Harper Lee, the author of the seminal "To Kill a Mockingbird," was born and raised in Monroeville, the inspiration for her classic novel's fictional town of Maycomb. The Monroe County Courthouse, where Lee watched her father practice law as a child, now operates as a museum.

The University of Alabama alum lived in Monroeville until her death in 2016, just a short drive from the Mockingbird Grill and Radley's Fountain Grille, named after the character Boo Radley.

Velma Wallis is a native Alaskan. Born in a remote village near Fort Yukon, she dropped out of school at age 13 to help raise her 12 siblings after their father's death. Wallis later earned her GED and moved to a cabin, where she practiced her hunting and trapping skills for over a decade.

She wrote and published her first book, "Two Old Women," in 1993, and it became a word-of-mouth bestseller. Based on an Athabascan legend passed down from Wallis' mother, the book has sold over 1.5 million copies.

Since then, Wallis has written other books, like "Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun" and "Raising Ourselves," for which she won an American Book Award in 2003. 

Jeannette Walls' 2005 memoir "The Glass Castle" examines her struggle as a child and young adult to overcome poverty and become self-sufficient. Her dysfunctional family were nomads of the Southwest, but the first place she remembers living is a small trailer park in Arizona.

Her memoir was turned into a film in 2017 starring Brie Larson.

Walls' most recent book, "Hang the Moon," was published in 2023 and focuses on young women living in Virginia during Prohibition.

John Grisham has written dozens of books across his career, beginning with 1989's "A Time to Kill," which was later turned into a film starring Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock, and Matthew McConaughey in 1996.

While he grew up in Mississippi and even served in the Mississippi House of Representatives, this lawyer turned master of the legal thriller genre was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

He branched out by writing "A Painted House" in 2001, a coming-of-age story inspired by his upbringing on a farm in Arkansas.

Other books by Grisham you may be familiar with are "The Firm," "The Pelican Brief," "The Client," and "Skipping Christmas" (which was adapted into the film "Christmas with the Kranks").

Even though he's 70, Grisham has shown no signs of slowing down. His next novel is expected in October 2025 and is called "The Widow." It's a departure from his usual fare — instead of a legal thriller, it's his first-ever mystery novel.

A California native, Joan Didion was a legendary novelist and essayist. She died in 2021.

She began her career writing for Vogue in New York City in the 1950s, but soon returned to her home state of California.

She authored five novels and 11 books of nonfiction throughout her decadeslong career. Many of her books — like 1968's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." 1970's "Play It As It Lays," and 2003's "Where I Was From" — depict California life and culture at the time they were written. 

Didion won the National Book Award for her 2005 memoir, "The Year of Magical Thinking," which she wrote following the death of her husband. 

Considered a founding father of 1960s counterculture, Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, the son of dairy farmers. His work promoted drug use as a path to individual liberation.

Two of his best-known novels — "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which was adapted into a film of the same name and won five Academy Awards, and "Sometimes a Great Notion" — were both set in Oregon, where he was raised.

Kesey died in 2001.

The eminent abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, born in 1811, grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut — and in 1896, she died in Hartford, just 32 miles away.

In her later years, she returned to Hartford, where she wrote some of her best-known works other than 1852's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" — "The American Woman's Home" and "Poganuc People" — and helped establish the Hartford Art School, which later became the University of Hartford.

Born in Delaware, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States, according to the Office of Research on Women's Health.

Though little is known about her personal life, Dr. Crumpler authored a book of medical advice for women and children in 1883, "A Book of Medical Discourses," based on her field notes.

In the historic book, Dr. Crumpler recounts: "It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others."

She died in 1895 at the age of 64.

Chabon was born in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, and began writing his first novel right after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, finishing it before getting his MFA from UC Irvine.

Since then, he's published multiple novels, most famously 2000's "The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

He's also been involved in TV shows — he was the co-creator of the 2019 Netflix miniseries "Unbelievable" and the Paramount+ series "Star Trek: Picard."

Sunshine State-grown Carl Hiaasen is a New York Times best-selling author and a master of the mystery thriller and children's genres.

He graduated from the University of Florida in 1974 and started writing for The Miami Herald when he was 23 years old. He wrote a column for the newspaper until 2021.

His most popular books, including "Hoot," "Flush," "Tourist Season," "Skin Tight," "Strip Tease," and "Skinny Dip," take place in Florida. Most recently, his 2013 book "Bad Monkey"  (also set in Florida) was adapted into an AppleTV+ series starring Vince Vaughn. It's also been renewed for a season two.

Novelist, essayist, and poet Alice Walker was born in Putnam County, Georgia, in 1944 and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.

Her third novel, "The Color Purple," depicted the life and relationship of two sisters in rural Georgia and was released to instant, universal acclaim. It was later made into a film directed by Steven Spielberg in 1985, a stage musical in 2005, and then a musical film in 2023.

In 1983, Walker became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, winning for "The Color Purple."

Since then, she has published many other books, essays, and poems, including "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" and "Meridian."

Kaui Hart Hemmings was born and raised on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu and still lives there. Her debut novel, 2007's "The Descendants," tells the story of a dysfunctional family living in Hawaii dealing with the impending death of its matriarch after a jet skiing crash.

