Books like Gravestone Chronicles I — picked by fans

This book is densely illustrated (I’d guess that about three-quarters of the 430 8”x10” pages of the main text are filled with images). This was what first led me to travel to New England to see these stones for myself, which I did six years later.

This combination of rich art and Puritan values should challenge anyone’s assumptions about early American sensibilities.

The Tashjians’ book challenged the idea that Puritans rejected visual art. Their study is important in documenting a new aesthetic, where the skull (death’s head) gives way to the winged faces of angels (cherubs), which were more gentle and sentimental in style rather than dark and threatening. Specific stonecutters discussed in this book include John Bull, William Codner, Zerrubbabel Collins, William Young, Henry Christian Geyer, Joseph Lamson and his shop, William Mumford, John Stevens and family, and Jonathan and Moses Worster. These are names well-known to anyone versed in this art form.

I was taken by the fact that new motifs in gravestone design could spread through the stonecutter community with such personalized innovations and styles. Further, in chapter 8: "The Icons of Essex," County provided a contrast with another style of cutting faces in stone. This book significantly broadened my view of stonecutting styles in New England. It also… show more.

The first volume of my book focused on Boston, Plymouth County, and Cape Cod. Benes’ study was essential for providing a larger context for my own account of the stonecutters of this locale. He relied on an analysis of over 4000 gravestones in over 100 burial grounds. He prodded the neophyte (like myself at the time) into considering the more symbolic elements of gravestones, including the perception that headstones and footstones represented the headboards and footboards of the beds in which the deceased were “sleeping.”

His book provided a much-needed reminder of the subtle religious symbolism found on all of these old monuments. Plymouth and Barnstable Counties are particularly important for understanding the stonecutters' business practices and design repertoires in this region of Massachusetts. 

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.

The first great American trashy novel, Peyton Place today seems rather tame, but in its day, it was scandalous. Plucking it from my mother’s bookcase when I was 14, I was engrossed by its roaring passion and sensational secrets.

Set in a small New England town, the book set the stage for the modern soap opera, and I wolfed it down like a big box of candy. It reminds me of those great, heady melodramas of the 1950s (and was itself made into a fabulously sudsy film in 1957), an intoxicating mix of all things forbidden.

I adored the fact that it was literary, which it doesn’t get enough credit for. I think its opening line—“Indian summer is like a woman…”—is one of the best in mid-20th Century literature. 

We highly recommend this capacious “counter-archive” of Native writing because it definitively lays to rest the myth of the “vanishing Indian.” Covering more than four centuries, it includes work from ten tribal nations from Maine to Connecticut in the form of early political petitions and land deeds to contemporary poetry and blogs. We love that its editor, a non-Native scholar, drew on the expertise of eleven Native editors from tribal communities for its diverse content, sourced from oral narratives, manuscripts stored in garages, and passed-around bootlegged copies. We also love that the book inspired a website for the extra material and for new work being produced now. In this sense, the website is a living document that illuminates the long history and vibrant presence of Indigenous writing.

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.  

I was once in line to get a book signed by Elizabeth Strout, and the minute I opened my mouth to greet her, I burst into tears. That’s how much I loved this book.

I loved Amy, the mother, and how hard she was trying to parent her teenage daughter, Isabelle. And Isabelle, who is trying to figure out her place in the world ends up having an affair with her teacher. But what I love the most is how much I felt bad for both Isabelle, who is trying to sort out her feelings for her teacher and herself, and Amy, who is furious at her daughter, the teacher, and herself.

Strout is so good at these kinds of perfectly imperfect relationships, these people who love and hurt each other. I read this book at least a decade ago and I still feel the sadness and tenderness of it… show more.

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.

The Patient is a very quick read and easy to get sucked into, questioning everything you might know or think. I love how it was told through a series of online posts during which the narrator, a young psychiatrist, slowly reveals his story, never quite knowing if what he experienced was real or if he was going crazy.

I love how the sci-fi aspect took it out of our real world just enough to feel fantastical but not too much to be unrealistic or like a classic high-fantasy novel. The pace was fantastic, the twists and reveals were perfectly placed, and it was just the right amount of horror. I appreciate any book that is unexpected and leaves me thinking about it for days after I’m finished.