Fiction Set in Santa Barbara

A young, Black woman working in publishing makes a surprise connection with an author who has failed to deliver his highly anticipated manuscript.

The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Detective Lew Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left...

Thanks to a childhood spend with a family of cops, Shawn Spencer possesses an incredible photographic memory and notices seemingly insignificant details. These traits allow him to spend his jobless days providing the police with mystery-solving tips-- but his knowledge soon makes him a suspect. In order to clear his name, the unlikely sleuth declares that he has clairvoyant abilities and launches his own investigative agency, Psych. His skeptical...

Detective Lew Archer is plunged into a fascinating and intricate case connected to a disastrous oil spill on the Southern California coast. He becomes involved with three generations of the imposing Lennox family whose offshore oil platform caused the spill; and whose young heiress, glimpsed for a haunting moment on the beach-clutching an oil-drenched sea bird in her arms, has disappeared.

"T. C. Boyle's seventh novel transforms two characters straight out of history into rich mythic figures whose tortured love story is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious. It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. The two wed, but before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic...

In this fast-paced and funny debut mystery, movie stars are in Santa Barbara for the film festival, and powerful business interests are at stake. Detective Nola MacIntire and her partner, Tony, must untangle the complicated web behind three seemingly unrelated deaths in this idyllic beach town.

In 1908 the Potter Hotel dominated the oceanfront along Santa Barbara's West Beach. Thirty six acres of lush gardens and pathways surrounded the luxurious six story hotel. April of that year saw the arrival of the Great White Fleet as it stopped in various seaports around the globe, sent on a mission of goodwill by President Roosevelt. How fortunate for the tiny town to be selected as one of the stopping points. It was a time for celebration. A time...

Traces an incrementally violent confrontation between a National Park Service biologist who would eradicate invasive wildlife on the Channel Islands and two locals who are fiercely opposed to the killing of any creatures.