The book was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name starring George Clooney.

A child of the frontier, this Annis, Idaho, native is best known for the book "Children of God." He also wrote a guide to Idaho and the 12-part "Testament of Man" series in a cabin that he built overlooking the Thousand Springs area.

Fisher's gritty account of trappers in the fur trade era, "Mountain Men," was made into a 1972 movie starring Robert Redford, titled "Jeremiah Johnson" — though, sadly, he didn't live to see it. He died in 1968.

Ernest Hemingway, best known for his 1952 novel "The Old Man and the Sea," found his passion for writing in the upscale Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, where he was born. In high school, he wrote for the school's newspaper and yearbook. After graduating in 1917, he left Illinois to report for The Kansas City Star.

His other most well-known works are 1926's "The Sun Also Rises," 1929's "A Farewell to Arms," and 1940's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

He died in 1961.

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park operates a museum in his childhood home.

Many of Kurt Vonnegut's works — though not his signature 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" — use his birthplace of Indianapolis as a symbol of American values, or contain at least one character from Indy.

In 1986, during a visit to North Central High School, he said, "All my jokes are Indianapolis. All my attitudes are Indianapolis. My adenoids are Indianapolis. If I ever severed myself from Indianapolis, I would be out of business. What people like about me is Indianapolis," per Indiana History.

Vonnegut died in 2007.

Before travel and history writer Bill Bryson shot to fame in the UK, where he now lives, he was Des Moines' hometown boy. He attended Drake University for two years and wrote about his 1950s Middle America upbringing in his 2006 memoir "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid."

Fellow Hoosier and former President Herbert Hoover features prominently in Bryson's 2013 book, "One Summer: America, 1927."

Bryson is also known for his 2003 book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and his 1997 book "A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail," which was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name starring Robert Redford as Bryson.

In 2020, Bryson told Times Radio that he was retiring from writing, according to The Guardian, though he released an audiobook in 2022 called "The Secret History of Christmas."

Perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplay for the 1961 film "Splendor in the Grass," Inge channeled his Kansas pride into his two novels: 1970's "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff" and 1971's "My Son Is a Splendid Driver," both of which take place in the fictional town of Freedom, Kansas.

His hometown of Independence fostered his creativity. As a boy, Inge cherished the tight-knit community and enjoyed seeing top artists perform as they passed through on their way to Kansas City. He also attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence, which now has a black box theater named after him.

When creating this list, Kansas was a tough call, like most of the Midwest states, as the pool of notable authors was small. We went with Inge — a playwright by trade — because of his staunch state pride.

Inge died in 1973.

Hunter S. Thompson, a Louisville native, wrote almost a dozen books and is credited as the founder of gonzo journalism, a style of first-person reporting that is devoid of objectivity.

He catapulted into fame with the seminal sports article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved," originally published in June 1970. Thompson pitched the Louisville-based story to Scanlan's Monthly just 72 hours before the race, and quickly found himself submerged in the spectators' lewd celebrations, according to Grantland.

After the article, Thompson went on to write his best-known book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," in 1971.

Thompson died in 2005.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Anne Rice brought the city to life in her Gothic fiction. The French Quarter provides a setting for "Interview with the Vampire," and her house in the Garden District served as the fictional home of her characters in the "Lives of the Mayfair Witches" series.

By the end of 2025, there will be three adaptations of Rice's work airing on TV: "Interview with the Vampire," which premiered in 2022, "Mayfair Witches," which premiered in 2023, and "Talamasca: The Secret Order," which will premiere in fall 2025. It's all part of the interconnected "Anne Rice's Immortal Universe." A fourth series, an adaptation of her novel "The Queen of the Damned," has also been greenlit.

Rice died in 2021, and her mausoleum is open to the public at a cemetery in New Orleans, per Atlas Obscura.

Stephen King is the quintessential Maine author. He was born in Portland, graduated from the University of Maine at Orono, and lived in Bangor for decades. He now lives in Florida.

King's fictional Maine topography provides a backdrop for almost all of his novels, including "Carrie," "It," "The Dead Zone," "Insomnia," "'Salem's Lot," and others — though not his most famous work, "The Shining."

King's 66th book, "Never Flinch," is set to be published in May 2025.

Tom Clancy, who was born and raised in Baltimore, wrote 19 novels throughout his career. They mostly focused on the fictional super-CIA analyst Jack Ryan. His 1989 book "Clear and Present Danger" was the best-selling book of the year it was released, The Washington Post reported.

His books have been adapted into multiple movies and TV shows, and Ryan has been played by stars such as Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, John Krasinski, and Alec Baldwin.

Clancy always had pride in his hometown and was even a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles. After his death in 2013, the team wore memorial patches the entire season.

Silver Spring native and romance novelist Nora Roberts was also in contention for this spot.

Born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, W.E.B. Du Bois was a preeminent sociologist, essayist, civil rights activist, and cofounder of the NAACP.

According to the History Channel, Du Bois was an early proponent of using data to solve social issues in the Black community.

