Top 5 Tuesday | Top 5 books set in America | 4/8/25 – Past Midnight Book Reviews & More

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and now being hosted at Meeghan reads.

This Week’s Topic is:

Top 5 books set in America

North or South, we’re doing the continents. Tell us about all your fave books set in the Americas!

Lies on the Serpent’s Tongue by. Kate Pearsall – West Virginia

A beautifully dark YA set in Appalachia tinged with magic, mystery, murder, and romance. For fans of House of Hollow and Wilder Girls! As Caball Hollow slowly recovers after a tumultuous summer, the James family must also come to terms with their own newly revealed secrets.

18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths—that’s what happens when you can smell people’s lies—and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long resented her gift, which has taught her that everyone lies and no one is who they seem to be. So when her old nemesis, Hadrian Fitch, the biggest liar of them all, shows up on her front porch—bloodied, broken, and asking for help only she can give—her first instinct is distrust. But something new is stalking the Forest that surrounds Caball Hollow.

Now things are disappearing. At first, it’s small stuff—like letters, photos, and keys. But then, Rowan notices people around her are losing their memories. And when the body of a neighbor is found in the middle of town, Rowan knows there’s a link between this death and all the events disturbing the Hollow. Can she find what—or who—the link is before it takes another life?

***

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by. Katherine Arden – Canada

During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

***

When the Bones Sing by. Ginny Myers Sain – Arkansas

The past three years have been tough for Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas, a small town quietly tucked away in the Ozark mountains. More than two dozen people have disappeared on the local hiking trails; there one moment, gone the next, not a trace left behind, until their buried bodies are discovered.

17-year-old Dovie doesn’t believe in magic even though she comes from a long line of women who can hear the bones of the dead sing, and for the past few years the bones have been crooning nonstop, calling out to Dovie to dig them up.

Some of the old-timers believe that it’s the monstrous Ozarks howler snatching people off the Aux Arc Trail. Well Dovie doesn’t believe in the howler, and she doesn’t believe her best friend Lo when he tells her he is being haunted by dark shadows. All she believes in is her talent that guides the local sheriff to the bones when they begin their song, then reuniting the dead with their families to give them some peace.

Lo doesn’t know peace, though. The shadows follow him everywhere. He soon learns they’re the murdered hikers and they want answers. But the truth of their deaths isn’t buried with their bones; it’s hidden somewhere deep in the hills. And Lo and Dovie must unearth it before anyone else is killed.

***

One in a Million by. Beverley Kendall – California

Megastar Whitney “Sahara” Richardson has everything planned—including when she’ll have kids. But a mix-up at the fertility clinic makes her the biological mother of a child she didn’t carry and whose father she’s never met. A fun celebrity rom-com with the poignancy of Abby Jimenez and a modern twist on “surprise baby” for fans of Jasmine Guillory.

World-famous Whitney “Sahara” Richardson is at the top of her game. With four Grammys, an Oscar nod, and a half-billion-dollar clothing line, her career is skyrocketing. Even her headline-grabbing dating life is looking up. And if everything goes as planned, marriage and children are just a few years away—and they will come in that order. However, a mix-up at the fertility clinic where her eggs are stored puts the cart before the horse, making her the biological mother of a child she didn’t carry and whose father she’s never met.

Oops. Sahara suddenly has a daughter…and her father wants to keep her.

***

The Hacienda by. Isabel Cañas – Mexico

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.