A great way to prepare for an upcoming trip—aside from getting your hands on the latest Frommer's guide for your destination, of course—is to read a book or two set in the place you'll be visiting.
Novels, histories, memoirs, travelogues, and works of journalism can offer unique and illuminating perspectives from a location's residents or previous visitors.
But beyond the travel section, bookstores and libraries are more likely to classify volumes by author and genre than setting.
Fortunately, bookworms with wanderlust can turn to TripFiction, a free, easy-to-use online resource for finding reading recommendations for travel.
Just enter a location in the search bar on the homepage and you'll be shown a list of titles tied to that place. They won't all be works of fiction, either. In fact, you can refine your search by applying a filter to sort results by 18 different genres, from autobiography to YA.
Each listing includes a synopsis, links to reviews, and user-generated star ratings for the quality of the book as well as for how effectively it evokes its setting. There's also a "Buy" button for purchasing the book from Amazon.
Of course, some places have generated more spilled ink than others over the years. Paris, for instance, has 49 pages of results at TripFiction, while Arkansas has just 2.
For especially literary locations, the site maintains an interactive Great Books Map with markers at more than 160 places you can click to find lists of the top 5 or top 10 books set there, as determined by TripFiction's experts.
You can use the site to get recs for free without joining, but if you sign up for a membership (also free) you'll be able to add new books to the database, post reviews, receive the monthly newsletter, and participate in weekly giveaways.
To get started, go to TripFiction.com.
