California fiction
Explore the best California fiction books with our curated list. Discover gripping novels set in the Golden State, from classic tales to modern masterpieces. Perfect for book lovers!
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
The saga of a family in 1939 that struggles through the Great Depression by laboring as Dust Bowl migrants.
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East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks' and the Hamilton's--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The story of two brothers, Aron is a clean-cut model student, engaged to be married, the pride of his hardworking father. Cal is a rebellious loner, sternly rejected by his father.
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Roughing it
by Mark Twain
Describes the author's experiences during the six years he spent in California, Nevada, and Hawaii
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The Life and Adventures of JoaquĂn Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit
by John Rollin Ridge
A fictionalized biography of Joaquin Murieta, a nineteenth-century Mexican bandit who organized an outlaw company numbering more than two thousand who terrorized gold-rush Californians.
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Bret Harte's Gold Rush
by Bret Harte
These fifteen stories bring the California Gold Rush to life with their boisterous assemblage of rough-clad miners, pistol-packing preachers, iron-willed women, and philosophical gamblers. Theirs was an unpredictable world, filled with gold strikes and freak tragedies, when the wisdom of the gambler sometimes counted for more than that of the preacher. A master storyteller, Harte weaves tales that seem to come directly from the campfire, where the spinning of yarns and swapping of lies were the highest form of entertainment.
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The Octopus
by Frank Norris
Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they despised: consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings they resorted to the same tactics used by the railroad: subversion, coercion and outright violence. In his introduction, Kevin Starr discusses Norris's debt to Zola for the novel's extraordinary sweep, scale and abundance of characters and details.
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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughters' memories and feelings
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Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West
Two classic short stories, one about a male reporter who writes an advice column, and the other, about people who have migrated to California in expectation of health and ease.
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The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
The renowned novel from the crime fiction master, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe. • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in. “Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion
A RICH DISPLAY OF SOME OF THE BEST PROSE WRITTEN TODAY IN THE USA.