After graduating from Harvard University, Du Bois published his groundbreaking book, "The Souls of Black Folk," in 1903.

A collection of sociological essays detailing the Black American experience, "The Souls of Black Folk" also introduced the theory of "double consciousness" and has become required reading in many courses around the US.

Du Bois died in August 1963, the day before the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

This bestselling author found inspiration in the economic turmoil of Detroit for his first novel, "The Virgin Suicides."

The Motor City native told NPR in 2009, "That whole feeling of growing up in Detroit, in a city losing population, and in perpetual crisis really was the mood that made me write 'The Virgin Suicides' in the first place."

His 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Middlesex" is also mainly set in Michigan.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born and raised on a tree-lined street in St. Paul's Ramsey Hill neighborhood. In his writing, Fitzgerald painted himself as coming from nothing when, in reality, the family lived in an upscale luxury apartment, per Minnesota Public Radio.

Fitzgerald's first writing to appear in print was a detective story in St. Paul Academy's newspaper when he was 13 years old.

In his most famous work, "The Great Gatsby," the main character, Nick Carraway, was based primarily on Fitzgerald himself — both were from Minnesota, attended Ivy League colleges, and then moved to New York to find themselves.

Fitzgerald died in 1940 under the impression that his work would soon be forgotten — "Gatsby" didn't become popular until it was distributed to soldiers during World War II.

Oxford, Mississippi, is the ultimate literary destination for fans of William Faulkner. He was reared, schooled, made famous, and buried there, and loved Lafayette County so deeply that he created his own fictitious county based on it.

He told the Paris Review, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it."

Indeed, almost all of Faulker's novels, including 1929's "The Sound and the Fury" and 1930's "As I Lay Dying," are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

Faulkner died in 1962 in his home state.

Poet, singer, and memoirist Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis.

Angelou was also a civil rights activist, working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Her most acclaimed work, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings," was published in 1969 and is a memoir of her traumatic early life and the development of her love for literature. Angelou was also a prolific poet, penning widely quoted lines in poems like "On the Pulse of Morning" and "Phenomenal Woman."

Angelou received an honorary National Book Award in 2013 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 before her death in 2014.

Born and raised in Helena, Meloy has written books for kids and adults, most famously the 2003 novel "Liars and Saints" and the 2017 novel "Do Not Be Alarmed."

The Harvard College grad is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, and has been dubbed "the first great American realist of the 21st century" in a review of her work by The Boston Globe.

Sparks was born in Omaha to a business professor and an optometrist's assistant — that's why, even though his work is most associated with North Carolina, he's representing Nebraska.

He wrote his first novel the summer after his freshman year at Notre Dame and, though the novel went unpublished, it was the beginning of a slow-going (at first) career in writing.

He wrote his first bestseller, "The Notebook," at age 24 in 1996. It spent over a year on the hardcover bestseller list.

Sparks has been an incredibly prolific author, writing a new book nearly every year, many of which have been made into films, including "A Walk to Remember," "The Lucky One," "Safe Haven," "Nights in Rodanthe," "The Last Song," and "Message in a Bottle."

Relatively new to the book industry, Bock, who was born and raised in Las Vegas, wrote his debut novel "Beautiful Children" in 2008. It was named the same year to The New York Times' Notable Book of the Year list.

Bock's parents were pawnbrokers, and his upbringing with them, as well as his childhood in Las Vegas, was a huge influence on the novel.

His latest book, "I Will Do Better: A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love," which is about his life with his daughter after his wife's death, was released in October 2024.

Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, where his father taught math and where Brown himself eventually attended, Parade reported.

Growing up Episcopalian, Brown doubted religion from a young age, which led to themes of conspiracy and religious skepticism that are found in many of Brown's books, like his most famous work, the 2003 novel, "The Da Vinci Code."

After graduating from Amherst College, Brown briefly pursued a career as a musician, even recording a few CDs, before quitting his teaching job to write full time.

The Newark-born author set many of his books in his hometown, including his last novel, "Nemesis," in addition to his most well-known works such as 1997's "American Pastoral," 1969's "Portnoy's Complaint," and 2004's "The Plot Against America."

The Jewish community in which he grew up became a huge influence on many of his books, including the relationships between family members or the divide between Jews and non-Jews where he was raised.

Roth died in 2018.

Anaya came from a family of cattle workers and sheepherders in the tiny town of Pastura.

"We were all poor, and had the curanderas — the healers — that helped," Anaya said in a 2016 interview with The Las Cruces Sun-News. "We had the vaqueros, the cowboys, who came in and out of the village. On Saturday evenings, my dad would take out a guitar, and somebody would bring beer, and my dad would sing some of the old New Mexico songs." He added that all of that "crawled into [his] DNA."

At age 14, he and his family moved to Albuquerque.

His first novel, 1972's "Bless Me, Ultima," was successful — but controversial — upon publication, and led to Anaya becoming one of the founding fathers of the Chicano literature movement. It was set in the New Mexico town of Guadalupe.

Anaya died in 2020.

James Baldwin's work weaves tales of "Black people's aspirations, disappointments, and coping strategies in a hostile society," according to the Poetry Foundation.

