MHC Books & Resources | Maine Humanities Council

Books, Poetry, and Big Ideas

can bring people together.

Many of the programs we create or support are built around texts—stories long and short, poems, essays and illustrated books, our Featured Reads, you name it. Whatever their form, they are all people’s efforts at expressing something important about their experience of the world around them.

Featured Reads

Whether used in Discussion Projects, Readers Retreat, Read ME, or representing Maine at the Library of Congress National Book Festival, our Featured Reads offer many opportunities for participation and connection in communities across Maine.

The Berry Pickers

In Amanda Peters’ debut novel, a four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

On Tyranny

A graphic edition of historian Timohty Snyder’s bestselling book of lessons for surviving and resisting America’s arc toward authoritarianism, featuring the visual storytelling of renowned illustrator Nora Krug.

American Breakdown

A Silent Spring for the human body, Jennifer Lunden’s wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James.

The Great Transition

Nick Googin’s richly imaginative, immersive, and electrifyingly relevant debut novel follows a shocking disappearance amid the climate crisis of our near future.

Rostam’s Picture-Day Pusteen

Inspired by author Ryan Bani Tahmaseb’s own childhood, this story shows that sometimes being brave means sharing your whole self with others.

Wishing Season

A moving middle grade story by Anica Mrose Rissi about the enduring bond between twins: Anders, who has recently died, and Lily, who has to balance her grief and confusion with a brother who isn’t quite gone—and how to navigate a world that is moving forward without him.