The best books about Los Angeles

Rebecca’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Ezra, has gone missing, but when she notifies the police, they seem surprisingly unconcerned. They suspect he has been playing the “stranger game,” a viral hit in which players start following others in real life, as they might otherwise do on social media. As the game spreads, however, the rules begin to change, play grows more intense and disappearances are reported across the country. Curious about this popular new obsession, and hoping that she might be able to track down Ezra, Rebecca tries the game for herself. She also meets Carey, someone who is willing to take the game further than she imagined possible.

A thought-provoking, haunting novel, The Stranger Game unearths the connections, both imagined and real, that we build with the people around us in the physical and digital world, and where the boundaries blur between them.

Jack Crowley is the last person a secret government agency wants to call for help.

He spends his days selling New Age trinkets to humans and his nights drinking with a street-hustling alchemist. Not exactly the law and order type. But when monsters from our childhood nightmares become flesh and blood, snatching people from the streets, he’s one of the few wizards alive who can uncover who’s behind it.

Sometimes, digging up the past reveals more than just secrets…

Former police detective, Jayne Sinclair, now working as a genealogical investigator, is commissioned by an adopted American billionaire to discover the identity of his birth father. She has only three clues to help her: a photocopied birth certificate, a stolen book, and an old photograph. But she soon realises somebody else is on the trail of the mystery. A killer who will stop at nothing to prevent Jayne from discovering the secret hidden in the past. It is the first in a series of novels featuring Jayne Sinclair, a genealogical detective.

Strays: A Lost Cat, a Homeless Man and their Journey Across America is a true story about a troubled drifter who finds a lost cat and takes her on a ten-month adventure across the spirit-lifting settings of the American West.

Michael King, a former chef, was depressed, drunk, and living on the streets of Portland. When stumbles on a hurt and starving stray, he takes her into his home in a UPS loading bay and into his heart. He names her Tabor and nurses her back to health. When winter comes, they hitchhike to the beaches of California, the deserts of Idaho, and the high-plains of Montana, surviving on the kindnesses of strangers. The pair become inseparable, healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. Meanwhile, back in Portland, the cat’s owner never stops looking her.

Part family saga, part love story, Royalties traces the rise of two immigrant families, whose paths would romantically, and, sometimes, tragically cross throughout much of the 20th century. From the humble beginnings of Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley to the glamour and power of Hollywood at its zenith, this multi-generational tale weaves the indelible story of struggles, sacrifice, and love.

Inspired by stories I heard throughout my childhood, I wanted to celebrate the legacy of my two famous grandfathers - the iconic Groucho Marx and legendary songwriter Gus Kahn - in a rich and engrossing fictional saga of two families with a cast of characters whose fates rise and fall, and rise again. I feel that my intimate perspective brings a thrilling mix of romance, family tribulations, and personal triumphs.

The Lockhart Women is a mother/daughter/sister story set in Huntington Beach, California in the 1990s. It's about divorce, choices, and regrets with the OJ Simpson trial as background noise. Susan Straight, author of In the Country of Women calls The Lockhart Women “deeply and thoroughly Southern Californian.”

The novel begins on June 17, 1994, the night of Simpson’s slow-speed chase through Southern California, when Brenda Lockhart’s husband announces he’s leaving her for an older and less attractive woman. Brenda’s never worked outside the home and needs to find a job. Instead, she sits down on the couch and gets hooked on the media frenzy surrounding the criminal trial. Meanwhile, her two teenage daughters make their own bad decisions in lovers and crime.

Investigating the death of a pugilist sends Jemmy  McBustle to illegal boxing bouts in 1898 St. Louis. She chases clues from the department store to Coroner’s office to the grand Jewish Fair. She visits City Jail to interview Jesse James’ smarter brother, legendary outlaw Frank James. She even explores the seedy world of patent medicine makers who flourished before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

Jemmy has troubles. Every person at the Illuminator newspaper hates her. Mother keeps trying to marry her off to a rich old geezer. Add into the mix a swarm of boarders at the McBustle boarding house, an uncooperative Thanksgiving turkey, and an entire family down with the flu. Oh, and there’s an ugly calico cat with a broken leg.

A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: she will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna's mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister?

The once great Global Civilization not only dominated the earth by the end of the 21st century, but it expanded to the solar system and created colonies on Venus, Mars, Europa, and Titan. Then came the Fall.

Overnight the light of Civilization dimmed and the settlers on these far-flung worlds were left to fend for themselves for a thousand years. Saturnius takes place on Titan where the colony has split into two factions. One inhabits the ancient city and has formed a cult around the Global Corporation. The other has retreated to the forests and waits for the moment to destroy it all. But what could cause a global civilization to simply collapse? Well, this list provides some interesting scenarios…