Choose your L.A. literary adventure with these 5 new novels and writer hangouts

This summer, I read my way around Los Angeles and highly recommend the experience.

There were plenty of freshly published L.A. novels to dive into: My literary journey began in pre-Eaton fire Altadena (“ Bug Hollow ”) and ended in a run-down Hollywood mansion crawling with influencers (“If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You”); other novels transported me to West Adams Heights post-World War II (“ The Great Mann ”), Laurel Canyon of the mid-’60s (“ L.A. Women ”), contemporary Glendale (“ The Payback ”) and, farthest afield, Salton Sea (“ Salt Bones ”). And while the novels varied greatly, each was engagingly local. The familiar L.A.-ness of narratives populated with malls, dreamers and celebrities real and fictionalized added to those books’ appeal, while others set in less f