Baldwin, a New York City native and acclaimed novelist and essayist, was adored by critics for both his writing style and substance, and he penned now-classics like "If Beale Street Could Talk" and "Go Tell It On The Mountain."

Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948, where he lived for the rest of his life. On his move, he told The New York Times, "Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I could see where I came from very clearly, and I could see that I carried myself, which is my home, with me. You can never escape that. I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both."

Baldwin died in 1987.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Wolfe was recognized at a young age for his genius and enrolled at UNC Chapel Hill at age 15.

After completing further studies in playwriting at Harvard, Wolfe went on to write not only many plays, but some lengthy novels as well, including "Look Homeward, Angel," a work of fiction based on his life in Asheville.

While the book was a huge success, it was met with controversy back home, as more than 200 characters were based on actual Asheville residents, including his own family, according to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. The outcry was so bad that it led to Wolfe exiling himself from Asheville for almost a decade before returning home again.

Wolfe died in 1938.

Born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in 1908, the North Dakota native grew up in Jamestown, a medium-sized farm community, with a veterinarian father. L'Amour heard tales of the Great American Frontier from his uncles and his grandfather, who lived through the Civil and Indian wars.

Hearing these tales impressed L'Amour, who went on to write his "American Tradition" novels like "The Walking Drum" and "To the Far Blue Mountains."

He died in 1988. As The New York Times noted, at the time of his death, "all 101 of Mr. L'Amour's books — 86 novels, 14 short-story collections and one full-length work of nonfiction," were in print, making him one of the most prolific authors of all time.

Born in Lorain, Ohio, iconic novelist Toni Morrison studied at Howard and Cornell Universities before working as a publishing editor for many years. Morrison was 39 when her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," was published in 1970 to critical acclaim.

However, it was her third novel, 1987's "Beloved," that made her a literary star. 

Throughout her career, Morrison won several awards for her work, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 for "Beloved."

Morrison died in 2019.

Ralph Ellison is best known for his 1952 novel "Invisible Man," about a Black community in the South in which a man searches for his identity.

Before his writing career took off, though, Ellison left his home of Oklahoma City to pursue music at the Tuskegee Institute. It wasn't until Langston Hughes introduced Ellison to Richard Wright that Ellison was encouraged to take up writing.

"Invisible Man" was the only novel published by Ellison in his lifetime, making him one of the most famous literary one-hit wonders.

Ellison died in 1994.

Even though Cleary's Oregon hometown, Yamhill, was so small it didn't have a library, she developed a love of books early on. Once she got to school, the school librarians suggested she write children's books for a living, and Cleary made that her ultimate goal.

She published her first book, "Henry Huggins," in 1950. The "Henry Huggins" series lasted through 1964.

After that came her most famous series: The "Ramona" series, which began in 1955 and ended in 1999, including books such as "Beezus and Ramona," "Ramona Quimby, Age 8," and "Ramona Forever."

Cleary died in 2021 at the age of 104.

Pennsylvania native John Updike is one of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction more than once: in 1981 for "Rabbit Is Rich" and in 1990 for "Rabbit at Rest." His books are known for their carefully crafted depictions of the American middle class.

He also wrote "The Witches of Eastwick," which was turned into the popular 1987 film starring Cher and Jack Nicholson, and its 2008 sequel, "The Widows of Eastwick."

Updike died in 2009.

McCarthy's works are closely tied to the South, but the Southern Gothic writer was actually born in Providence.

McCarthy's family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when he was a child, and his father worked there as a lawyer.

McCarthy was 32 when his first book, "The Orchard Keeper," was published in 1965. Over the next 57 years, McCarthy wrote semi-regularly. His other works include 1992's "All the Pretty Horses," 2005's "No Country for Old Men," and 2006's "The Road."

McCarthy died in 2023.

Peggy Parish brought her beloved kids' book character Amelia Bedelia, a housekeeper who interpreted her employers' instructions literally, to life after spending years teaching elementary school and discovering what children like to read, according to Harper Collins.

Parish grew up and attended school in South Carolina but taught for many years at a New York elementary school before returning to her hometown of Manning. Her celebrated book series just celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2023.

Parish died in 1988, but Amelia Bedelia lived on through her nephew, Herman, who wrote "Amelia Bedelia" books for decades after his aunt's death. He died in 2024. 

Growing up, the Pulitzer Prize winner said he was considered "a daydreamer and rubbernecker," but those perceived weaknesses eventually became strengths when he decided to become a writer.

"They are prerequisites for writers. To follow your obsessions, which are probably your weaknesses, is a strength. Hard workers become great writers," he told The Dallas Morning News in 2018.

Johnson's best-known works are the 2003 novel "Parasites Like Us" and the 2012 novel "The Orphan Master's Son," which is what earned him the Pulitzer Prize.

South Dakota was another difficult state to fill — other authors, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, called South Dakota home at one time or another, but were not born there.

Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, a contemporary of  Robert Penn Warren, Katherine Anne Porter, and Jean Stafford, grew up in Tennessee and was named for his father, Matthew Hillsman Taylor, an attorney and Vanderbilt alum, according to The New York Times.

