Fiction With Familiar Settings

seongeona: Set in Minneapolis

missizicks: I've only visited New York three times in my life but I've been lucky to have a friend who lives there show me round. The scenes where Theo walks the streets rather than take the subway reminded me of the wanders I've taken in the city.

ZephCraven: New York, especially the Met; the beginning made me double check incident history there!

lilithcat: Not only is this set in my city (Chicago), much of it takes place at the Newberry Library, one of my favorite haunts.

thorold: Best-known novel set in The Hague

EMS_24: Like Thorold says. Set around 1900. The streets and houses still have the same atmosphere, one can imagine you will meet Eline in the Nassaulaan.

msjudy: I can always be found in a bookstore

dsliesse: Yet another one obviously in San Francisco, although the only reference is to "The City". I wasn't alive at the time this book is set, but from what I know from studying history it's pretty accurate geographically.

katemcangus: The first family hails from Austin in this book, and I loved their love of Texas.

yak_blankman: Test

dara85: I once lived in apartment that had a window facing the Lincoln Highway. There is also a town mentioned that is near where I grew up.

TheLOFT: Beautiful book set in NYC!

souloftherose: Also Lyme Regis, Dorset, England

ManWithAnAgenda: Bath, England particularly the Pump House

Boand: Set in Bath and Lyme Regis, both places I have visited many times and know well

seongeona: Carleton College, Northfield Minnesota

souloftherose: Tilling, the setting for most of this series, is closely modelled on Rye, East Sussex, UK

Boand: Set in Rye, East Sussex. The actual houses in the stories can be visited.

kristilabrie: Inspired by Orrington, Maine

ahef1963: The early parts of the book are set at the University of Toronto, where I went to grad school.

Aquila: Belize. I visited some of those caves before they were tourist attractions.

ManWithAnAgenda: The ruins at Cahal Peche among other sites in Belize

saskia17: San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands right off the Ventura, CA coast where I grew up.

karenb: A decent example of when a city is also a character in the book, really.

Diabolical_DrZ: A very familiar but depopulated and different San Francisco

DalkeithLibrary: Mary Jane Maffini is an Ottawa based mystery writer (and lapsed librarian and former mystery book store owner). The Camilla MacPhee mysteries are Ottawa-based and each is constructed around one of Ottawa's many festivals (Winterlude, Bluesfest, etc.). I know the scenery, the locations. I even know Mary Jane since she was my boss during her librarian phase. It gives me great pleasure to be able to picture each locale.

perennialreader: Libraries and bookstores are my favorite places to be.

msjudy: I can always be found in a bookstore

fulner: Lake Wobegon may be a fictional place, but rural Minnesota is a very real place, and it's probably as close as anything that will ever be written about by hometown.

aprille: Ann Arbor, Michigan

gypsysmom: Set in the North End of Winnipeg

dara85: I have visited this area and have seen the passion play. I lived in northern Missouri for a couple years.

gmathis: Written by someone who had the privilege of visiting the Ozarks before the Branson MO tourism boom ... you can still find patches and hills and valleys that fit his descriptions if you venture away from the amusement park zone.

terran: I grew up in Montana during the 1950s and rode the train alone to Wisconsin every summer from the ages of 10-16.

Tosta: Wisconsin

ZephCraven: Maine, generally. He's got his own fictional map of the state, of course, but I didn't realize how Maine-centered he was when I started this book. I started in October, as I was packing up to move to Maine — an appropriately spooky introduction.

ahef1963: Set largely in the Royal Ontario Museum, which was my favourite family destination both as a child and with my own children.

Bookwomble: Set in Alderley Edge, Cheshire

Tosta: Minnesota

vwinsloe: This is Western Massachusetts.

aprille: Chicago, Illinois

paradoxosalpha: The time I lived in Amsterdam at the start of the 21st century enhanced my appreciation of this fin-de-siecle tale set there.

missizicks: Glasgow is one of my favourite cities. My brother-in-law is from there, so I've visited a lot. Kelman doesn’t describe the city but instead conjures it through the conversations of Tammas and his workmates, his friends, his sister and girlfriend. I felt like I was there with them.

perennialreader: I love Savannah!

featherbear: portal to hell in the courtyard next to the Yale Librarian's office; spent my career working at the library not realizing I was doing the Devil's work

kristilabrie: Features locations in Portland, Maine

karenb: Among other things, a love letter to New York City and its people.

aprille: Chicago, Illinois

Cecrow: Prince Edward Island, Canada

slimikin: Ireland, generally, but especially the look of the sky

al.vick: Chicago

ohheyalibrarian: Takes place on the shores of Lake Michigan near Milwaukee, WI.

