes
- Little Fruitcake: A Childhood In Holidays (2007): A charming comical collection of tales brimming with the spirit of the season. The stories capture the outrageous unpredictability of family celebrations, one story for each of the twelve days of Christmas, all set against the backdrop of rural Maine. (Memoir rather than fiction.)
GRIESEMER, John
- Signal and Noise (2003): Historical novel about the laying of the first transatlantic cable, from 1857-1866. Set in Maine, London, the Atlantic Ocean, New York City, and Pennsylvania.
GROH, Brian
- Summer People (2007): A college dropout becomes the summer caretaker for an eccentric matriarch in Brightonfield Cove, Maine.
GUTCHEON, Beth
- More Than You Know (2000): Hannah Grey returns to Dundee, Maine, to tell the story of her true love and the ghost that haunted her one fateful summer. Her story is paralleled by the tragic story of a family who lived in the same house over 100 years ago. The family's story slowly reveals the solution to a murder mystery that was never solved in the close knit community.
- Leeway Cottage (2005): 'Chronicles how an unlikely marriage endures over the course of the 20th century. The novel is anchored in the idyllic, fictional summer colony of Dundee, Maine, which will always feel like home to Annabelle Sydney Brant, but turns on the story of the Danish resistance against the Nazis in WWII, a revolt Annabelle's Danish-born, half-Jewish husband, Laurus Moss, leaves the U.S. to join' (from Publisher's Weekly review).
- Good-bye and Amen: A Novel (2009): In a summer cottage on the coast of Maine, an unlikely love was nurtured, a marriage endured, and a family survived. Now it is time for the children of that marriage to make peace with the wounds and the treasures left to them.
GUY, David
- Jake Fades: A Novel of Impermanence (2007): Jake is a 78-year-old Zen master and bicycle repairman in Bar Harbor. As he begins to notice signs of mental aging, he looks to longtime student Hank as his successor.
HADDAM, Jane
- And One to Die On: A Birthday Mystery (1996): Armenian-American detective Gregor Demarkian solving a murder mystery on a remote Maine island where a former silent movie actress and her sister weave sinister plots.
HALL, Linda
- Coast of Maine Christian mystery series
- Margaret's Peace (1998): When Margaret Collinwood inherits her childhood home in Coffins Reach, Maine, she returns to the seafront house hoping to rest, paint, and to find the peace she has lost after the death of her daughter and the subsequent breakup of her marriage. But Margaret's return to her family home forces her to face difficult childhood memories surrounding the fatal accident that took the life of her sister twenty-five years earlier. 300 pp.
- Island of Refuge (1999): As the police begin an extensive investigation of their friend's death, Naomi and Zoe are distraught. Two states over, Margot begins her own investigation because Jo lived with them for a few months. What she discovers shatters her to the very core and intertwines the lives of the island dwellers as they seek to make peace with themselves, their lives, and God.
- Katheryn's Secret (2000): Mystery writer Sharon Colebrook finds herself the unexpected recipient of her deceased Aunt Katie's papers, and hopes to learn about a murder Katie had hinted at years before. But as Sharon and her husband Jeff begin to investigate, the carefully kept facade of her strict religious family begins to crumble. Secrets, long buried, begin to surface, and only God's grace can put this family back together again. 305 pp.
- Sadie's Song (2001): Nine-year-old Ally Buckley disappears, in circumstances that closely resemble another recent and chilling event. Fear spreads throughout the Maine fishing village of Coffins Reach and the local church that Sadie and her family attend. Then Sadie discovers a drawing done by Ally among her abusive husband's possesions, an odd evidence that danger may be closer to home than she'd ever known possible.
- Steal Away (2003): A famous evangelist hires P.I. Teri Blake-Addison to solve a mystery connected to his wife's death in a boating accident. Set in Maine and on Grand Manan Island.
- Chat Room (2003): In Maine, Glynis Pigott hires private detective Teri Addison to find out what's happened to her missing best friend, lawyer Kim Shock, who quit her job to join her Internet lover Gil Williamson in Texas. Also examines Internet-only churches vs. in-person church communities; cults; and issues of belonging.