Taylor later went by Peter Taylor professionally, dropping the Matthew Hillsman; all of his works were written under the name Peter Taylor.

Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1987 for his novel "A Summons to Memphis."

He died in 1994.

It's hard to overstate Hoover's impact on the publishing industry. She puts out bestsellers at an astonishing rate: She's released 26 books and sold over 20 million copies, per The New York Times. She was also named one of Time's Most Influential People in 2023.

Not that her career has been without controversy, but it doesn't seem to have affected Hoover's popularity. She's become a brand of her own and has multiple film adaptations of her novels set after the box office success of "It Ends With Us" … even though the behind-the-scenes drama almost derailed the entire thing.

Hoover was born and raised in Texas, and still lives in her hometown of Saltillo, with a few of her books being set in East Texas.

Though Savage is best known for his Montana-based novels, such as 1967's "The Power of the Dog," the Wild West author was actually born in Salt Lake City, according to his 2003 obituary in the Los Angeles Times. 

He followed his mother to a Montana ranch when she remarried, and there gained his inspiration for many of his books.

His last book before his death, "The Corner of Rife and Pacific," follows the joys and sorrows of a family in the small, fictional Montana town of Grayling.

"The Power of the Dog" was turned into a movie in 2021 starring Benedict Cumberbatch. It was nominated for 12 Oscars, including best picture, winning one for best director.

Hill was born and raised in Burlington and remained in the Northeast for college, where he attended Dartmouth. A foremost authority on the Green Mountain State, Hill spent many years as the editor of Vermont Life magazine, during which time he also authored several Vermont-centric books, including 'The Winooski," according to his 1987 obituary in The New York Times.

It was particularly difficult to track down Vermont-born authors. Poet Robert Frost wrote in and about the state but was born in San Francisco, and Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" while living in Brattleboro, but was born in India.

Though Willa Cather is generally known for writing about frontier life, she was born in Virginia. Known for her books like "O Pioneers!," "My Antonia," and the Pulitzer Prize winner "One of Ours," Cather paved her way as a preeminent author of modernist fiction focusing on the Great Plains of the US.

She died in 1947.

Debbie Macomber, who was born in Yakima, Washington, is a successful romance novelist with over 200 titles currently in print.

According to her website, she is a No. 1 New York Times-bestselling author, and many of her books have been turned into Hallmark movies. She is best known for her "Cedar Cove" series, which was adapted into Hallmark's first scripted series and aired from 2013 to 2015. It starred Andie MacDowell.

Born in West Virginia, author Mary Lee Settle was best known for her critically acclaimed "Beulah Quintet" series, which was historical fiction that focused on events from Cromwell-era England to 20th-century West Virginia.

Settle also won the National Book Award for her 1978 novel "Blood Tie," and she established the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction just two years later.

She died in 2005.

Ingalls Wilder, whose family moved from state to state like nomads for much of her life, was born in the "big woods" of Wisconsin, where her 1935 children's classic "Little House on the Prairie" was eventually set.

Other books from her "Little House" series were also based on the places she'd lived — Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri — and all but one of her books were nominated for the prestigious Newbery Medal for exceptional children's literature, though she never actually won.

Ingalls Wilder died in 1957.

Born in Cheyenne, MacLachlan carried a bit of prairie dirt with her wherever she went to remind herself of her hometown (Cheyenne, Wyoming) until her death in 2022, according to her Amazon bio.

Lauded for her beloved children's books that tell stories of home and family, like 1985's "Sarah, Plain and Tall" and 1993's "Baby," MacLachlan was always fascinated by children's preoccupation with and attachment to certain places.

When a local attorney is asked to defend an African American man accused of rape, he has to decide between doing what's right and doing what society expects of him, launching his children right in the middle of the conflict.

This Pulitzer Prize winner is set in Maycomb, a community divided by racism and inspired by Lee's hometown of Monroeville.

Find out more about this book here.

Christopher McCandless, a young man from a family of money, donates all of his savings to charity and abandons his possessions before hitchhiking into the Alaskan wilderness to reinvent himself.

This true-story survival-drama was made into a movie of the same name in 2007, directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch, shedding light on McCandless' idealism of a life unburdened by material possessions and the harsh realities of the Alaskan wild.

Find out more about this book here.

Taylor is well on her way to escaping small-town life. But shortly into her journey to Tucson, Arizona, where she hopes to start over, a stranger leaves her with a Native American toddler with a traumatic past.

Kingsolver's story of finding salvation in a barren situation is packed with real places and events.

Find out more about this book here.

Luke Chandler lives on a cotton farm with his parents and grandparents and suddenly finds himself keeping the deadly secrets of harvest workers. The legal-thriller follows the 7-year-old as he grows up and loses his innocence in the 1950s.

The narrator's upbringing in rural Arkansas inspired this coming-of-age tale.

Find out more about this book here.

Joan Didion's 1970 novel established her as a master fiction writer in addition to an already acclaimed nonfiction one. Set in Nevada, New York, and Hollywood, it's "an indictment of Hollywood culture" in the 1960s and utterly gripping in its intensity. Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, adapted the book into a movie in 1972.

