Delaware

Photo by Josefina Lacroze on Unsplash

Delaware is small, in fact it is the second smallest state in the U.S. But in it small surface area live a lot of people, making it the sixth most densely populated state, and even more chicken, with an estimated 200 chicken per person. There are some creepy names along the shore of Delaware, like Slaughter Beach and Murderkill River, which might get you into reading some mystery/thrillers set in Delaware. If murders and suspense are not your cup of tea, the list below offer more options: 

Humor

📚 The Discreet Charms of a Bourgeois Beach Town by Rich Barnett

Tucked away on the Atlantic shore in often-overlooked Delaware sits Rehoboth Beach, one square mile of cottages, upscale restaurants, fry joints, plein air bars, art galleries, t-shirt shops, and, of course, sandy beaches. Founded in 1872 as a Methodist summer retreat, this little beach town draws a different congregation today, a delightful and eclectic blend of highbrow and lowbrow, homo and hetero, urban and rural. There’s no place quite like it. Author Rich Barnett has been writing about his explorations of Rehoboth Beach and the surrounding environs in his regular column for the magazine Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. Now for the first time, Barnett presents the best of his columns in this lively, humorous, and eccentric look at his adopted home town. While the book focuses on a coastal town in Delaware, the message of scratching below the surface of the places we live and visit in order to get the authentic experience is much broader. There's a "bourgeois beach town" in just about every coastal state, don't you think? 

True Crime

📚 And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano: The Deadly Seducer by Ann Rule

From America's most celebrated true-crime writer comes the heartbreaking real-life drama of a doomed young woman hopelessly trapped in a web of sexual intrigue, political manipulation, and emotional deception by her charming and successful—but ultimately deadly—lover.

The author of fifteen New York Times national bestsellers, Ann Rule, a former Seattle policewoman, has researched thousands of homicides and understands every facet of murder investigation. Now, in the most complex and shocking book of her long career, she delves into the motivation that drove a seemingly successful man to kill, and she explores heretofore unknown aspects of a fatal affair between a beautiful young woman who moved confidently in the heady world of the upper echelons of government and a widely admired millionaire attorney who was an immensely popular political figure.

On June 27, 1996, thirty-year-old Anne Marie Fahey, who was the scheduling secretary for the governor of Delaware, had dinner with a man she had been having a secret affair with for more than two years. "Tommy" Capano, forty-seven, was perhaps the most politically powerful man in Wilmington. Son of a wealthy contractor, former state prosecutor, partner in a prestigious law firm, advisor to governors and mayors, Tom Capano had a soft-spoken and considerate manner that endeared him to many. Although recently estranged from his wife, he was a devoted father to his four beautiful young daughters, the trusted son of his widowed mother, and the backbone of his extended family. But sometime after 9:15 that night when Anne Marie and Tom left a Philadelphia restaurant, something terrible happened to Anne Marie. It would be forty-eight hours before her brothers and sisters realized that she had disappeared entirely.

Ann Rule brilliantly traces the lives of both Fahey and Capano as she discloses the intimate details of their ill-fated bonding. A vulnerable, trusting woman becomes spellbound by a charming, duplicitous married man, and what begins as a seemingly unremarkable affair is slowly transformed into an obsessive, convoluted, and deadly relationship.

Through her impeccable research, Rule peels away layer after layer of deception to reveal a man who lived a secret life for decades, a man so greedy that he would sacrifice anyone to gain what he desired. One of his many mistresses—all of whom were unknown to one another—was Deborah MacIntyre, an attractive and wealthy member of one of Wilmington's oldest families and an administrator of an elite private school. She, too, would become part of the mystery surrounding Anne Marie's disappearance.

As three prominent families are destroyed to satisfy one man's jealous obsessions, this unfathomable tragedy becomes a tale that few would believe if it were presented as fiction. Shockingly, it is all true. Destined to become a classic, And Never Let Her Go is a riveting account of forbidden love and murder among the rich and powerful, and a chilling insight into the evil that sometimes hides behind even the most charming façade.