- Steal Away (2003): Dr. Carl Houseman, celebrated minister and speaker, is determined to find out what really happened to his wife, declared dead five years ago after her sailboat washed ashore on a coastal island of Maine. Private investigator Teri Blake-Addison must piece together the life of this woman who felt she didn't know or understand the God that her husband so faithfully served. Did Ellen really die in those cold Atlantic waters?
HALL, Meredith
- Beneficence (2020): Quietly beautiful writing belies the intense emotional tumult felt in a family after the death of a child on their once-idyllic dairy farm in mid-20th-century Maine. A gut-wrenching and worthwhile read.
HAMBLY, Barbara
- Homeland (2009): Historical fiction set in the Civil War. Two young women, a Southerner living on a plantation surrounded by scarred and blood-soaked battlefields, and a Northerner, living on an isolated Maine island, her beloved husband fighting for the Confederacy, exchange letters.
HAMLIN, Ardeana
- Pink Chimneys: A Novel of 19th Century Maine (1988): Story of three women -- Fanny, her daughter Elizabeth, and Maude, a midwife -- who strive to find their place amidst the tumultuous decades of mid-19th-century Maine.
- A Dream of Paris (2004): In 1911 Maine, Laura pursues her dream to study art in Paris, encouraged by an aging painter, a suffragette friend, and her own father, a farmer who had once dreamed of singing opera.
- Abbott's Reach (2011): Sequel to Pink Chimneys. A headstrong woman (Elizabeth's daughter, M) prepares to go to sea with her husband, setting the stage for romance, adventure, and family strife.
HAND, Elizabeth
- Generation Loss (2007): A down and out photographer visits a Maine island to interview a famously reclusive photographer and confronts an old mystery and the disappearance of a local teenager. Psychological thriller.
HANNAH, Kristin
- Waiting for the Moon (1995): Historical romance. Setting is coast of Maine, 1882. Selena came alone to the mansion on the isolated Maine coast. There she met Ian Carrick, a physician turned recluse, haunted by a telepathic gift that has destroyed his desire to heal. Selena comes to him, the only person he's ever met who is immune to his psychic powers. A mesmerizing innocent, she turns his life upside down, bringing light into darkness.
HARDWICK, Elizabeth
- Sleepless Nights (1979): Partially set in Maine. Kentucky race tracks, fifty-second street jazz clubs in the forties, Billie Holiday in Harlem, Boston's Beacon Hill, summers in Maine, winters in Manhattan; such is the unusual landscape of the inner life of an American woman.
HARDY, Alice Louise
- Escape from a Canvas World (2000): Mystery and romance in the waters off the Maine coast. Author is part-time Georgetown resident. 340 pp.
HARNUM, Robert
- Exile in the Kingdom (2001): Philip Carmichael is popular at his Maine high school. A conscientious student and star of the basketball team, he lives in an affluent household and enjoys the latest in electronic marvels. He is a model young American. Yet, he lives with a mother he never sees, in a house owned by a man that she now despises. He spends a good deal of his time alone, and in silence, studying hard, and then winding down with a good game of Doom or Mega-Death. He is detached, self- absorbed, disaffected. Philip will soon commit an act of violence, and his trial will polarize the small New England community in which he lives.
HARRISON, Stuart
- Still Water (2000): A compelling blend of suspense, adventure and romance in a small fishing community off the coast of Maine.
HARTMAN, Jane E.
- Hatchet Harbor: A Maine Coast Adventure (1999): An old-fashioned love story, with vivid descriptions of nature, wild life and the ecology -- with a plea for saving the environment. Mistrust is brewing in this tiny Maine fishing village, where love of nature collides with human greed and the locals and summer people take sides in a brewing environmental conflict.
HARTSOCK, J. Dak
- Siege of Eden (2001): Horror, set in Maine. 467 pp.
HASTINGS, Corrilla
- Dead Lady at Green Meadows (1998): Botanical mystery set in Maine.
HATCH, M.R.P.
- The Strange Disappearance of Eugene Comstocks (1895): Detective story set in Maine. 307 pp.
HAUTALA, Rick
- The Mountain King (1996): Horror. Mark Newman has heard tales of the demon that resides on the rocky slopes of Mount Agiochook, in what is now Maine, but he doesn't believe them. The day his friend Phil disappears in a sudden, blinding snowstorm, Mark believes when he sees something he knows can't be real -- something that will kill again and again. Novel includes three bonus short stories.