Find out more about this book here.

A recovering alcoholic writer accepts a position as winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel, which sits in the Colorado Rockies. He moves in with his family, including 5-year-old son Danny, who has psychic abilities and begins to witness aspects of the hotel's horrific past.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired the fictional Overlook, offers a Ghost Adventure Package for guests.

Find out more about this book here.

Considered the original anti-suburban novel, "Revolutionary Road" follows a young, bright couple marooned in Connecticut and trying to escape pressure to conform in the 1950s. Their failed attempts to be different lead to self-destructive affairs and a psychotic breakdown.

In 2008, the book was adapted into a movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Find out more about this book here.

Seven years after settling in Wilmington, an Italian couple is still in pursuit of the American Dream. Maddalena sews at a factory, but desperately wants to be a mother, while her husband's nighttime escapades threaten to unravel all their hard work.

Castellani wove bits of his own family history into the book. His Italian father, who emigrated to Wilmington after World War II, dreamed of opening a restaurant in Wilmington's Little Italy neighborhood just like Maddalena's husband did.

Find out more about this book here.

A classic work of African-American literature, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is about Janie Crawford, a woman living in the town of Eaton, Florida.

Hurston was one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s, publishing the novel in 1937. But she slipped into obscurity in the later years of her life, and "Eyes" went out of print until Alice Walker championed her in the 1970s. Now, the book is taught in classrooms around the country.

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Mitchell's 1936 classic love story, set in the South during the Civil War and its aftermath, introduced the world to Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. O'Hara, the young spoiled daughter of a plantation owner, and her rogue star-crossed lover are torn apart and reunited through the tragedies and comedies of the human existence.

Mitchell spent nine years writing her manuscript, and the ensuing, unwanted fame led her to vow she would never write again.

But the book has been criticized for its portrayal of slavery, for romanticizing the Confederacy, and for its inclusion of racist stereotypes. In 2023, a new edition of the book came with a warning from its UK publisher, Pan Macmillan, that "there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written," The Telegraph reported.

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The first of Michener's mammoth sagas, "Hawaii" tells the islands' history, from its creation by volcanic activity to its evolving identity as the most recent of the 50 US states.

Michener sought to show how Hawaii harmonizes different cultures and races, as a template that would benefit the rest of the country. However, he and his wife, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, faced harsh discrimination while living there.

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Little to do with housekeeping, Robinson's poetic story follows two orphaned girls who are cared for by eccentric female relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone.

Robinson describes the town as "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather." This, and many other details in "Housekeeping," conjure images of her own Idaho hometown of Sandpoint.

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The story of a Lithuanian immigrant employed in Chicago's stockyards, where Sinclair worked undercover to research for the book, revealed the poverty, hopelessness, and unpleasant living and working conditions experienced by meatpacking laborers in the early 20th century.

The book's graphic depictions of the slaughterhouse work caused a public uproar that contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act six months after "The Jungle" was published.

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Written by a native Hoosier, the novel centers on characters struggling to preserve their status during the rapid industrialization between the Civil War and 20th century. The aristocratic Amberson family loses its prestige and wealth as "new money" tycoons take over.

Woodruff Place, Indianapolis' earliest suburb, was the setting for Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons," which Orson Welles later adapted as a movie.

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When an Iowa farmer decides to retire, he plans to divide his thousand acres of land among his three daughters. The youngest objects, setting off a chain of events that unleashes long-suppressed emotions and secrets. It's a modern-day "King Lear."

Smiley's narrator describes the farm in Zebulon County as "paid for, no encumbrances, as flat and fertile, black, friable and exposed as any piece of land on the face of the earth," like a lot of land in Iowa.

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There's no place like the Great Kansas Plains.

Baum's imaginative tale of Dorothy Gale from Kansas and her Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion friends was the best-selling children's story of the 1900 Christmas season and spawned the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

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Uncle Tom, a long-suffering enslaved person, is sold by the Shelby family and begins a journey that, for 19th-century readers, depicted the realities of slavery and endorsed the power of Christian love to overcome all obstacles.

Stowe based the abolitionist novel on the first-hand stories of former enslaved people in Kentucky, a slave state, while she lived across the Ohio River in Cincinnati. Its powerful condemnation of slavery fueled the human rights debate in the mid-19th century.

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"A Confederacy of Dunces" is one of the funniest American novels ever published. It's hard to describe, but it's basically about a 30-year-old man named Ignatius J. Reilly who lives with his mother in New Orleans. Reilly is educated and philosophically opposed to having a job, but has to confront reality when his mom makes him get one.

The story behind the novel is as famous as the novel itself. It was Toole's first published novel, published 11 years after his death after being championed by his mother and the writer Walker Percy. It was released to instant acclaim, winning a rare posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

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Carrie, a shy high school girl raised by an unstable, Christian fundamentalist mother, discovers she has telekinetic powers. When her classmates falsely crown her prom queen in an elaborate effort to humiliate her, she enacts her supernatural revenge.

Stephen King is Maine's biggest champion in literature, and "Carrie" takes place in the fictional town of Chamberlain.

