Welcome back to Book Break! In this video I am recommending books set in small towns, and I have
got a really long list here, because this setting is just so popular, but of course there are so
many more not on this list, so do leave your favourites below in the comments on this list. I
have got mostly books set in American small towns, because that is such a strong trope and just so
popular, but I have tried to mix things up with small towns in other parts of the world as well.
But let's get started with those classic small town American books. This one you can tell from
the title is a great place to start Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain, so this is a
book that flashes between two parallel timelines. In 1940 we meet an artist called Anna who moves
to a sleepy small town called Edenton in North Carolina, because she has been commissioned to
paint a mural for them. In 2018 we meet Morgan, a woman who has been sentenced to serve three years
in prison for a crime she didn't commit. But she gets the opportunity to serve her sentence free
out of prison if she takes up the job of restoring an old post office mural in a sleepy small town.
And of course there are clues hidden in this mural passed through the decades that hide secrets of
this small town. For something very moving let's move to Colorado for Plainsong by Kent Haruf.
So this one has a whole cast of characters, we have a pregnant teenager who has just been kicked
out of her house by her mother, we have a newly single father trying to raise his boys on his own,
we have two elderly brothers who work away in the countryside diligently at the homestead,
and so many more characters who live in and around this small town. And the book is all
about them muddling through the ups and downs and challenges of daily life all brought together by
the community of this town. Another one set in Colorado, but this time a crime novel,
is Girl in Snow by Danya Kakafka. So in this one a high schooler is found murdered and her sleepy
Colorado suburb is completely shaken up, and the book focuses on three people left behind:
the boy who loved her, the girl who wanted her life, and the officer assigned to investigate
the murder. And it's all about this small community where everyone is being watched,
and how blurred the line is between love and obsession. Shotgun Lovesongs by Nikolas Butler
is set in Little Wing, Wisconsin, and it's about four men who were born and raised together as
best friends in this hometown, but have gone on to live massively different lives. One of them even
going on to become a famous musician, but in this book they're reuniting, they're back in town for
a wedding, and excited to be back together with their childhood best friends, only to find out
quite how different they are now from each other, which leads them to question whether you ever can
truly come home. The Roundhouse by Louise Erdich is set on the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota
and it's all about a family dealing with the aftermath of a terrible violent crime. It's all
told through the eyes of the 13 year old son of the family, but with some commentary which shows
that he's looking back on this from some point, decades down the line, and making sense of it
from the future. And the story incorporates a lot of Ojibwe folklore and culture as well,
so the characters interact with ghosts and seek guidance from animals as part of their healing
journey. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is a brilliant book, this was massively popular when
it first came out, and then got talked about all over again this year after the TV show came out.
This one is set in Shaker Heights, this almost too perfect creepily perfect little community,
or at least it is until single mother Mia and her daughter Pearl moved to town, setting off
a series of events that sparks conflict between a lot of the families in this town. And at the
centre of the novel is this heartbreaking custody case between two mothers, and Celeste Ng does such
an amazing job of bringing all of the characters to life. You empathise with every single person
in this book, even as they do horrible things to each other, it's really sad and moving but also a
lot of fun watching this carefully planned small town implode. There are quite a few different
settings in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston which is an incredible book, but it
starts when Janie Crawford comes back to the small town she used to live Eatonville, which is a real
place, it was one of the first self-governing all-black communities, and it's actually where
the author Zora Neale Hurston herself grew up. So the book starts with Janie coming back to town
surrounded by gossip, and then we get flashbacks telling the story of her life up until that point.
Her three husbands and her search for her own identity through each of these marriages.
And Zora Neale Hurston developed her storytelling technique from listening to her neighbours in
Eatonville sitting on the town steps and telling each other stories and gossip,
so she's got that small town feel down so well. Before Brit Bennett wrote The Vanishing Half
which everyone's been buzzing about this year, her first book was called The Mothers and it was about
a big secret in a small town. So in this one a 17 year old girl called Nadia who is a mourning
after her own mother's suicide, gets pregnant after a romance with the local pastor's son,
and the way that she hides this secret from everyone in her life including her best friend,
will stick with these characters through the rest of their lives. The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
takes the disturbing secrets in a small town thing to a whole new level, so be warned before reading
this one, it's a lot. So the Roanoke family live in rural Kansas, they're rich, they're beautiful,
they have this amazing huge estate, and everyone wants to be them, but they have a secret,
and because of it the girls of the Roanoke family all either run away or they die. So Lane Roanoke,
our main character, is 15 when her mother dies from suicide, and so she comes to live with
her family on the Roanoke estate and learns what it really means to be a Roanoke girl.
