Fans pick 100 books like Clueless in New England

It is a book that deep dives into a historical event, in this case, the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. Check. It is a nonfiction book that reads like a gripping thriller, in this case, the serial killer H.H. Holmes, who built a three-story building featuring secret rooms, torture chambers, and a crematorium. Check. Chicago leaps off the page. By the end of the book, I was able to envision the massive exposition, its hundreds of temporary buildings, all white colored, interlaced with ponds and canals.

Much like that exposition helped raise Chicago up from its Great Fire, so I could see a Chicago of the past, in a glorious triumph of industry and innovation. Oh, and yeah, a serial killer constructing a horrific murder building.

I’ve read In Cold Blood at least twice, but I think three times is the actual count. The first time, I was in my early twenties, not yet a writer, and I remember being gobsmacked—love that word—by a single sentence.

I remember reading the sentence again. And again. It was a marvel to me how alive it was, and how it told me all I needed to know about a place to understand that place. Nothing happens here; move on, it said—“Like waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama in the shape of exceptional happenings had never stopped there.”

Mysteries also are a part of historical true crime, including people who were (or still are) missing and/or those who lived under changed identities. In the Nevada desert in 1968, Fletcher literally bumped into a trunk filled with decades-old possessions. Whose were they? Fletcher then documented his own investigation as he managed to find newspaper articles and National Archive records to piece together an old prospector's life. Armchair sleuths and others who are proficient in searching the internet today will find this book is a real eye-opener, as it shows what it was like to reconstruct a person's hidden life, without even getting online. For Fletcher, the process evolved a bonus –– a spiritual adventure of his own.

This classic is technically nonfiction, but it reads like a mystery novel as it follows the story of Jim Williams, an antiques dealer on trial for the killing of Danny Hansford.

I’ve read this book more than once, savoring John Berendt’s lyrical prose and his brilliant evocation of the charm, eccentricity—and fear—one can find in America’s most beautiful and haunted city: Savannah, Georgia.

Although shorter than the other books on my list, I think the story and art is none the less impactful. The Wendy Project deals with grief, especially grief in younger readers with a gentle understanding. I loved the unique approach to the whole book as well. The book is the journal of the main character Wendy, who receives it and starts to draw in it during the events of the story. I found The Wendy Project in my hands at a time when I was struggling to acknowledge my own grief, and it certainly nudged me to face it.  

When the Robertsons bought their 18th-century home in Hampton, Ct., they inherited an unparalleled lode of documents assembled over 100 years of the previous owners’ history. Starting in the 1790s, the Traintors saved, it seems, every bit of paper that came through their hands: from private letters and business accounts, to pamphlets, social invitations, school records, and, of course books. The Robertsons spent years digesting this remarkable trove. In this book, they “open out” the evidence – as Laurel Ulrich did for Martha Ballard’s diary – in a way that transforms it into a moving and deeply intimate story of family life and community change in a small New England town. I found their tale – told often in the Taintors’ own words – to be vivid, immediate, a surprisingly frank, personal, and moving story.

Eric Fisher has been Chief Meteorologist at WBZ-TV in Boston since April 2013, and was an on-camera meteorologist for The Weather Channel before that. In this 2021 book, Fisher is able to strike the perfect balance between the “what’s so” and the “why” behind these historic storms (as well as with other types of natural disasters affecting New Englanders). This rare quality, augmented by his meticulous research of historical accounts of these events, including the impressive array of meteorological records broken along the way, enables him to present an enjoyable, educational read—especially for the interested layperson. 

Harriette Merrifield Forbes pioneered the field of American gravestone studies. Her admirable study has separate chapters on several artisans, including the 17th and 18th-century stonecutters of Boston, the Lamsons of Charlestown, the Fosters of Dorchester, the stonecutters of Groton and Harvard, and the “Thistle-Carver” of Tatnuck. It also has chapters on the gravestones of Rhode Island and Connecticut. 

Forbes initiated real interest in this area of research. I found it astounding that she could have accomplished so much in the 1920s—before the introduction of modern battery-powered flash systems (which I relied on so often in highlighting shallow carvings and lettering)—and almost singlehandedly lit the fire of inquiry in so many of us who followed her model. She was also attentive to the human side of this craft, with many interesting observations on the stonecutters’ intentions and skills.

This is one of the nonfiction books I read as a teenager that convinced me to become a professional writer. The author, Sebastian Junger, doesn’t just describe the titular storm (which hit the U.S. East Coast in 1991) in terrifying detail—he also manages to assemble all of the weather-driven chaos into a real, gripping narrative. We don’t know a lot about what actually happened to the Andrea Gail, the fishing boat at the center of the narrative, but Junger recreates its final hours in a way that feels bracingly real—and heartbreaking.

Even if you don’t like nonfiction books, The Perfect Storm has the pacing and heart of a novel. I consider it one of the finest—maybe the finest—disaster narrative ever written, and it’s a perfect choice of book if you’re trapped inside by a raging storm.

This book has all my favorite detective fiction elements: a beautiful cover, an independent heroine, Abigail Rook, crime-solving alongside an elusive detective, R.F. Jackaby, and a solid plot that kept me guessing until the end. Set in late nineteenth-century New England, Rook teams up with Jackaby in a parallel to a Watson-Holmes relationship except this detective novel features the supernatural. Rook learns quickly that Jackaby stands out among detectives as he can see supernatural creatures. I love so much about this book, particularly the chemistry between Rook and Jackaby as co-investigators. This is a must-read not only for detective fiction fans, but for Dr. Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans as well.