Made in Massachusetts

A selection of local reads.

Updated April 14, 2026
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1776
McCullough, David G
Paper Book
America's beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation's birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war...
All souls : a family story from Southie
MacDonald, Michael Patrick
Paper Book
The author recounts growing up in a poor Irish neighborhood, and remembers the four brothers he lost to violence.
American Bloomsbury : Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau : their lives, their loves, their work
Cheever, Susan
Paper Book
The 1850s were heady times in Concord, Massachusetts: in a town where a woman's petticoat drying on an outdoor line was enough to elicit scandal, some of the greatest minds of our nation's history were gathering in three of its wooden houses to establish a major American literary movement. The...
Another bullshit night in Suck City : a memoir
Flynn, Nick
Paper Book
"Clear-eyed, inventive, and astonishingly honest." --Elissa Schappel, Vanity Fair Nick Flynn met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger father, a self-proclaimed poet and con man...
The art of scandal : the life and times of Isabella Stewart Gardner
Shand-Tucci, Douglass
Paper Book
Black mass : the true story of an unholy alliance between the FBI, and the Irish mob
Lehr, Dick.
Paper Book
John Connoly and James "Whitey" Bulger grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, in the mid 1970's, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened next -- a dirty deal to...
A break with charity : a story about the Salem witch trials
Rinaldi, Ann.
Paper Book
Susanna English desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage, but she doesn’t realize the leader of the group, the malicious Ann Putnam, is about to set off a torrent of false accusations that will lead to the imprisonment and execution of countless...
Caleb's crossing
Brooks, Geraldine
Paper Book
A richly imagined new novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller, People of the Book. Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native...
The Dante Club : a novel
Pearl, Matthew
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller Words can bleed. In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields—are finishing America’s first...
Girl, interrupted
Kaysen, Susanna
Paper Book
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and...
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
The stunning graphic novel adaptation * A must-read and collector's item for fans of "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (New York Times).   Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale   In Margaret...
Home town
Kidder, Tracy
Paper Book
In this splendid book, one of America's masters of nonfiction takes us home--into Hometown, U.S.A., the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, and into the extraordinary, and the ordinary, lives that people live there. As Tracy Kidder reveals how, beneath its amiable surface, a small town is a place of...
Improper Bostonians : lesbian and gay history from the Puritans to Playland
History Project Boston, Mass
Paper Book
"Drawing on newspaper accounts private archives, advertisements, and other sources, Improper Bostonians introduces us to men and women who flouted conventional gender rules, were unapologetic about their lifestyles, and tried to make sense of their sexuality - sometimes at great cost." "As Improper...
In Adamless Eden : the community of women faculty at Wellesley
Palmieri, Patricia Ann.
Paper Book
Wellesley College was unique in its commitment to an exclusively female faculty, and has educated women such as Katharine Lee Bates and Hillary Clinton. This book is a narrative history of the first generation of Wellesley professors.
Louisa May Alcott
Cheever, Susan
Paper Book
Susan Cheever's comprehensive and definitive biography sheds new light on of life of Louisa May Alcott, whose work has inspired generations of women.
My most excellent year : a novel of love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park
Kluger, Steve
Paper Book
Dear Anthony: I appreciate your recent interest, but I?m not accepting applications at this time. Your letter will be kept in our files and someone will get back to you if there is an opening. Thank you for thinking of me. Respectfully, Alejandra Perez P.S. It?s...
No gods, no monsters
Turnbull, Cadwell
Paper Book
Named a BEST BOOK OF 2021 by the New York Times, NPR, the New York Public Library, Audible, Tor.com, Book Riot, Library Journal, and Kirkus! Longlisted for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award "Riveting...[A] tender, ferocious book."--New York Times "Beautifully fantastical."--NPR<...
The Peabody sisters : three women who ignited American romanticism
Marshall, Megan
Paper Book
Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways our American Brontes. The story of these remarkable sisters -- and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day -- has never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall's monumental biograpy brings the era...
Prep : a novel
Sittenfeld, Curtis
Paper Book
Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition. Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her...
Revere Beach elegy : a memoir of home and beyond
Merullo, Roland
Ebook
In Revere Beach Elegy, Roland Merullo returns to his childhood heaven of Revere, Massachusetts, a place, five miles from Boston, where the affirmation of family -- fifty cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles that are more like mothers and fathers -- and the tough codes of his gritty working-class...
The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
Introduction by Kathryn Harrison Commentary by Nathaniel Hawthorne, W. D. Howells, and Carl Van Doren A stark tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel...
Show me a sign
LeZotte, Ann Clare
Paper Book
Don't miss the companion book, Set Me Free CRITICS ARE RAVING ABOUT SHOW ME A SIGN Winner of the 2021 Schneider Family Book Award * NPR Best Books of 2020 * Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020 * School Library Journal Best Books of 2020 *...
Summer sisters : a novel
Blume, Judy.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY * "Summer Sisters is a book to return to again and again."--Colleen Hoover "As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing 'How...
The trial of Lizzie Borden : a true story
Robertson, Cara
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY BOOK AWARD In Cara Robertson's "enthralling" book, The Trial of Lizzie Borden, "the reader is to serve as judge and jury" (The New York Times). Based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence, this true crime...
Walking to Martha's Vineyard : poems
Wright, Franz
Paper Book
In this radiant new collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. As he watches the “Resurrection of the little apple tree outside / my window,” he shakes off his fear of mortality, concluding “what death...

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