- Impulse (1996), partially set in Hilton, Maine
- Bedbugs (2000): A collection of 26 short stories, mostly set in Maine.
- Four Octobers (2003-06): A collection of nostalgic supernatural/suspense 'coming of age' novellas set in fictional Stonepoint. Each story is set in October.
- Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers (2007): A collection featuring the novel Little Brothers plus five short stories and three myths concerning the creatures who emerge from underground every five years to wreak havoc on the Maine town of Thornton.
HAYMAN, James
Homicide Detective Michael McCabe suspense series, set in Portland- The Cutting (2009): Suspense fiction. Homicide Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, to escape a dark past: both the ex-wife who’d left him for an investment banker, and the tragic death of his brother. He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city ... so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.
- The Chill of Night (2010): When McCabe finds the frozen body of an ambitious and beautiful young attorney stuffed into the trunk of her brand new BMW convertible, the only clue is a piece of paper stuffed between her teeth with a biblical quote about sinners dying by the sword, and the only witness is a young schizophrenic woman,
HEALY, Jeremiah
- Foursome (1993): A John Cuddy Mystery, set in Maine. Two couples move from high-living Boston, to a getaway camp in Maine, where 3 are brutally murdered and the 4th is framed as the killer.
HERSEY, P.R.
- The Takedown (2003): Murder mystery that follows a former Navy Seal now working for a major insurance company who notices clients dying. He and friend begin an investigation that leads them on a chase to the coast of Maine. Written by Maine native.
HETLEY, James A.
- The Summer Country (2002): First novel. Dark fantasy. Growing up poor in Naskeag Falls, Maine, Maureen leads an ordinary life until she discovers her blood goes back to the land of Mordred and Merlin. Author lives in Bangor. Starred review in the ALA's Booklist. Hetley describes Naskeag Falls as 'an amalgam of Bangor and Lewiston/Auburn, with University of Maine at Orono tacked on.'
- The Winter Oak (2004): Sequel to The Summer Country.
- Dragon's Eye (2005): Features the Morgan and Haskell families of fictional hardscrabble Stonefort, Maine, which Hetley describes as 'a small coastal community modeled on Stonington or Jonesport'.
- Dragon's Teeth (2006): Sequel to Dragon's Eye.
HILL, Sandra
- The Last Viking (1998): Humorous time-travel romance. Geirolf Ericsson is a farmer and master shipbuilder in what is Norway in the year 977 A.D. Journeying on a quest to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to return a sacred relic, he finds himself sucked into Maine in the year 1997. When medieval historian Meredith Foster finds him -- in a leather tunic -- roasting a rabbit in her fireplace she thinks it's some kind of elaborate joke; but she soon realizes that he knows much about the tenth century and nothing about the 20th. As Rolf helps Meredith fulfill her grandfather's dream of re-creating a Viking ship, he awakens her to dreams of her own.
- Here Comes Santa Claus (2001; with Katie Holmes and Trish Jensen): Humorous romance. A rollicking romance follows three notorious bachelors -- a Blue Angels pilot, a bounty hunter, and an ex-NFL football player -- of Snowdon, Maine, as they attempt to get to their friend's Christmas Eve wedding on time and have many romantic and hilarious adventures along the way. 394 pp.
HIRSCHHORN, Richard
- Target Mayflower (1977): Novel about Hitler's last desperate gamble, to send a submarine pack to Maine, where they will liberate a POW camp filled with Afrika Korps troops, invade the U.S., and threaten Boston with V-2 rockets.
HODGKINS, Fran
- The Cat of Strawberry Hill (2005): (RL: K-3) The owners of a Rockport Inn find a blue-eyed kitten at a highway rest area. A true story. Illustrator Lesia Sochor lives in Brooks.
HOFFMAN, L.P.
- The Canaan Creed (2009): Mystery, set in Wyoming and Maine. Wolf biologist Anna O'Neil returns from Yellowstone NP in Wyoming to Maine to investigate the death of her father while she was far away. The emergence of a strange document sets her search upside down.
HOLMES, Edward M.
- Driftwood: Maine Stories (1972)
- A Part of the Main; Short Stories of the Maine Coast (1973): 177 pp.