And yeah like I said, it's dark. Now just one more from the states before we move on. This next
book is just the pinnacle of all of the small town American novel tropes that you guys love,
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter, so Krysten Ritter is an actress, she's been in Jessica Jones, she's been
in Gilmore Girls, she's been in Don't Trust the B*** in Apartment 23, she's a hilarious actress,
and it turns out she can write too! So I think everyone's favourite version of the small town
story is when an investigator has to go back to their own small town where they grew up and solve
a mystery that has roots tracing all the way back to their own childhood there, and that is exactly
what Bonfire is, and it's exactly what you're after. It's a little bit Erin Brockovich as well,
because our main character is an environmental lawyer who is investigating this big plastics
corporation in the town. You can really imagine it as a TV show with Krysten Ritter in the lead, it's
a lot of fun, but now let's head out and visit some small towns from other parts of the world.
So Beartown by Fredrik Backman is set in Sweden and this one really explores how toxic small
communities can be. Beartown is a small town set deep in the forest where everyone rallies around
the local junior boys' ice hockey team, which symbolize all of their hopes for
the town's future, which means that when one of the boys on the team rapes a girl from the town,
nobody wants to believe her. So this book will make you so angry and so sad,
but it's really beautifully written, and the book goes between a really large cast of characters and
we learn a lot about them each as individuals, which then contrasts really well with the effect
of this powerful small town group mentality. It's amazing. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
is set in a small town in western Nigeria where four brothers decide to start ignoring their
father's strict instructions and go fishing at a forbidden river without his knowledge. But one day
there they meet a man who predicts that one of the boys will be killed by one of the brothers,
a prophecy that in true Greek tragedy fashion, sets off this heartbreaking chain of events. The
Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa is actually set on a Japanese island, so a very isolated community,
and it's a very surreal book where objects keep disappearing from the world, and from people's
memories, and The Memory Police are there to make sure that nobody is holding on to memories
of objects that no longer officially exist. Our main character in the novel is a writer, and her
editor is somehow keeping all of his memories and is therefore in danger from the memory police. So
she helps to hide him in her house, and then woven throughout the book we also get extracts
of her own equally surreal writing. It's a very interesting book. Carpenteria by Alexis Wright is
set in a small fictional town called Desperance on the gulf of Carpentaria in Australia. In this town
the aboriginal people of the Pricklebush clan are in conflict with various enemies in the community,
from the white inhabitants of the town, to the local law enforcement, to a large mining operation
that has been established on their sacred land, so the book is very much an exploration of the
negative effects of colonialism, but it's also a celebration of Alexis Wright's own proud
aboriginal heritage. And finally I've got a few set in England's own small towns. So The Neighbor
by Fiona Cummins is a thriller set in a small Essex town. The Lockwood family have just moved in
in the middle of a news frenzy about a series of killings in the area. No wonder their new house
was so cheap. It seems like a lovely friendly new community but the murders aren't stopping. So the
book takes turns taking us behind the doors of each of the inhabitants in this town, revealing
their dark secrets, until nobody seems quite so neighbourly anymore, and you have no idea who
to trust. Then one more thriller before I finish on a cozy small town story, but Sixteen Horses by
Greg Buchanan. I have hyped this one up in quite a lot of videos recently, because I really think
you guys are going to love it when it comes out next year. This one is set in a small seaside town
where 16 horses' heads have just been found buried in the ground and the town completely descends
into paranoia and hysteria as the investigator uncovers more and more crimes in the community,
all linked to one deadly secret. And finally for something funny and cozy to balance that out:
The 12 Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss is a romantic comedy. So Kate Turner has recently
returned to live in her sleepy hometown. She's very happily single, but when one of her oldest
friends convinces her to sign up for the 12 dates of Christmas app she thinks that sounds fun.
12 christmasy dates with 12 different men, all set under twinkly lights over hot chocolate or
mulled wine, what could go wrong? Well the whole town is watching to find out. So do let us know
your favourite books set in small towns. It's such a great setting and I know there are so many more
brilliant ones out there. We would also love to hear from you. Which setting would you like us to
recommend you books from next? Do you want books set in cities, do you want books set in the deep
countryside? Let us know in the comments below, and in the meantime I will link to a playlist
here of loads more reading recommendations from us here on Book Break. See you next time!