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Another Baltimore-based novel by Tyler, "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" tells how three siblings remember growing up with their perfectionist mother as she lies on her deathbed. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel examines how the siblings' recollections vary drastically.

Tyler's characters live in Charles Village, near her long-time residence.

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"Walden" is the product of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau's two-year retreat into the woods, an experiment in isolation, simple living, and self-reliance. By immersing himself in nature, he hoped to understand society more objectively.

Encompassing 61 acres, Walden Pond is the crown jewel of the greater Walden Woods ecosystem in Concord.

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"The Virgin Suicides" is a gripping tale of five beautiful yet eccentric sisters who all die by suicide in the same year in Gross Pointe, Michigan. It is written from the perspective of an anonymous group of boys who are observant, infatuated, and endlessly struggling to explain the tragedy.

Eugenides said he was inspired by the deterioration of the state's auto industry and the "feeling of growing up in Detroit, in a city losing population, and in perpetual crisis."

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"Main Street" reveals two sides of Minnesota: the thriving metropolis of Saint Paul, where the heroine is from, and the dried-up small town she moves to after much convincing from her new husband. The young woman falls victim to the narrow-mindedness and unimaginative nature of the townspeople.

The author used his birthplace of Sauk Centre as a mold for the fictionalized Gopher Prairie setting.

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"The Sound and the Fury" encapsulates the decline of the American South through the dysfunctional Compson family, who face financial ruin during the Roaring '20s and lose the respect of the townspeople in Jefferson, Mississippi.

Many readers complained that the book's stream of consciousness style was hard to follow. Faulkner's advice was to "read it four times," he told the Paris Review.

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This classic coming-of-age story set alongside the Mississippi River follows Tom Sawyer, a young boy who preoccupies himself with pulling pranks and impressing a girl — until he witnesses a murder. Tom and his companions run away to an island, but eventually return to take up treasure hunting.

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which inspired the setting of "Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

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"A River Runs Through It" is the semi-autobiographical tale of everyday life in the west for two brothers who are the sons of a local pastor.

Set amidst the beautiful, wondrous landscape of Montana, the two boys — one dutiful and one rebellious — each grow up and discover themselves, turning, at times, to dark places, but always under the footfalls of their father.

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The reader meets Ántonia Shimerda through a written account from the narrator, Jim Burden, a young man who moves to the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, to live with his grandparents.

Through Jim's lens of love and infatuation, Ántonia is brought to life as a young Bohemian girl with many trials and triumphs. The reader grows to know her and, simultaneously, the author as well, who wrote the novel from details of her own life in Nebraska.

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"Fear and Loathing" follows a journalist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, on a trip to Las Vegas to cover an event taking place there.

However, the two are preoccupied and saddened by what they perceive as the decline of 1960s American pop culture and begin experimenting with drugs. Much of the book is seen through their hallucinations and twisted realities, which are only fueled by the hyperreal surroundings of Sin City.

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Containing all the classic John Irving tropes — a bear, rape, body-building, and social privilege — "The Hotel New Hampshire" follows a peculiar family as they open hotels in New Hampshire, Vienna, and Maine.

The book evokes Irving's upbringing in the back woods of New Hampshire.

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Based on Díaz's own experiences as a Dominican immigrant who moved to New Jersey, the 10 short stories in "Drown" tell of the struggles the New Jersey immigrant community faces, from poverty to homesickness to the language barrier.

The outlook is often grim, but thanks to Díaz's riveting and intoxicating narrative, we manage to see the characters' unsentimental determination for a better life.

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The final book in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, "Cities of the Plain" is about a doomed romance in the American frontier between a man and a sex worker who runs afoul of a pimp.

The novel is set in New Mexico on the border of the United States and Mexico.

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"The Great Gatsby" tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a young, lovesick millionaire, through the eyes of his friend and next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway. The novel progresses as Gatsby tries to rekindle his love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin.

Through Gatsby's shady business dealings and his extravagant wealthy lifestyle on Long Island, Fitzgerald reveals a world in New York that is both terribly beautiful and terribly corrupt.

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This Sparks romance novel, made famous by its film adaptation starring Mandy Moore, shows the unlikely, blossoming love between two high school students from Beaufort: Landon Carter, a popular rebel, and Jamie Sullivan, a quiet bookworm.

While Landon tries to get closer to Jamie, she pushes him away, fearing that a secret will end things between them before it begins.

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A woman living on a North Dakota Indian reservation is attacked, but police have a hard time investigating the case when she is unwilling to discuss what transpired.

Her son takes matters into his own hands, recruiting his friends to find out what happened and bring justice to his family and tribe.

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In Foster Wallace's slightly altered view of Ohio in 1990, we follow our heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, a telephone operator and secretary who juggles a job with barely any purpose, a relationship with her much-older boss, and the task of finding her decrepit grandmother.

The grandmother, along with 25 other residents of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home, has managed to disappear without a trace.

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"Paradise" chronicles tensions between the patriarchal, all-Black town of Ruby, which was founded by the descendants of free slaves intent on isolating themselves from the outside world, and a nearby community of five women, each seeking refuge from the past.

