I will grab a book set in Baltimore or D.C. without much expectation, simply because I know the area and want to see a literate take on it. Laura Lippman was a delightful surprise because she is so good. I've also encountered the pretty awful, and was stuck with one as my only book on a long flight. Groan!

The Tony Hillermans, the James Lee Burkes, the Laura Lippmans rightfully become nationally known. As does Margaret Maron, who sets her latest series in rural North Carolina, and Joan Hess with her Arkansas locale. My beloved Sharyn McCrumb also. But I have to wonder if there are more regional writers that the rest of us just never learn about.

My cousin in East Tennessee has made a point of tracking down regional writers. She introduced me to Beverly Connor who has one mystery series featuring an archaeologist working in the East Tennessee - Northern Georgia area. Completely enjoyable, but the Baltimore Library only has 3 of her novels and the local bookstores don't stock her at all.

Are there deserving regional novels you've read that never gained a national audience? I don't mean to slight our International friends here. We've talked before about our ignorance of other literatures. I'm particularly interested in good writers that never made it beyond their home region in their own country.

I mentioned on the April Reading thread reading Wormwood by Susan Wittig Albert. In it, China Bayles goes to KY to help a friend of her mother's do herb walks at a fictional Shaker village and solves both a new murder and an old one. JHG's The Believers is set in a Shaker village; it was my mother's favorite of her books.

A childhood favorite was Annie Fellows Johnston who wrote the now-non-PC The Little Colonel books. They were set in KY soon after the Civil War and continued to the main character's adulthood. The first one was made into a movie starring Shirley Temple.

This has been a much-read book here in Indiana.

I've recently started reading Laura Lippman's books and, while they are based in Baltimore, she makes many references to Maryland as well and, as Chris says, these books are very well known and very well written. I don't know how I missed them for so long.

One book that is region specific but not real accurate is Jodi Pichoult's Plain Truth. Her portrayal of the Amish of Lancaster County was way off, and she moved landmarks around-very annoying for people who know where things really are. And little details like you can't buy beer at a convenience store in PA but her character does so. If you are going to write about a real place, then deal with the landscape as it really is, just like the characters would have to if they were there!

I once read a mystery that took place in Briarcliff and Ossining near where we live. My son and I both read it and were constantly yelling..."That's not where that store is!"

Another regional read that I liked was "The Wind" by Dorothy Scarborough that is about the loneliness of life in a small Texas town during the 1920's. The heroine does not fare well with the isolation and the constant wind, but it's a fascinating story. I really enjoyed it.

I could have sworn I already posted this, but it ain't there....

Ah well.

Andrea Levy - Small Island. Winner of the Orange Prize, and it also won an award for being the best of the first ten Orange Prize-winners. A wonderful book, set mainly in the late forties in Britain, about people from Jamaica coming to London and their experiences when they arrived. Funny, poignant, and very moving.

It's beyond my comprehension why it wasn't even long-listed for the Booker.

Mariannese, I looked at Godwin's books on Amazon and wondered why I'd never paid any attention to her. Then I saw a book cover I had seen in the stores, and several similar covers, and it screamed "romance novel" to me. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I've read plenty, but it's just not my first choice when book shopping. Are you telling me I've judged shallowly and wrongly by appearance? Oh the horror!

Frances, one of by oldest friends is just off Rockville Pike, I'll have to try that novel by Coll.

Carolyn, Giles is a perfect example of what I was looking for. My library has not one book by her. And I'd probably enjoy Giles because my mother's family is from the hills of Kentucky and I've done genealogical research there. (A 2 or 3 times great grandfather did go west for the gold rush, but came back to Kentucky. Not trusting banks he buried, so he said, his gold. Always claimed he could see the location from his front porch. My grandmother told me there was a mad scramble when he died without telling anyone where it was. Seeing as how his house, and porch, was on the side of a mountain with a long vista, it took a long time for people to give up looking.)

Dorothy Scarborough is another writer not carried by my local library system, Lemonhead.

I remember Lonesome Dove, I think it was, had a wonderful scene early on about an easterner getting off the train in Texas and becoming totally disoriented by the wind. Never realized it was that real, I just thought it was metaphor.

On-line booksellers truly have opened up our reading horizons.

Oh trust me. The wind is real!! Spring around here is very windy and dusty and so most people are going around sniffing with allergies etc.

You should check out the Scarborough book - it's set in a town not too far from here when it was much smaller than a town (just a few houses) and the story is just great. You really get into how she (the heroine) feels in her isolation after being a city girl...

Some of her books are better than others, of course. I read a literary criticism of her work once that quoted her as saying she always wanted to write like Willa Cather, and the reviewer said she had succeeded--beautiful writing but she forgot to tell a story. (Sorry, Cather fans.)

Mrs. Giles was also quoted as saying she should have been qualified to write because she had read a book a day for years. Sounds like some of us could qualify on those terms, doesn't it?

Another of her KY series dealing with different characters is set in the mountains: The Enduring Hills, Miss Willie, and Tara's Healing.

Anyway, if you're interested in beautiful photos and good prose, these are good books to learn about the barren but beautiful West Texas area.

He has a website, but it's broken right now else I would add it.

I'm taking availability in my Baltimore library, primarily, as an indicator of how well known non-Baltimore writers are outside of their own region, deservedly or not.

While the online booksellers make all books available, I know I, at least, like to browse the brick and mortar booksellers and the library for my next book. If authors aren't on the shelf to be scanned, they rarely come to my attention. Except from here at Reader's Paradise, of course.