This skyline's been the inspiration for some
pretty cool work.

Seattle is not only the home of a great number of writers (is it the climate, so conducive to huddling inside over a laptop, or the ubiquitous availability of coffee, the elixir of creativity?), it's also served as the setting for a great number of novels.

There's no better way to discover the Seattle "literary scene" than to curl up with a book that so clearly depicts how writers themselves view the Emerald City.

This 101 list, of course, is far from comprehensive. Please feel free to leave comments with your favorite books and stories set in and around Seattle, and keep a look out for Part II of this guide to discover other great Seattlecentric reads.

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
  A steampunk take of how Dr. Leviticus Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine destroyed our fair port city back in its boomtown days and unleashed a zombie-creating blight gas that changed the course of history.
• Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins
  The novel that launched a thousand cult followers featuring the characters that duck and swirl through  and around Captain Kendrick's Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve of Skagit County.
• House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford
  A sad and sweet book set in downtown's International District that tells the story of Seattleite Henry Lee as he loses his wife to cancer in 1986 and remembers the emotional ravages of World War II.
• Surveillance, Jonathan Raban
  Near-future Seattle sets the backdrop of this unsettling novel where freelance journalist Lucy Bengstrom seeks the truth behind an author's autobiography.
• City at the End of Time, Greg Bear
  Three young Seattleites hold the key to a strange and distant future, holed up inside a mysterious warehouse filled with books.
• Black Hole, Charles Burns
  In this formative and formidable graphic novel, 1970s Seattle teenagers try and fight the spread of "the bug," an STD that turns them into horrifying cool looking mutants.
• Shoot the Buffalo, Matt Briggs
  Nine year old Aldous Bohm moves with his bizarre and idealistic family to Snoqualmie, Washington, "to reinvent the American family." This reinvention, of course, isn't nearly what it seems.
• Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
  This classic tale of Microsoft's heyday nailed the clichés that have become part of the very fabric of our city--overworked, obsessive geeks, sensitive pony-tailed developers, and alienated young hackers.
• The Glass Harmonica, Louise Marley
  Weaving together 1760s London and near-future Seattle, Marley's book tells the parallel tales of two glass harmonica playing young women and their connections across time.
• Always, Nicola Griffith
  Torvingen, the towering detective and martial arts expert created by Nebula award winning Griffith, arrives in Seattle to settle a deal-gone-bad, and is pulled instead into the violent underbelly hidden by the lush green trees and smiling residents.

For more info: Check out the Seattle Public Library's reading list of books set in Washington State.