CITY · UNITED STATES

Books set in New Orleans

29.951, -90.072

42 books · 33 authors · 1880–2025

42 books here

Most-set authors

James Lee Burke (4) · Frances Parkinson Keyes (3) · Anne Rice (3) · Barbara Hambly (2) · Maurice Carlos Ruffin (2) · Robert Olen Butler (1)

Genres

literary fiction (15) · mystery & crime (9) · historical fiction (4) · romance (3) · young adult (1) · fantasy (1) · thriller & suspense (1)

Books set here

Set in New Orleans (30)

A Free Man of Color

Barbara Hambly

1830s Mardi Gras murder mystery

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Robert Olen Butler

Vietnamese immigrant enclave

A Hall of Mirrors

Robert Stone

Primary setting — 1960s New Orleans

A Kind of Freedom

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Seventh Ward family saga

A Walk on the Wild Side

Nelson Algren

1930s French Quarter skid row

Coming Through Slaughter

Michael Ondaatje

Storyville jazz era New Orleans

Crescent Carnival

Frances Parkinson Keyes

Mardi Gras New Orleans setting

Dinner at Antoines

Frances Parkinson Keyes

Dinner at Antoine's restaurant

Feast of All Saints

Anne Rice

Antebellum free people of color

Fever Season

Barbara Hambly

antebellum yellow fever epidemic

Heaven's Prisoners

James Lee Burke

Louisiana bayou and New Orleans, Dave Robicheaux

How the Word Is Passed

Clint Smith

Smith's hometown and starting point of his tour through slavery's American monuments

New Orleans plantation mansion on the bayou

New Orleans Mourning

Julie Smith

New Orleans mystery setting

People We Meet on Vacation

Emily Henry

One of the key vacation destinations in the novel's nonlinear road-trip romance between lifelong best friends Poppy and

Road Home

Rex Ogle

primary narrative setting; Rex lives homeless here

The American Daughters

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

French Quarter — enslaved women spies sabotage the Confederacy

The Edge of Water

Olufunke Grace Bankole

New Orleans immigrant life, Hurricane Katrina

The Grandissimes

George Washington Cable

Creole society setting

We Cast a Shadow

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Near-future New Orleans; racial dystopia in the South

What Hunger

Catherine Dang

Vietnamese family in New Orleans

Zeitoun

Dave Eggers

Katrina-flooded home city

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

Kowalski apartment Elysian Fields

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius sells hot dogs

Interview with the Vampire

Anne Rice

Louis and Lestat home

Mayfair witches mansion

The Yellow House

Sarah M. Broom

Family home demolished post-Katrina

Black Sunday

Thomas Harris

Super Bowl terrorist attack climax

Also featuring New Orleans (12)

Amity

Nathan Harris

1866 starting point for freed siblings

Band of Angels

Robert Penn Warren

Civil War era second setting

City of Night

John Rechy

French Quarter Mardi Gras

Dinner at Antoine's

Frances Parkinson Keyes

Post-WWII New Orleans setting and atmosphere of the novel

French Quarter perfume shop

Let Us Descend

Jesmyn Ward

slave market destination

The Awakening

Kate Chopin

Pontellier family home

The Client

John Grisham

climax location

The Optimist's Daughter

Eudora Welty

New Orleans; Judge McKelva is hospitalized here for eye surgery in the opening of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

The Tin Roof Blowdown

James Lee Burke

Post-Katrina crime setting

The Moviegoer

Walker Percy

Aunt Emily home base

Notable locations in New Orleans

French Quarter2French Quarter, New Orleans2Garden District, New Orleans2Antoine's Restaurant1Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans1Gentilly, New Orleans1Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans1Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans1New Orleans East1Tulane Stadium, New Orleans, Louisiana1Uptown New Orleans1