San Francisco! Just saying the name brings up images of fog rolling over hills, cable cars climbing steep streets, and a history full of gold rushes and earthquakes. It’s a city that feels alive in a unique way, and so many authors have set their stories here.
You can walk the same streets as Sam Spade, feel the energy of North Beach, or imagine the city rebuilt after disaster. If you love books that really put you in a specific place, here are 35 novels that use San Francisco as more than just scenery.
This is where detective Sam Spade became famous. Set in the foggy San Francisco of the 1920s, Spade gets tangled in a hunt for a jewel-encrusted falcon statue after his partner Miles Archer is murdered.
You follow Spade through back alleys and shadowy offices, never quite sure who is telling the truth. Hammett knew the city well, and it shows.
Step into 28 Barbary Lane in the 1970s. Mary Ann Singleton visits San Francisco, then impulsively decides to stay. She finds an apartment managed by the wonderful, mysterious Anna Madrigal.
Through Mary Ann, we meet a whole group of people whose lives intertwine in funny, surprising, and sometimes dramatic ways. It really feels like 1970s San Francisco.
This historical novel drops you right into the chaos before and during the massive 1906 earthquake and fire. Annalisa Passarelli is a reporter who stumbles onto deep corruption within the city government just as disaster strikes.
The book shows the terrifying scale of the destruction and how people tried to survive and expose the truth amid the ruins.
This one is part of the Women’s Murder Club series. Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends investigate deaths at a prominent San Francisco hospital. Patients who should be getting better suddenly die, and the pattern is alarming.
At the same time, a different set of murders grips the city. Lindsay has to figure out if there’s a connection.
Lindsay Boxer is back. This time, she’s chasing a killer known for targeting wealthy victims. As if that wasn’t enough, a truly bizarre case lands on her desk involving severed heads found in a public garden.
Lindsay and the Women’s Murder Club must untangle these threads, which lead to some unexpected personal secrets.
The Women’s Murder Club faces criminals who wear police masks during violent robberies. Lindsay Boxer leads the investigation, but she also suspects corruption might reach inside her own department.
It’s a double threat, as the team tries to stop the masked attackers while unsure who they can trust.
Another classic from Hammett, this features his nameless detective, the Continental Op. He’s hired to look into a diamond theft but soon finds himself investigating a family supposedly cursed.
The trail leads him through San Francisco cults, addiction, and multiple murders, all tied to the Dain family’s dark past.
Modern San Francisco Homicide Inspector Kate Martinelli investigates the murder of a man found dressed like Sherlock Holmes. The victim was obsessed with the great detective. The case gets stranger when Kate discovers a lost Holmes manuscript possibly connected to the crime.
The story shifts between Kate’s investigation and fragments of this potential Holmes story.
This book started the Women’s Murder Club series. Homicide Inspector Lindsay Boxer teams up with a medical examiner, a reporter, and an assistant D.A. They work together to solve a series of shocking murders.
The victims are all newlyweds, killed shortly after their weddings in San Francisco. Lindsay also deals with personal health issues during the case.
Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women’s Murder Club investigate a new series of murders in San Francisco. The victims seem unrelated at first – an elderly Black woman shot, a child killed – but Lindsay suspects a hidden link.
The investigation uncovers old family secrets and points towards a killer motivated by revenge.
A townhouse explosion rocks a wealthy San Francisco neighborhood. Lindsay Boxer and the Women’s Murder Club discover it was no accident. A radical group is targeting the city’s rich and powerful.
Lindsay must stop the escalating violence while also navigating some serious personal drama.
This is a very unique Brautigan story. The main character works at a strange San Francisco library. People don’t check out books; they drop off their own unpublished manuscripts. His life takes a turn when his girlfriend Vida needs an abortion, which was illegal then.
They decide to drive to Tijuana, Mexico. It’s a gentle, quirky book with a specific 1960s feel.
This graphic novel tells three different stories. One is about Jin Wang, a Chinese-American kid trying to fit in at a suburban school near San Francisco. Another retells the Chinese legend of the Monkey King.
The third follows a character named Chin-Kee, who embodies negative stereotypes. You wonder how these connect, and the way they finally do is quite clever.
Narrated through the journal entries of high school senior Flannery Culp, this story is set in San Francisco. Flannery describes her close group of friends, “The Basic Eight,” their elaborate conversations, and their school life.
Things get dark when infatuation with an English teacher and other teenage dramas lead to terrible consequences. It’s a sharp look at adolescence gone wrong.
Christopher Moore brings his signature humor to this vampire tale set in San Francisco. Jody wakes up one night as a newly turned vampire and has no idea what to do.
She meets Tommy, a young guy new to the city, who agrees to help her navigate her undead existence (he works the night shift at a grocery store, which helps). It’s funny, chaotic, and very San Franciscan.
Charlie Asher runs a secondhand shop in San Francisco. He’s a beta male, neurotic, but basically a good guy. Then, his wife dies shortly after giving birth, and strange things start happening. Charlie discovers he’s been unwillingly recruited as a “Death Merchant”.
His job is to collect souls around the city and protect them from dark forces that live in the sewers. It’s absurd and touching.
This is the first book featuring San Francisco detective Kate Martinelli. Assigned to a case outside the city, she investigates the disturbing murders of young girls near a secluded community.
