The following list is from the Book Arts List, with help from Alice Simpson. It started when she asked for a list of fiction that had books as a central plot point. Bibliomysteries.com also has a list of suggested mystery titles.
The Mystery Readers Journal had an issue on bibliomysteries (mysteries that have settings, plots, or substantial characters related to the world of books, writers, archives, and libraries) in 2005. You can read several of the articles here.
In the list below, linked titles have a review on this blog. Books sorted by author, click on title to resort. Contact me if you have a title to add to the list.
Title | Author | |
Patience and Fortitude | Nicholas A. Basbanes | |
The Uncommon Reader | Alan Bennett | |
Celestial Chess | Thomas Bontly | |
Labyrinths | J. L. Borges | |
Tunneling | Beth Bosworth | |
Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | |
People of the Book | Geraldine Brooks | |
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop | Lewis Buzbee | |
Possession | A.S. Byatt | |
The Rule of Four | Ian Caldwell | |
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler | Italo Calvino | |
Auto-da-Fe | Elias Canett | |
Homicide in Hardcover | Kate Carlisle | |
If Books Could Kill | Kate Carlisle | |
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay | Michael Chabon | |
Maps and Legends | Michael Chabon | |
The Body in the Library | Agatha Christie | |
Sixpence House | Paul Collins | |
The Book of Lost Things | John Connolly | |
The Archivist | Martha Cooley | |
The Cure for Death: Lightning | Gail Anderson Dargatz | |
The House of Paper | Carlos Maria Dominguez | |
Vellum | Hal Duncan | |
The Bookman’s Wake | John Dunning | |
Booked to Die | John Dunning | |
The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco | |
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg | Philip Jose Farmer | |
The Geographers Library | Jon Fasman | |
The Big Over Easy | Jasper Fforde | |
The Eyre Affair | Jasper Fforde | |
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime | Jasper Fforde | |
The Well of Lost Plots | Jasper Fforde | |
First Among Sequels | Jasper Fforde | |
Lost in a Good Book | Jasper Fforde | |
Something Rotten | Jasper Fforde | |
The Bookshop | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish | Richard Flanagan | |
The Key to Rebbeca | Ken Follett | |
The Jane Austen Book Club | Karen Joy Fowler | |
Inkheart | Cornelia Funke | |
Inkspell | Cornelia Funke | |
The Book Book | Steven Gilbar | |
Blind Submission | Deborah Ginsberg | |
Memory House | Lucia Graves | |
Book Case | Stephen Greenleaf | |
Codex | Lev Grossman | |
The Book of Air and Shadow | Michael Gruber | |
Book: A Novel | Robert Grudin | |
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street | Helene Hanff | |
84, Charing Cross Road | Helene Hanff | |
Q’s Legacy | Helene Hanff | |
The Secret of Lost Things | Sheridan Hay | |
Necronomicon: Book of Dead Names | ed. George Hay | |
The Italian Lover | Robert Hellenga | |
The Sixteen Pleasures | Robert Hellenga | |
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt | Nick Horn | |
The Polysyllabic Spree | Nick Hornby | |
Too Loud a Solitude | Ohumil Hrabal | |
The Know-It-All | A. J. Jacobs | |
The Incredible Book-Eating Boy | Oliver Jeffers | |
Mister Pip | Lloyd Jones | |
Unsolicited | Julie Kaewert | |
Uncataloged | Julie Kaewert | |
Shelf Life | Ed. Greg Ketter | |
Ex Libris | Ross King | |
The Angle Quickest for Flight | Steven Kotler | |
The Grand Complication | Allen Kurzwell | |
A Cracking of Spines | Roy Harley Lewis | |
The Rock | Kanan Makiya | |
The Library At Night | Alberto Manguel | |
Night Train to Lisbon | Pascal Merci | |
A Canticle for Lebowitz | Walter Miller | |
The Book of Lies | James Moloney | |
The Haunted Bookshop | Christopher Morley | |
Parnassus on Wheels | Christopher Morley | |
The Marshal and the Mad Woman | Magdalen Nabb | |
Reading Lolita in Tehran | Azar Nafisi | |
Suite Francaise | Irene Nemirovsky | |
My Name is Red | Orhan Pamuk | |
The Dante Club | Matthew Pearl | |
Special Topics in Calamity Physics | Marisha Pessl | |
The Book on the Bookshelf | Henry Petroski | |
The Club Dumas | Arturo Perez Reverte | |
The Ink Drinker | Eric Sanvoisin | |
The Bookseller of Kabul | Asne Selerstad | |
The Thirteenth Tale | Diane Setterfield | |
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress | Dai Sijie | |
Chasing Shakespeares | Sarah Smith | |
The Child That Books Built | Francis Spufford | |
The Journal of Dora Damage | Brenda Starling | |
The Diamond Age | Neal Stevenson | |
The Atrocity Archive | Charles Stross | |
The Limehouse Text | Will Thomas | |
The Illuminator | Brenda Rickman Vantrease | |
A Rare Murder in Princeton | Ann Waldron | |
Salamander | Thomas Wharton | |
The Blind Man of Seville | Robert Wilson | |
The Professor and The Madman | Simon Winchester | |
The Shadow of the Wind | Carlos Ruiz Zafon | |
The Last Kabbalist In Lisbon | Richard Zimler | |
The Book Thief | Markus Zusak |