Bjace's 50 states

#1--Colorado: Lady's life in the Rocky Mountains
#2--Florida: Contents under pressure by Edna Buchanan; murder and mayhem in Miami
Cross creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings--Life on an orange grove in Central Florida in the '30s ; Lion country by Frederick Buechner
#3--Illinois: Professor's House by Willa Cather ; Through Charley's door--Emily Kimbrough comes of age as a young writer for Marshall Field's magazine ; Across five Aprils by Irene Hunt--A southern Il family weathers the five springs of the Civil War.
#4--Arkansas: Martians in Maggody by Joan Hess;down-to-earth fun among the inbred ; Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks by Donald Harington; offbeat family saga
#5--Massachusetts: Death and strudel by Dorothy & Sid Rosen; period mystery set in Boston ; Nantucket diet murders Another Eugenia Potter mystery
#6--New York: World of Henry Orient by Nora Johnson--Two young teenage girls form a school friendship which enables them to deal with some of the difficulties in their lives. New York City is the backdrop. ; The trees kneel at Christmas by Maud Hart Lovelace--Lebanese immigrant children in Brooklyn see if a Lebanese Christmas lesson is true in the New World as well.
#7--Wisconsin: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink--Life in a large, exuberant pioneer family in frontier Wisconsin
#8--New Hampshire: Meadow grass by Alice Brown--Quirky stories of New England village life ; A gathering of days--a young girls life on a NH farmin the 1830s..
#9--North Carolina: Where the lilies bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver--A family of Orphans in the Smoky Mountains become wildcrafters to remain independent.
#10--Washington: The egg and I by Betty MacDonald--Absolutely hilarious account of the author's life on a remote chicken farm on the Olympic Penninsula pre-WWII ; The plague and I, life in a tuberculosis sanitarium was never so funny.
#11--Texas: All the pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy--Life among cowboys in south Texas and Mexico.
#12--Minnesota: Northern lights by Tim O'Brien--Two brothers take a cross country ski trip during a dangerous winter storm.
#13--Maine: Arundel by Kenneth Roberts--Pre-Revolutionary invasion of Canada through Maine The baked bean supper murders--A murderer is loose in the town where Eugenia Potter summers and she must find him or perhaps lose her own life. Has recipes and lots of descriptions of New England food ; Murder with puffins by Donna Andrews--Romantic getaway deteriorates into murder and mayhem ; Cordelia Underwood by Van Reid--Treasure hunting and mayhem in coastal Maine.
#14--Iowa: The cooking school murders by Virginia Rich. When Eugenia Potter arranges for a famous food writer to give a cooking class in her Iowa hometown, she is amazed to find murder on the menu as well.
#15--Arizona: The 27-ingredient chili con carne murders by Virginia Rich and Nancy Pickard--
#16--Pennsylvania: Dewey Decimal system of love by Josephine Carr ; Set at the Free Library of Philadelphia ; The case of Jennie Brice by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Love and murder in turn of the century Pittsburgh.

#17--Virginia: Murder with peacocks by Donna Andrews--Three weddings in a Virginia small town bring on someone's homicidal instincts
#18--Ohio: My life and hard times by James Thurber--Thurber's marvelously funny account of growin up in Columbus, Ohio
#19--Montana: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson. Not my favorite coming of age novel, but it was set in the Big Sky country
#20--Utah: Monkey wrench gang--the original cult ecoterrorism novel. I loved Edward Abbey, who was both charming and hostile, wonderful and antisocial
#21--California--Hollywood and Levine by Andrew Bergman. Jack Levine, a New York PI, goes to Hollywood to help a friend and gets embroiled in a plot having to do with the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Has lots of real-life characters imported into it. Fun but basically silly ; Cheshire cat's eye by Marcia Muller. Murder set among historic preservationists and building restorers in San Francisco. Blandings castle and elsewhere by P. G. Wodehouse--5 of the stories are set in 1920s-1930s Hollywood in the movie business. (Wodehouse had worked in the movies and the stories are especially fun.) ; The loved one An Englishman's take on expatriate Englishmen and their strange relationship to the Hollywood culture
#22--Georgia--Run with the horsemen by Ferrol Sams. Coming of age novel set in rural Georgia during the Depression. Southern culture in all its glory and repulsiveness. (Some of the racial incidents in this book, perpetrated by educated people, are sick-making.).
#23--Louisiana--Gutenberg murders by Gwen Bristow. Murder set at a research library in New Orleans. Doesn't make nearly enough of its setting.
#24--Indiana--High cotton by Darrell Pinckney--Coming of age novel set in Indianapolis' black middle class in the 1960s-70s.
#25--West Virginia--Pilgrim at Tinker Creek--the natural life of an Appalachian River--alternately rambling and glowing; full of minutia.

#26--District of Columbia--Carnage of the realm by Charles Goodrum. Murder set among Washington's library and museum culture.
#27--New Jersey--One for the money by Janet Evanovich--Stephanie Plum takes on Trenton's mean streets as a bounty hunter when she can't find any other gainful employment.
#28--Connecticut--We wish you a Merry murder by Valerie Wolzien--Christmas in the high-toned 'burbs is all parties, just the right gifts and murder when a venture capitalist is found dead by the fire in his ex-wife's lavishly decorated home. ; Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes. Jerry Pye and his intellectual dog Ginger make life interesting in Cranbury, CT (a fictionalized West Haven.