Salinas Valley – 
San Simeon – 
Desolation Wilderness – 
Long Beach – 
Santa Ynez – Crime thriller set in AMSTERDAM
TripFiction armchair travel by book – CALIFORNIA
11th June 2020
TripFiction armchair book travel – California.
We may all still be locked down, but TripFiction is here to help you travel vicariously through books with a strong sense of place. The TripFiction team have been trawling through their database of thousands of books – novels, memoirs and travelogues – and hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve dug up.
CALIFORNIA
We have more than 2,000 books set in North America. Check out our Great Books Map for some top 5 or 10 literary wanderlust suggestions in New York, California, Chicago, Florida, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington. But get off the beaten track and hunt down a few books set in more quirky places around California. Here are a few ideas to get you exploring with a book…
Salinas Valley – East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity: the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence.
San Simeon – California Dreaming by Belinda Jones
Ever wished you could make-over your life?
Make-up artist Stella is an expert at helping other people change their images, but when it comes to transforming herself, she doesn’t even know where to start.
So when her new friend, glamorous Hollywood actress Marina Ray, summons her a movie set in California, Stella can’t resist the chance to start afresh – it is the land of sunshine and opportunity after all!
But are they really friends or does Marina have an ulterior motive? What is the secret that both women are hiding about the nautical (but nice) men in their lives? And what will it take to really make both of their California dreams come true?
In a Pacific Coast journey that takes in Los Angeles, the world’s most romantic ranch and California’s very own castle in the sky – this story of friendship, long-distance love, kissing (and making up) is the perfect escapist read.
Desolation Wilderness – Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown
It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan–a Berkeley Mum with an enviable life–went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.
But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?
Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth–about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page.
Long Beach – Cooking for Ghosts: Book I in the Secret Spice Cafe Trilogy by Patricia V Davis
Do hearts broken long ago forever leave a tangible trace?
A Vegas cocktail waitress. An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: each is haunted by a tragedy from her past.
Cynthia, Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes. They decide on impulse to open The Secret Spice, an elegant café on the magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural occurrences, the ship hides her own dark secrets.
The women are surrounded by ghosts long before they step aboard, but once they do, nothing is quite what it seems. Not the people they meet, not their brooding chef’s mystic recipes, and not the Queen Mary herself. Yet the spirits they encounter help them discover that there’s always a chance to live, as long as one is alive.
Santa Ynez – Sideways by Rex Pickett
Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles–who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a weeklong opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.
A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships. Adapted in 2004 into a memorable Oscar-winning movie, starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church.
We hope these off-the-beaten track books set in California help you escape for a little while. Let us know what other quirky places you’ve heard of in the Golden State, and check out our database for any books set there.
The TripFiction Team
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