NW Book Lovers
From the Pacific NW Booksellers Association | promoting independents since 1965
  • Find a store
  • NW authors
  • Classifieds
  • Browse
    • N.W. Voices: Essays
    • Conversations: Interviews
    • The Storefront: NW booksellers
    • Face Out:
      Bookseller recommended
    • One Nightstand:
      Reader recommended
    • Award Winners
    • A Cup of News
    • Best Foot Forward
    • Doodles
    • Reading-Related Rambles
    • The Shelf Talker
    • Turning Pages
  • Indie NW Bestsellers
  • About Us
Browse: Home / books set in CA

books set in CA

Nov

13

2024

Echoes of Memory by Sara Driscoll

This mystery by Sara Driscoll is a stand-alone story. My previous exposure to her books was in her FBI-K9 series. Echoes of Memory is a different type of mystery/police procedural but equally great reading. Quinn Fleming, the lead character, is a young woman (in her late 20s or so) who works in a flower store …

Apr

11

2022

Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett

New Paperback of the Week from Madison Books Among the booksellers of my acquaintance, this was by far the most-anticipated book of the year. Author Mikel Jollett was once a young fiction writer of growing reputation who made an unexpected career turn and became the front-man for indie band Airborne Toxic Event. His literary talent …

May

19

2021

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and Erasure by Percival Everett

If you, like me, thought Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown was a terrific novel, funny, tragic, thought-provoking, insightful, all those good things, then here’s your next great read: Percival Everett’s Erasure. √ them out today. —Nancy Pearl on social media 5/18/20, reposted 5/18/21 One Nightstand is a reader-fueled feature, and you can be a contributor, too. Simply …

Apr

15

2021

Windhall by Ava Barry

Ah, here is Ava Barry’s Windhall, a deliciously dark murder mystery about the golden age of Hollywood. Back then, a leading lady’s dead body is discovered in her equally famous director’s rose garden. He’s charged with murder, but the case is thrown out before the trial, and the director vanishes. Now, sixty-nine years later, another woman …

Oct

21

2020

The Body Double by Emily Beyda

Instead of a hare with a pocket watch, it’s an enigmatic man with a proposition who leads our unnamed narrator down the rabbit hole. His offer is unusual, but lucrative: if she is willing to relinquish her identity entirely to work as a stand-in for a reclusive young actress until she is well enough to …

May

25

2020

The Compton Cowboys by Walter Thompson-Hernández

As it says on the cover, there are cowboys in Compton, which has been known to resemble the Wild West on occasion. The Compton Junior Posse was founded in 1988, and it has been instrumental in preserving the historical legacy of the black man in the opening of the West during the later part of …

Jan

6

2020

The Magical Language of Others by E. J. Koh

This mesmerizing memoir by poet and translator E. J.  Koh explores immigration, motherhood, familial bonds, love, trauma, forgiveness and reconciliation. It takes the reader from San Francisco to Korea to Japan. I found it to be a gorgeous, lyrical, painful, poignant and hopeful read. –Janis Segress, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, WA Explore language and …

Nov

19

2018

Dry

Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

If you’re looking for inspiration to start hoarding water in your home and vehicle, look no further. In Dry, Southern California devolves into chaos as tap water suddenly ceases to flow. Stores are stripped bare of all bottled drinks, and within days lawlessness abounds. The book follows a cast of teenage characters as they first …

Mar

2

2018

Natalie Singer

Searching for California

The problem: I’m writing a book about California. Not just a story set in a place, but a story of the place itself. A rooted story, one that will sweat California out of its paper pores. One that, with its California pheromones, will ensnare you from the shelf, radiating heat and salt air. The problem …

Search

Facebook icon Twitter icon Instagram icon
What are you reading?

Advertising information

We recommend

Of N.W. interest

  • Book Nook Bits for Teens
  • Brad Craft: Used Buyer
  • Brian Doyle: Complete Epiphanies
  • Literary Arts
  • Northwest Passages Book Club
  • NW Book Talk
  • Oregon Humanities
  • Poetry Northwest
  • Seattle City of Lit Map
  • Seattle Indie Bookstore Day
  • Seattle Literary Map
  • Writing the Northwest

Of national interest

  • Authors Against Book Bans
  • Bookstore Romance Day
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • Independent Bookstore Day
  • Indie Bob Spot
  • largehearted boy
  • Literary Hub
  • Live Wire Radio's Open Book Podcast
  • New York Times Books
  • NPR Books
  • Salon.com
  • The Book Man
  • The Rumpus

On the industry

  • Book Publishers Northwest News
  • Bookselling This Week
  • PW Daily
  • Shelf Awareness

For library lovers

  • ALA READ Poster Series
  • EarlyWord
  • Home
  • Find an Indie Bookstore Near You!
  • NW authors
  • Classifieds
  • Indie NW Bestsellers
  • About Us

© 2010-2026 NW Book Lovers

A production of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.