MartinBuell: Mystery series that runs all the way through to Y is for Yesterday, all set in Santa Barbara, CA (called Santa Teresa in the novels), in the 1980s.

featherbear: Born & brought up there

perennialreader: Charleston!

souloftherose: Set in Cambridge and Bletchley Park, UK

nessreader: Century spanning epic in v specific point of the balkans

hipdeep: This is an exceptionally good description of DC and how it treats immigrants, not to mention the battle in the Georgetown mall.

r.orrison: I was born and raised in northern Minnesota, and every book in the Cork O'Connor series reminds me of that.

sturlington: Setting is modeled on the town where I grew up, and I recognize the store from the novel as one I used to go to a lot

dsliesse: Despite an oblique reference to the airport in Chicago as a different site, this is clearly set at O'Hare International Airport, which I frequented as my family traveled between home in California and the rest of the family's home in northwest Indiana.

waitingtoderail: New York - if you have ever driven in downtown Manhattan on a weekday, Merrill's descriptions of the traffic will be very familiar.

katemcangus: Set in my hometown of Austin, TX.

birder4106: About abysses, cohesion, diversity, love, sacrifice, etc., etc.

EerierIdyllMeme: Salterton is not so secretly Kingston, which I intuited before confirming it.

jwindisch: This book brings Spokane, Washington in the early 1980s to life. Some of the locations like Dick's Drive-in, the Donut Parade, and the old motels on the Sunset Hill still appear much like they do in the book. For anyone who visited Spokane in the 1980's, Jess Walter captures the feel of the place in a way that grounds the story. I'm sure it would have worked with another small city setting, but the grittiness of Spokane works perfectly!

tamiNeilson: South Dakota In Black Hills, Dan Simmons immerses the reader in time and place by layering meticulous historical detail with sensory-rich storytelling and a deeply rooted cultural perspective. He doesn’t just describe the Black Hills or late‑19th‑century America — he reconstructs them through the lived experience of Paha Sapa, whose memories, visions, and spiritual worldview turn the landscape into something both physical and mythic. Simmons blends real historical events, such as the Battle of Little Bighorn and the carving of Mount Rushmore, with the textures of daily life: the sounds of the plains, the rhythms of Lakota culture, the political tensions of the era, and the encroaching presence of American expansion. This combination of factual grounding and emotional immediacy makes the reader feel as though they are standing inside the era rather than observing it from a distance.

shelleyraec: Hammer evokes the town, it’s people, and the landscape with beautifully descriptive phrasing. It is the height of summer, Riversend, as a victim of the seemingly endless drought, is a dying town surrounded by a dying landscape. With a population of only a few hundred, those that remain are barely able to hold body and soul together.

WendyRobyn: Although written before my time this book set on the west coast of Australia still felt very familiar compared to the countless American, British and etc books I have read

Lilirose_: My city and the voice of my generation, it doesn't get more familiar than this.

baaic: Buddy Bradley "lives" in Seattle and, among other things, plays in a "grunge" band

paradoxosalpha: Told in the voice of a teenager in the Chicago suburbs in the 1980s. (I was a suburban Chicago teenager in the eighties.)

skid0612: Both branches of my family originated in El Paso and i visited often.

princessgarnet: Takes me back when I was a college intern at the Library of Congress! In the novel, the Library is moving into its new digs aka the Jefferson Building.

Charon07: About a road trip in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where I spent a year as an exchange student. It made me very nostalgic for that time and place.

tardis: This (and the two sequels) are set in Edmonton, Alberta. It doesn't name the city, but mentions bookstores, restaurants, and other places I love here :)

jbergerot: Sacramento, CA

missizicks: A novel set in the city that I now call home in a historical period and social setting that is my specialism. It reminds me of the ways the city has changed, and the ways it hasn't.

yoyogod: This is set very near to where I live in an area that I drive by frequently.

TheLOFT: Collection of beautiful horror stories set me in NYS hometown; met the author at our book club and he's a lovely man.

Elgreco2025: Set in Montreal and in the beautiful Quebec countryside, of which I have been able to visit some already but many still remain to be discovered.

Yuki-Onna: Set in the north quarters of Dublin and in the National Botanical Gardens. I visited this part of Dublin many times and it's become a kind of home to me.

sallylou61: My husband is from West Virginia and we often visit there. I bought this book on one of our trips.

Maddz: My home town... I have other books in the series, but not this one as it's Amazon only.

cpg: Douglas Thayer did a great job capturing the Intermountain West.

hfglen: I've only visited Oudtshoorn a few times, but a rock in Meiringspoort, where Langenhoven clais to have camped, is inscribed with his elephant's name.

Rommert: Describes the trouble a young women gets into when she wants to use her maternal language. Setting is the region where the author and I lived (Friesland), and the situations we both encountered.

Lilirose_: Basically a tour of the most significant places of my city, pretty familiar indeed.

aprille: Detroit, Michigan

kristilabrie: Derry is based on King's hometown of Bangor, Maine

al.vick: Cincinnati

hipdeep: Small town society in Ohio is still very similar to what Anderson describes, even if Anderson's Winesburg doesn't actually exist, and the time period is a long way away.

perennialreader: Would love to live in Mitford.

souloftherose: The setting of this mystery novel is closely based on Greenway, the author's summer home in Devon

tamiNeilson: Victorian London By telling the story through Wilkie Collins, Simmons gives you a narrator who is both insider and unreliable observer. Collins leads you through opium dens, graveyards, theaters, and back alleys with the authority of someone who has lived there his whole life. His voice makes the city feel intimate, dangerous, and strangely alive.

msjudy: I can always be found in a bookstore