Her main suspect is Vaun Adams, a renowned but strange artist who lives nearby and has a troubled past. Kate has to unravel the secrets of the community and the artist.
Written at the end of the 19th century, this novel gives a raw look at Polk Street in San Francisco. McTeague is an unlicensed dentist, big and simple. He marries Trina, who then wins $5,000 in a lottery.
That money slowly poisons their lives, leads to greed, jealousy, and eventually violence. It’s a powerful story about how environment and desire can corrupt people.
Clay Jannon loses his tech job and ends up working the late shift at a peculiar bookstore in San Francisco. The store is tall, narrow, and full of strange, devoted customers who check out obscure books. Clay gets curious about the owner and the odd transactions.
He uses his tech skills to investigate and uncovers a secret society linked to the bookstore’s mysteries.
This novel dives into the lives of people in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood during the dot-com boom days. It follows several characters through their interconnected stories of ambition, parties, secrets, and relationships.
The book captures the energy and sometimes chaotic feel of that specific time and place in the city.
Meet Wittman Ah Sing, a Chinese American graduate living in San Francisco during the vibrant 1960s. He’s a playwright, full of restless energy, quoting poetry and railing against stereotypes.
Wittman struggles with his identity and tries to stage an epic play based on Chinese legends. The book is energetic and captures the spirit of the counterculture era in the city.
Jamie moves to San Francisco in the 1990s, seeking freedom and a new life. While he explores the city and builds relationships, he also digs into his deceased father’s past.
He discovers his father might have had a hidden life connected to the Beat Generation poets and writers of San Francisco decades earlier. The story connects two different eras of the city.
San Francisco Police Sergeant Bobby Zha is shot and killed. Then he wakes up in another man’s body. He remembers his own murder and feels driven to find out who killed him and why.
His investigation takes him through a strange version of San Francisco, where technology, crime, and maybe even supernatural elements mix.
This science fiction novel connects two timelines. In one, set partly in near-future San Francisco, Verity is an “app-whisperer” hired to test a new digital assistant called Eunice. Eunice turns out to be far more powerful and mysterious than expected.
Verity gets pulled into events influenced by people from a different, future timeline trying to avert a disaster in their past.
Set in a near-future San Francisco after a major earthquake, this story follows Colin Laney. Laney has a unique talent for spotting key patterns in data. He senses a major turning point in history is imminent.
Part of the story takes place on the Bay Bridge, which has become a kind of squatters’ city made of salvaged parts and shops.
Imagine San Francisco years after a plague wiped out most of the population. The city is quiet, reclaimed partly by nature, and inhabited by artists and pacifists who have created a unique community.
Their peace is threatened when a militaristic force from the south decides to conquer the city. The residents must use their creativity and art to defend their home.
This graphic novel presents the diary of Minnie Goetze, a teenager growing up in 1970s San Francisco.
Through her explicit words and drawings, Minnie documents her life, her exploration of sex (including an affair with her mother’s boyfriend), and her struggles to understand herself and the adults around her. It’s a raw and honest look at adolescence.
Twelve-year-old Donald Duk lives in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He dislikes his name and feels embarrassed by his Chinese heritage, preferring Fred Astaire movies.
As Chinese New Year approaches, Donald has vivid dreams about the building of the transcontinental railroad by Chinese laborers. These dreams help him connect with his history and identity.
In a future San Francisco (around 2048), the city has become an ecotopian society based on respect for the earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. They live peacefully and sustainably. However, they face invasion from a militaristic, corporate state to the south.
The story follows the residents, including an old healer and her grandson, as they use nonviolent resistance against the invaders.
What if H.G. Wells actually built a time machine? In this novel, he uses it to pursue Jack the Ripper, who has escaped from Victorian London to 1970s San Francisco. Wells arrives in the modern city completely unprepared for the culture shock.
He must track down the Ripper before he kills again in this strange new world.
This book takes you into the gritty, vibrant queer scene of San Francisco’s Mission District in the 1990s. Told in short chapters, each named after a girl the narrator Michelle gets involved with, it follows her experiences with love, sex, friendship, and heartbreak.
It captures the raw energy and atmosphere of that specific time and community.
Journalist Jack Hatfield gets banned from covering the War on Terror after being unfairly smeared by the media. He moves to San Francisco but finds himself uncovering a potential terrorist plot involving stolen explosives.
Set against familiar city landmarks, Hatfield races to stop the attack while battling powerful forces trying to silence him.
Ruth Young lives in San Francisco and cares for her aging mother, LuLing. LuLing suffers from dementia, but before her memory fades completely, Ruth discovers writings that reveal her mother’s hidden past in a small village in China.
The story unfolds across generations, showing the secrets, misunderstandings, and deep connections between mothers and daughters.
In the late 1930s, three young women—Grace, Helen, and Ruby—become friends while working as dancers at the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
They navigate the glamour and challenges of the entertainment world, deal with prejudice, and guard deep personal secrets. Their friendship faces tests through wartime, loyalty, and betrayal over many years.
Young Moon Shadow travels from China in the early 1900s to join his father, Windrider, in San Francisco. Windrider works in a laundry but dreams of building and flying his own airplane.
Father and son bond as they pursue this dream, face prejudice, and experience life in Chinatown, including the devastating 1906 earthquake. It’s a touching story about family and resilience.