- Mostly Maine: Short Stories and Other Writings (1977)
- Two If By Sea: A Novel (1994)
HOLMES, Linda
- Evvie Drake Starts Over (2019): Debut novel, light-hearted romance (good beach book) set on the fictional midcoast Maine town of Calcasset (think Rockland), where Evvie is a 30-something Calcasset native and recent widow who hasn’t come to terms with the emotionally abusive nature of her interrupted marriage. Her reboot starts after she takes in a tenant, disgraced Major League pitcher Dean, who’s laying low in Maine after a headline-making slump. The two chat wittily, flirt, and ultimately help each other face their demons, with assists from Evvie’s high-school bestie and salty lobsterman dad.
HOLT, Harrison Jewell
- The Calendared Isles: A Romance of Casco Bay (1910): 296 pp.
- Midnight At Mears House (1912): 337 pp. Maine?
HONIG, Lucy
- Picking Up (1986): A turning point in the life of a downeast potato fields worker, April, in her 30s and the mother of three sons. Won Dog Ear's 1986 Maine Novel Award.
- Open Season (2002): A collection of short stories with the title story about a young couple moving from an urban area to build a home and life in rural Maine.
HOOD, Ann
- Somewhere Off The Coast Of Maine (1987): Looking back into their 1960s pasts, Suzanne, Claudia and Elizabeth attempt to reconcile their youthful lives with what they have become in the mid-1980s. Partially set in Maine. Rhode Island author.
HOOD, Margaret Page
- The Silent Women (1955): First Gil Donan mystery, set in Spruce Island, Maine.
- The Scarlet Thread (1956): Second Gil Donan mystery.
- In the Dark Night (1957; also as The Murders on Fox Island) : The third Gil Donan mystery. Set in Maine. Also known as The Murders on Fox Island
- Drown the Wind (1961): Another in the Gil Donan mystery series. Andy Bruce was the most hated resident of craggy, windswept Fox Island off the coast of Maine. A tough, vigorous bantan of Yankee shrewdness, he had stepped on the toes of most of his neighbors as he clawed his way to control of the island's property and wealth. When Andy's body was found one frosty dawn -- his skull smashed in by a marlin spike -- Sheriff Gil Donan faced his most baffling case and an almost limitless array of prime suspects.
- The Sin Mark (1963): Mystery set on the Maine coast.
HOPKINS, Nevil
- The Racoon Lake Mystery (1917): Mystery set in north woods of Maine.
HORNBERGER, H. Richard (AKA Richard Hooker)
- M.A.S.H. Goes to Maine (1971): The four irrepressible surgeons (Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Spearchucker) who brought brilliant medicine and lunacy to the troops in Korea deliver both specialities to the natives of Spruce Harbor, Maine.
- M*A*S*H Mania (1977): Alive and well in Spruce Harbor, Maine, the hometown of Hawkeye Pierce. He and his wacky pals of the M*A*S*H 4077th may be growing older, but they sure haven't grown up! Who else would connive to send a forty-year old lobsterman to medical school - on a football scholarship?
HOUGAN, Carolyn
- The Romeo Flag (1989): Hitchcockian thriller partially set in Maine. This sophisticated thriller hurtles from the last days of the royal Romanovs to WWII Shanghai to present day San Francisco and Maine. Divorced teacher Nicola Ward, with a baffling diary, discovers her family once had been involved in an infamous Soviet spy ring. Virginia author.
HOWE, Bert
- Echo Horizon (2001): Historical fantasy. Modern, independent Marna teaches history at a fictitious Maine college, where she and a friend are collaborating on a doctoral thesis. Marna experiences paranormal events that take her back to the time of the American Revolution, which she sees through the eyes of another girl, Sarah.
HUNT, Samantha
- The Seas: A Novel (2005): Retelling of 'The Little Mermaid' A nameless 19-year-old narrator is in love with a 33-year-old fisherman, Jude, a former soldier in Iraq who has returned to their small coastal town in Maine unable, or unwilling, to speak about his experiences in the military. The narrator's father, before he vanished into the ocean 11 years earlier, told her that she is a mermaid, a sentiment that obsesses the girl. Is she? And if so, will she kill her soldier with a kiss?