Fiction in Unusual Settings

SOUTH CAROLINA. RED LOBSTER RESTAURANT. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/300_1828034/1/300_1828034/cite. Accessed 9 Jun 2017.

Tired of  reading the same old, same old plots? Have mysteries solved by Scotland Yard, edgy fiction set in big cities, dysfunctional surburban family dramas and the like started to seem like old hat? Are you tired of contemporary backdrops to the stories you read? We've combed our catalog to find a selection of books with somewhat unusual settings, in a variety of genres, which we hope will pique your interest. Do you recommend any fiction with unusual settings? Let us know in the comments!

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
Setting: last day of business at a Connecticut  Red Lobster
  

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Setting: a planet, Oasis, where only one plant grows and one animal lives 

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Setting: a religious pilgrimage in the era of the Black Death 

Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown

Setting: on the ship of a female pirate in the early 1800s  

The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

Setting: the kitchen of the last tsar   

The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

Setting: the kitchen of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas   

Watergate by Thomas Mallon

Setting: Washington, D.C. in 1972   

White Heat by M.J. McGrath

Setting: Inuit territory at the Arctic Circle   

The Boy from Reactor 4 by Orest Stelmach

Setting: Chernobyl

The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beyon Rees

Setting: a Palestinian refugee camp

The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny

Setting: 16th-century Venetian female doctor's travels across Europe in search of her father

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Setting: Chechnya 

The Fire Child by S. J. Tremayne [eBook]

Setting: Cornish mine country 

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Setting: coastal Essex estuary

The People's Act of Love by James Meek

Setting: Siberia 1919 

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

Setting: one block of a city street 

The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirahk

Setting: a fantastical version of medieval Estonia 

Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Setting: an English garden