Historical Fiction

📚 West of Rehoboth by Alex D. Pate

Set in the early 1960s, West of Rehoboth is the moving story of twelve-year-old Edward Massey. Each summer, to escape the heat of Philadelphia, Edward's family moves to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The "coloreds only" side of a pristine resort on Rehoboth Beach offers work for his mother and a sandy playground for his sister. But for Edward -- an imaginative, inquisitive boy -- it offers the chance to understand his reclusive, curmudgeonly Uncle Rufus, a man caught in a swirl of hard luck and bad choices.

Forging a tenuous bond, their relationship will take Edward on a harrowing journey through Rufus's past, facing the violence, disappointment, and frustration that shaped his destiny. Award-winning author Alexs Pate tells a mesmerizing story -- of family, of coming of age, of reconciliation -- revealing the extraordinary compassion and healing power of one unforgettable boy.

Mystery/Thriller

📚 Unspoken Fear by Hunter Morgan

    (Stephen Kill #1)

Your Sin Will Find You Out . . .

In a sleepy little rural town in Delaware, someone is stalking the residents, murdering them for sins they thought were committed in secret.

Seeking Redemption . . .

After serving five years for vehicular homicide while driving drunk, Noah Gibson has just been released from prison. He's lost everything: his job as parish priest, his wife and his home. He's also blacking out and can't account for his time when the murders were committed.

Unspoken Fear . . .

Rachel Gibson has done her best to forget her ex-reverend husband, but she begins to fall in love with him all over again--seemingly against her will. Now she wonders if her new-found love is responsible for the brutal deaths of former friends and neighbors, killed to "pay" for their sins.

📚 Still Life in Blood by Crystal Heidel

Does seeing the future mean you may have a chance to change it? For Francesca Munro, a successful artist in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, that is a question that plagues her daily thoughts. For years she's kept her psychic abilities a secret but when a murder she's dreamt of actually occurs—and then another—her struggle to cope with the deadly visions may be exposed. Francesca knows that there is a deeper meaning to the murders, one that may be connected to her—especially when she begins to receive bizarre and cryptic clues that send her catapulting into a search for the truth about her mother who committed suicide twelve years earlier. As Francesca tries to figure out how the past she barely remembers, yet is so desperate to forget, is connected to the killings, the body count rises. Delaware State Police Homicide Detective Jack Remington tries to unravel the intricate knot that ties the victims to Francesca. But can Jack solve the mystery before Francesca becomes the final piece in a twisted killer's one-man show?

📚 Sunburn by Laura Lippman

One is playing a long game. But which one?

They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through.

Yet she stays and he stays—drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other—dangerous, even lethal, secrets that begin to accumulate as autumn approaches, feeding the growing doubts they conceal.

Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other’s lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away—or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them?

Something—or someone—has to give.

Which one will it be?

Middle Grade

📚 We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly

It's January 1986. The launch of the Challenger is just weeks away, and Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware.

Cash loves basketball, Dr. J, and a girl named Penny; he's also in danger of failing seventh grade for a second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade and wrestles with an explosive temper that he doesn't understand. And Bird, his twelve-year-old twin, dreams of being NASA's first female shuttle commander, but feels like she's disappearing.

The Nelson Thomas siblings exist in their own orbits, circling a tense, crowded, and unpredictable household, dreaming of escape, dreaming of the future, dreaming of space. They have little in common except an enthusiastic science teacher named Ms. Salonga—a failed applicant to the Teacher in Space program—who encourages her students to live vicariously through the launch. Cash and Fitch take a passive interest, but Bird builds her dreams around it.

When the fated day arrives, it changes everything.