Morrison conceived the idea for "Paradise" after researching the all-Black towns in Oklahoma that formed when newly freed men left plantations under duress.

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Randle McMurphy barges into an Oregon mental institution one day and decides to rally the patients against the tyranny of Nurse Ratched. McMurphy stirs more trouble as he smuggles in women, alcohol, and other contraband, leading to an all-out war between him and the institution.

Told through the eyes of one of the patients, Kesey's novel reveals bits of his own background. He previously worked as an orderly in a mental health ward.

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"The Lovely Bones" is a dark, gripping tale about Susie Salmon, a young girl who was brutally raped and murdered in the cornfields of Norristown. It's told from her point of view after her death.

Looking down on her family from heaven, Susie watches as they come to terms with what happened to her and try to solve a case that, to police, seems to lead nowhere.

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Anna has always been her older sister Kate's lifesaver. She's undergone countless surgeries, transplants, and donations to help save her sick sister, but when doctors discover that Anna is now a match to be Kate's bone marrow donor, Anna decides to sue for the right to control her own body.

Picoult shows the heartbreaking pull between freedom and family in this Rhode Island-set novel.

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Lily Owens is a young girl growing up in 1960s South Carolina with an abusive father and an African American nanny who serves as a surrogate mother. When her nanny ends up in jail for insulting some white men, Lily breaks her out and the two run away, seeking refuge among three eccentric bee-keeping sisters.

Monk Kidd injects some of her own Southern upbringing into this contemporary heartwarming novel.

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"A Long Way From Home" details Brokaw's own "American pilgrimage," from boyhood on the Missouri River into a career in broadcast journalism in the '60s.

In Brokaw's honest narrative, we see how much his life has been shaped by growing up in South Dakota and the historic events he lived through as a child and young adult.

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"A Death in the Family" is the only novel by the polymath writer James Agee. It's a semiautobiographical book about the emotional reverberations in a family after a father dies in a car accident. Set in Knoxville, it lyrically captures the feelings of every character, from the inner mind of a child to the tragedy of a widow.

The novel was published posthumously, after Agee died of a heart attack at 45, and won the Pulitzer Prize. He was also an acclaimed screenwriter, critic, and journalist.

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Made famous by the film of the same name starring Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men" is Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece about a drug deal-gone-wrong on the Texas-Mexico border. The event left a group of men dead and $2 million in an abandoned truck.

Llewellyn Moss, who discovered the scene, takes the money and gets swept up in the illicit drug business.

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Ebershoff weaves a novel based on the life of Ann Eliza Young, one of the wives of Mormon leader Brigham Young, who escapes her oppressive husband and embarks on a mission to end polygamy. The tale is juxtaposed against a modern-day story, following a young Mormon man who was cast out of the church and is trying to re-enter to solve his father's murder.

In this work of historical fiction, Ebershoff takes a critical look at polygamy through his side-by-side narratives.

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Tartt's debut novel tells the story of six classics students at a fictional Vermont college and was a sensation when it was released in 1992. It's narrated by Richard Papen, one of the students, who recounts the story of a murder that happened among them.

The story takes a classic whodunnit premise and situates it in an coming-of-age story as well as the intellectual world of classic literature.

"Forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled, 'The Secret History' achieves just what Ms. Tartt seems to have set out to do: It marches with cool, classical inevitability toward its terrible conclusion," Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times in her review of the novel.

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Jesse Aarons wants to be the fastest runner in his rural Virginia elementary school and almost realizes his dream until a new girl shows up and outruns everyone. This leads to an unlikely friendship between Jesse and the girl, Leslie, who together invent a magic wooded kingdom they call Terabithia.

The book is loosely based on events from Patterson's own childhood, which she spent in the greater DC area.

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The small town of Forks, Washington, became famous as the setting for Meyer's best-selling vampire book series.

Bella Swan moves from her mom's house to live with her dad in Forks where she meets Edward Cullen, a quiet, handsome young man at her new high school. Edward usually keeps to himself, but he is drawn to Bella and can't seem to stay away from her — for a shocking reason.

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In this story of espionage, conspiracies, and buried American secrets, "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown has done it again.

Brown's beloved character Robert Langdon returns, this time chasing down his mentor's kidnapper in DC while trying to decode five puzzling symbols linked to the Free Masons.

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In Friendly, a young boy finds a puppy he names Shiloh in the hills behind his home. But Shiloh belongs to Judd, a scary town-drunk who beats the dog.

Now the boy, who's made a friend in Shiloh, will do anything to save him.

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The classic characters Laura, Mary, and their family struggle to make a home for themselves in Ingalls Wilder's beloved "Little House" children's book series.

Based in part on Ingalls Wilder's own journey around the Midwest, young Laura and Mary, along with their parents and baby sister Carrie, learn to survive the long winter, fend for themselves, and take care of each other in this true-to-life work.

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Kaufman wrote "The Laramie Project" as a play to recount the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who became the victim of an extreme hate crime in a quiet Wyoming town.

Shepard is remembered and honored from the perspective of family and friends as Kaufman takes a lens to the stubborn intolerance in society.

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