Books Set in Unusual Places

Set on a dusty planet where only one plant grows, only one animal lives, and the humanoid inhabitants have faces that looks like fetuses. Oh, and the rain is sentient (or is it?).

Set in a circus touring across the backwaters of the U.S., Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene.

Set in a deep-sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A team of American scientists discover a spaceship undamaged by its fall from the sky—and containing a terrifying and destructive force that must be controlled at all costs.

Set in Great Britain, circa 1985. But here, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. It’s a bibliophile’s dream.

Set on Arrakis, a desert planet with no natural precipitation. It’s “His Imperial Majesty’s Desert Botanical Testing Station” before the discovery of melange, and the only natural source of it in the universe.

Set on Mars, but it’s not the Mars you think you know. Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Set in a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past.

Set in a Red Lobster perched in the far corner of a rundown New England mall. The restaurant hasn’t been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug, but manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift with a near-mutinous staff.