Ten Great Books set in LOS ANGELES

6th April 2023

The Californian city of Los Angeles is the latest destination for us to visit in our ‘Great books set in…’ series. Ten great books set in Los Angeles.

‘When its 100 degrees in New York, it’s 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles’ – Neil Simon

‘City of Angels’. ‘La-La Land’. ‘Tinseltown’. At once a city of dreams and of lost hope, LA has long held a fascination for writers of books and movies. Here are ten great books that capture that simultaneous glamour and despair:

The Tiger Catcher by Paullina Simons

Can true love ever die?

Julian lives a charmed life in Los Angeles. Surrounded by friends, he is young, handsome, and runs a successful business. Everything changes after he has a fateful encounter with a mysterious young woman named Josephine. Julian’s world is turned upside down by a love affair that takes him – and everyone else in his life – by storm. For the two new lovers, the City of Angels is transformed into a magical playground.

But Josephine is not what she seems and carries secrets that threaten to tear them apart ― seemingly forever.

A broken man, his faith in tatters, Julian meets a mysterious stranger who tells him how to find Josephine again if he is willing to give up everything and take a death-defying trip from which no one has ever returned. So begins Julian and Josephine’s extraordinary adventure of love, loss, and the mystical forces that bind people across time and space. It is a journey that propels Julian toward an impossible choice which will lead him to love fulfille…or to oblivion.

Fever City by Tim Baker

Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America’s richest and most hated man.

Hastings, a mob hitman in search of redemption, is also on the trail. But both men soon become ensnared by a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza.

Decades later in Dallas, Alston’s son stumbles across evidence from JFK conspiracy buffs that just might link his father to the shot heard round the world.

Violent, vivid, visceral: Fever City is a high–octane, nightmare journey through a Mad Men-era America of dark powers, corruption and conspiracy..

LA Confidential by James Ellroy

An involved story, with a beautiful, unique style. Graphic and dark. A police brutality case provides Ed Exley with an opportunity to make a name for himself but by testifying against other police officers he makes enemies as well as some powerful friends….

Adapted into a hugely successful Oscar-winning film in 1997, starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2016.

A biting satire about a young man’s isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.

Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father’s racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father’s work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that’s left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.

What’s more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

In his trademark absurdist style, which has the uncanny ability to make readers want to both laugh and cry, The Sellout is an outrageous and outrageously entertaining indictment of our time.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

‘For a while, Daisy Jones & The Six were everywhere. Their albums were on every turntable, they sold out arenas from coast to coast, their sound defined an era. And then, on 12 July 1979, they split.’

‘Nobody ever knew why. Until now.’

They were lovers and friends and brothers and rivals. They couldn’t believe their luck, until it ran out. This is their story of the early days and the wild nights, but everyone remembers the truth differently.

The only thing they all know for sure is that from the moment Daisy Jones walked barefoot, on to the stage at the Whisky, the band were irrevocably changed.

Making music is never just about the music. And sometimes it can be hard to tell where the sound stops and the feelings begin.

The Saviour of 6th Street by Orlando Ortega-Medina

Deserted by his father at the age of four and raised by his voodoo queen mother on the fringes of Skid Row, Los Angeles street artist Virgilio Santos believes it his mission to save the down-and-outers in his neighbourhood. But when he crosses paths with Beatrice Schein, an alluring Westside art collector, who aims to promote him to the international art world, Virgilio is tempted to turn his back on his friends. That is, until he discovers that Beatrice’s father is the principal financier of organized crime in his neighbourhood with plans to tear it all down for redevelopment. Rendered with urgent intensity, The Savior of 6th Street is a literary tour de force that confirms Orlando Ortega-Medina as one of the most original storytellers of our time.

An Inconvenient Woman by Stéphanie Buelens

When Claire Fontaine learns that her ex-husband Simon is marrying again, to a woman with a teenage daughter, her blood runs cold. She is sure that years ago Simon molested her own daughter and was responsible for her mysterious death. She can’t let him get away with it a second time. Vandalism, harassment; whatever it takes, Claire will expose him.

Simon doesn’t know where Claire got this delusion from; her daughter’s death was ruled a suicide, but she has always blamed herself – is she just lashing out? Wanting to protect his new fiancee, he hires Sloane Wilson, an ex-cop turned ‘sin-eater’, whose job it is to handle delicate cases without getting the police involved, to get Claire off his back.

Sloane must navigate the wreckage of Claire and Simon’s marriage to discover the truth. Two people with conflicting stories and a whole lot of reasons to want to hurt each other. Is she crazy or is he manipulative? And can Sloane stay clear-headed enough to figure it out?

Beneath the Same Heaven by Anne Marie Ruff

Kathryn, an American woman, and Rashid, a Pakistani-born Muslim man, seem to have bridged the divide between Western and Islamic world views with their marriage and two American-born children. But everything changes when Rashid’s father is suddenly killed by a US drone attack near the Afghan border, and their cross-cultural family descends into conflicting ideas of loyalty, justice, identity, revenge, and terrorism.

“A thought-provoking love story. This novel masterfully blends the dangers of geopolitics superimposed on romantic and unconditional familial love… Ruff bravely circumnavigates the violence at the heart of the story to lay bare the intricate drama of before and after. Revenge versus justice. Clanship versus kinship. Passionate love versus filial obligation. All are explored with intimate humanity in this compelling, tender, and timely novel.”—Kim Fay, author of The Map of Lost Memories, Edgar Award Finalist for Best First Novel.

Afraid of the Light by Douglas Kennedy

The new novel from the bestselling author of The Pursuit of Happiness and The Moment

Brendan has always lived a careful, constrained life. A salesman who never liked the work, he’s a man who has stayed in his marriage and his faith because it was what was expected of him. But now, having lost his job after corporate downsizing and on the cusp of sixty, he finds himself scrambling to somehow stay afloat in the only Los Angeles work on offer to a man his age – driving for Uber.

When one of his rides, a retired professor named Elise, asks to be dropped off outside an abortion clinic where she now volunteers, Brendan finds himself literally driving right into the virulent epicentre of one of the major issues of our time, engulfing his life in the process.

A novel of high suspense and considerable moral complexity, Afraid of the Light is a tough, affecting social thriller that speaks volumes about the corrosive divisions of our troubled times.

American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor

Beau Rosenwald – overweight, not particularly handsome, and improbably charismatic – arrives in Los Angles in 1962 with nothing but an ill-fitting suit and a pair of expensive brogues. By the late 1970s he has helped found the most successful agency in Hollywood.

Through the eyes of his son, we watch Beau and his partner go to war, waging a seismic battle that redraws the lines of an entire industry. We watch Beau rise and fall and rise again, in accordance with the cultural transformations that dictate the fickle world of movies. We watch Beau’s partner, the enigmatic and cerebral Williams Farquarsen, struggle to contain himself, to control his impulses and consolidate his power. And we watch two generations of men fumble and thrive across the LA landscape, learning for themselves the shadows and costs exacted by success and failure.

We hope you enjoy our selection of Loas Angeles fiction. Please add any of your favourites that we have missed in the Comments below!

Tony for the TripFiction team

Join Team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)POS ANGELES

Subscribe to future blog posts