Tim Winton is an author from my home state, Western Australia. His novel Cloudstreet is set in Perth, where I used to live.
Now I live in London, where possibly more books are set than any other city. I read the most recent Harry Potter recently, which mentions several central London locales.
Another Douglas Coupland book… Girlfriend In A Coma takes place in a lot of familiar locales (with some familiar people in a familiar timeframe).
The downside to this is when they set a book where you live but it’s clear they’ve never lived there. This happens quite a bit with San Francisco - added for color by a writer who may have looked at a map and that’s about it.
I’ll never forget the murder-mystery book I read about a young military cadet couple that left their house in Forest Hill and went for a jog in Golden Gate Park and got attacked. Houses in Forest Hill are easily in the $5 million and up range, and even if these cadets happened to be the richest military personnel in history, there’s no way to get there easily without jogging a looong way down major commuter streets. If residents of Forest Hill wanted to go for a jog, I’d imagine they’d go to Lake Merced or along Great Highway, both of which would be a direct shot down Sloat Ave.
To the OP, White Palace was a good read for me, b/c it was set in my hometown of St. Louis and got the neighborhoods down pat. Not just the neighborhoods, but who would live there and how they would behave.
George Crabbe’s The Borough is set on the Suffolk coast. However, it’s two centuries old, so I can’t really vouch for its realism :wally
John Irving was apparently a good friend of my Headmistress from middle and high school.
He actually mentions her in in A Prayer for Owen Meany, our English teacher didn’t warn us about it when she assigned us the chapter – just so see could see our reactions! 
Also, I’d like to third the thing about the Finovar tapestry. I read the scene that takes place at UofT Convocation Hall the day after the first time I’d been there. I remember thinking about how cool a building/room it was, and then I read that someone agrees!
Top this one: not only is Ulysses set partly in my home town, my great grandfather’s shop gets mentioned *by name * in Molly’s soliloquy. There are some other books set in Gibraltar, like Marguerite Duras’ ‘The Sailor from Gibraltar’ and Paul Gallico’s ‘Scruffy’, Blasco Ibañez’s Luna Benamor, some military thriller/action novels and even Mills and Boon romances, but Ulysses kind of overshadows them. :dubious:
As of right now, Amazon.com has 10,178 books “set” in Gettysburg, PA.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why? 
There are a number of books set in Houston, so that’s no big deal. However, a few years ago I read Cormac McCarthy’s *All the Pretty Horses * and noticed some familiar street names. The book is set in my childhood hometown of San Angelo, TX. It’s not one of your more well-known cities, so I was unreasonably excited about it.
Most of the short stories of Flannery O’Connor are set within a few miles of where I live. The novel/movie Paris Trout is very closely based (little other than the the names were changed) on a multiple murder that occurred here (Milledgeville GA) during the Sesquicentennial Celebration in 1953. Alice Walker and Joel Chandler Harris were born 15 miles away (although to different mothers of different races in different centuries [though both were born to penniless parents on plantations- Harris was illegitimate and Walker was the daughter of sharecroppers]) and based fiction in the town of Eatonton where they spent their childhood.
Joseph Wambaugh’s Fire Lover not only takes place in the area where I grew up, I knew the Orr Family. I went to school with the younger sister, and shopped at the father’s sporting goods store.
Several of the fires that John Leonard Orr set were in business that I shopped in, or knew of. A former manager of mine was working for Ole’s when Orr set the fire there.
What was the real kick in the pants was I knew the story of Orr, but had no clue that it was the same family until I started reading the book last year. :eek: Freaky.
Several other Wambaugh fiction books take place around my part of LA. One of them has the two lead characters going to a Mexican restrauant (El Sombero) down the street from the old Northeast police station. Until I moved out of the neighborhood, this was my favorite place to eat.
Vincent Bugliosi’s book Til Death do us Part has many scenes that take place in Glendale Ca. In a gym where I used to work out, at bars I used to frequent, etc. Reading it was like a trip down memory lane. Not freaky like Fire Lover, but, uhm, different.
Nope…what some folks (including a whooole lot of residents who can’t bother to learn the name of the town they live in) call “Bricktown” or “Brick Town” is Brick Township, N.J. It was once called Bricktown, but that hasn’t been the case for over 50 years. Time people got it right.
Folks from Wall Township or Howell Township don’t call their towns “Walltown” or “Howelltown”…Brick shouldn’t be any different.
[/climbs off soapbox, slips, twists ankle, gets transported to Brick Hospital]
I don’t think I’ve run across any books set in Calgary yet, but I did read an interesting one that was set in Edmonton of the future. Once again I can’t remember the title of the book, but I remember one scene in which a character freezes to death because he starts a fire (which could have saved his life) under a bunch of snow, and it melts and falls on the fire and puts it out.
I have read some Robertson Davies (Fifth Business, I believe), when I was too young to appreciate it. I’ll have to go back and look into him again, I think.
I would like to visit Maine some day, and see all the places that I’ve read so much about from Stephen King’s novels.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was set in Savannah.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The book The Shipping News by Annie Proulx was set in Newfoundland, Canada. Its not where I live normally, but it is where Im studying at the moment.
I havent actually read the book, but I did see the movie that was based on it just last week. Stars Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore and Judi Dench amongst others, its not bad!
I hope the link works, apologies if not.
I’m hereby admitting I’m a “fluff” reader a lot of the time!
A couple of books by Sandra Brown are set in New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter. She’s done a good job with keeping her books logistically correct.
John Grisham’s books are primarily set in the southern Mississippi area, which we’re also pretty familiar with. I think he captures the local, not to mention the pace of life and folks attitudes, very well.
I can do ya one better-- *Fool on the Hill * takes place in the dorm where I lived while I was at Cornell. It was a ridiculous depiction, I have to say, and that sort of ruined the book for me.
Kathy Reichs sets part of her crime novels in Montreal, because one of her characters works there (well, here). It’s fun to be reading a book and suddenly come across a description of buildings you see every day, and streets you walk down all the time.
I’m sure I’ve answered this before…
but ‘The Soldier’s Return’ and the two sequels by Melvyn Bragg are set in Wigton Cumbria, the nearest town to my house.
John Williams is writing excellent books about Cardiff (Cardiff Dead, The Prince of Wales), where I grew up, as has Bernice Rubens - I especially enjoyed ‘Yesterday in the Back Lane’
Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series is set in Baltimore. Her office was in the Butcher’s Hill neighborhood (where I lived at the time) and much of the action in one book occurred within blocks of my house, including directly across the street from me.
OK people move along, nothing to see here. Me and Hal are having a private conversation.
If you look at the map (if you zoom in) you see Brick Township north of the Metedeconk River. Bricktown is south of the river. They are different. Bricktown may be a section of Brick Township but it does exist. If you look at maps you can find other examples of this. On most maps you can find Avenel and New Market. Both of those “towns” are actually part of larger townships (Woodbridge and Piscataway). On the other hand you may be right and all the maps are wrong.