Romance

📚 Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

    (Black Dog Bay #1)

Welcome to Black Dog Bay, a tiny seaside town in Delaware known as "the best place in America to bounce back from your breakup." Home to Better Off Bed-and-Breakfast, the Eat Your Heart Out bakery, and the Whinery bar, Black Dog Bay offers a haven for the suddenly single.

Flight attendant Summer Benson lives by two rules: Don’t stay with the same man for too long and never stay in one place. She’s about to break rule number one by considering accepting her boyfriend’s proposal—then disaster strikes and her world is shattered in an instant.

Summer heads to Black Dog Bay, where the locals welcome her. Even Hattie Huntington, the town’s oldest, richest, and meanest resident, likes her enough to give her a job. Then there’s Dutch Jansen, the rugged, stoic mayor, who’s the opposite of her type. She probably shouldn't be kissing him. She definitely shouldn't be falling in love.

After a lifetime of globe-trotting, Summer has finally found a home. But Hattie has old scores to settle and a hidden agenda for her newest employee. Summer finds herself faced with an impossible choice: Leave Black Dog Bay behind forever, or stay with the ones she loves and cost them everything... 

Short Stories

📚 Benediction by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Benediction" is a short story by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in 1920 in Fitzgerald's short story collection Flappers and Philosophers. It tells the story of a young girl, Lois, who is on her way to a tryst with her lover, Howard, and stops to meet her much older brother, Kieth, who is in a seminary and about to become a priest..

Contemporary Fiction

📚 The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

“A dazzling, heartbreaking page-turner destined for breakout status: a novel that gives voice to millions of Americans as it tells the story of the love between a Panamanian boy and a Mexican girl: teenagers living in an apartment block of immigrant families like their own.

After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras leave México and come to America. But upon settling at Redwood Apartments, a two-story cinderblock complex just off a highway in Delaware, they discover that Maribel's recovery--the piece of the American Dream on which they've pinned all their hopes--will not be easy. Every task seems to confront them with language, racial, and cultural obstacles.

At Redwood also lives Mayor Toro, a high school sophomore whose family arrived from Panamá fifteen years ago. Mayor sees in Maribel something others do not: that beyond her lovely face, and beneath the damage she's sustained, is a gentle, funny, and wise spirit. But as the two grow closer, violence casts a shadow over all their futures in America.

Peopled with deeply sympathetic characters, this poignant yet unsentimental tale of young love tells a riveting story of unflinching honesty and humanity that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American. An instant classic is born.

📚 A Gentleman's Game by Tom Coyne

A Gentleman's Game is the story of young Timmy Price, whose mastery of the game of golf inspires awe among the adult membership and envy among his peers on the shaded fairways and immaculate greens of exclusive Fox Chase Country Club in suburban Delaware. But when his self-made father forces Timmy to become a caddy at the club to teach him a lesson in humility, he is thrown into the hardscrabble world of the behind-the-scenes workers who make the game possible. And when his best friend and fellow looper, Jamie Byrne, abruptly stops showing up at the caddy hole, it begins a series of events that will force Timmy to confront the dark secret that hides behind the community of Fox Chase.

Soaring and lyrical, A Gentleman's Game is an internationally acclaimed debut about an extraordinary young man and the game he loves that is like no other.

Autobiography/Memoir

📚 The Ties that Bind: A Memoir of Race, Memory, and Redemption by Bertice Berry

When novelist Bertice Berry set out to write a history of her family, she initially believed she'd uncover a story of slavery and black pain, but the deeper she dug, the more surprises she found. There was heartache, yes, but also something unexpected: hope. Peeling away the layers, Berry came to learn that the history of slavery cannot be quantified in simple, black-and-white terms of "good" and "evil" but is rather a complex tapestry of roles and relations, of choices and individual responsibility.
In this poignant, reflective memoir, Berry skillfully relays the evolution of relations between the races, from slavery to Reconstruction, from the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power 1970s, and on to the present day. In doing so, she sheds light on a picture of the past that not only liberates but also unites and evokes the need to forgive and be forgiven.