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Novels that Take Place in San Francisco

San Francisco has been celebrated in some excellent novels. Here's a list of some of the best novels set in San Francisco that SFPL has to offer. Most are available in multiple formats - books, ebooks, and downloadable audiobooks.

User from San Francisco Public Library

16 items

  • "A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time."
    Book, 1989New York : Vintage Books, 1989, c1930. — M HAMMETT
  • "This book chronicles the lives of four Chinese women, their forty-year friendship, and how the death of one brings her daughter into the fold and creates a new understanding for each."
    Book, 1989New York : Putnam's, c1989. — F TAN AMY
  • "While deciding if she should quit working for her family's private investigation firm, Izzy Spellman copes with meddling parents, an alcoholic uncle, the disappearance of her younger sister, and her own problems with men and drinking."
    Book, 2007New York : Simon & Schuster, c2007. — F LUTZ LIS
  • "A naive young secretary forsakes Cleveland for San Francisco, tumbling headlong into a brave new world of laundromat lotharios and cutthroat debutantes."
    Book, 2007NY : Harper Perennial, c2007. — F MAUPIN A
  • "After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in…
    Book, 2008New York, NY : Tor Teen, 2008. — F DOCTOROW
  • "In January 2021, years after World War Terminus has destroyed the planet, bounty hunter Rick Deckard remains on the Earth pursuing his vocation of hunting down and killing rogue androids."
    Book, 1996New York : Ballantine, 1996. — TEEN SF DICK
  • "A Chilean woman searches for her lover in the goldfields of 1840s California. Arriving as a stowaway, Eliza finances her search with various jobs, including playing the piano in a brothel."
    Book, 2000New York : Perennial, 2000. — F ALLENDE
  • Maids of Misfortune

    A Victorian San Francisco Mystery: Victorian San Francisco Mystery, #1

    Locke, M. Louisa
    "It's the summer of 1879, and Annie Fuller, a young San Francisco widow, is in trouble. Annie's husband squandered her fortune before committing suicide five years earlier, and one of his creditors is now threatening to take the boardinghouse she…
    eBook, 2014[United States] : M. Louisa Locke, 2014. — EBOOK HOOPLA
  • "On a warm May night in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom shimmers with crystal and silver as a glittering, celebrity-studded crowd gathers for a charity dinner dance. The evening is perfect-until, just minutes before midnight, the room…
    eBook, 2008New York : Bantam Dell, 2008, c2007. — EBOOK BOUNDLESS
  • "Clay Jannon, the new night clerk at Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, notices the strange behavior of the customers and is determined to find out what is really going on."
    Book, 2012New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. — F SLOAN RO
  • "Living in San Francisco's Chinatown-with his widowed father, Old Master Wang, who misses the old way of life in China, and his younger brother, who just wants to be a normal American teenager-Wang Ta becomes involved with a series of women as he…
    Book, 2002New York : Penguin Books, c2002. — F Lee C Y
  • "John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper. From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of…
    Book, 1991New York : Vintage International, 1991, c1986. — F SETH VIK
  • "In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal…
    Book, 1989New York : D.I. Fine, c1989. — M LESCROAR
  • Locked Rooms

    a Mary Russell Novel

    King, Laurie R.
    "Mary Russell, en route to San Francisco with her husband, Sherlock Holmes, to settle her family's estate, finds herself plagued with dreams that hint of a trauma she suffered during the 1906 earthquake."
    Book, 2005New York, N.Y. : Bantam Books, c2005. — M King Lau
  • "Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club."
    Book, 2021New York, NY : Dutton, 2021. — TEEN F LO
  • "Max, who was born in the body of an old man and looks younger each year, explains his life and his choices to his wife and son."
    Book, 2004New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. — F GREER AN