The Novel Tourist Book Club

I had the joy of experiencing a very unusual luxury this weekend: a beautiful hotel room all to myself. It. Was. Glorious. This wondrous adventure came about because my brother and new sister-in-law finally tied the knot. My parents had booked a room at the hotel, but weren’t sure if they were going to stay. So, my teenager and I planned to share the room with them. As it turns out, my daughter ended up staying in another room with her friend and my parents decided to drive home after the wedding. I had the room to myself!

I woke up early Sunday morning, stretched my legs under delightfully soft silk sheets, started the micro-pot of coffee brewing, and pondered what book to read – after all, the hotel room was mine until 11:00 a.m. and I knew my teenager wasn’t about to wake up early and come looking for me! I started to read Seating Arrangements, a book about a wedding in Connecticut that I had begun reading earlier in the week, but then it dawned on me that lazing away a Sunday morning in a hotel reading a “book set in a hotel” would be the perfect time to check off that category from the 2018 Read & Go Challenge!

10 Books Set in a Hotel: Read & Go!

Fiction writers have the luxury of setting their madcap adventures, murderous plots or romantic trysts anywhere they can dream up.  These authors have chosen to entrench their characters in a world revolving around a hotel, motel or Inn. So, book your next getaway and get lost in a luxurious bubble-bath while pouring through one of these hotel novels. Here are just a few of the books set in a hotel that I found interesting:

1. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Author: Jamie Ford
Genre: Historical Fiction set in a hotel

Several years ago this book was my local book club’s pick. I very much enjoyed it. The hotel, the Panama Hotel, is actually an important historic landmark in Nihonmachi or “Japantown,” in Seattle’s International District. The hotel houses the belongings of the Japanese families who were forced into internment camps once Executive Order 9066 was enacted in 1942, weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  Nearly 110,000 Japanese-Americans endured extremely difficult living conditions and poor treatment at scattered locations across the country. After the Japanese internment, most of the Seattle-based families were not able to return due to death, financial constraints, and relocation; their belongings still reside in the basement of the hotel.  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us insight into the feelings of various groups during this time.  It focuses on the relationship between Henry, a first generation Chinese American boy whose parents make him wear a pin that says, “I am Chinese,” and Keiko, a second generation Japanese American who meet while “scholarshipping” at a predominately all-white school.

2.  The Gentleman from Moscow

Author: Amor Towles
Genre: Historical fiction book set in a hotel

The Gentleman from Moscow is the story of a trapped in a hotel for over thirty years. In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

While the story is entirely fictional, the Metropol itself is a real hotel which was built in the center of Moscow in 1905. It is still welcoming guests today. The hotel is around the corner from the Kremlin and a few blocks from the head quarters of the secret police. The Metropol was one of the few fine hotels in Moscow at the time and almost anyone famous who visited the city either drank at, dined at, or slept at the Metropol.

3. The Shining

Author: Stephen King
Genre: Horror (aka Scary!!!) book set in a hotel

I cannot do scary! I read Stephen King’s Thinner back in high school and was terrified for weeks! I know all the pop-culture references to various Stephen King book scenes, but every since Thinner, I haven’t had the gumption to read one! But, this terrifying book set in a hotel and the next one are on the list for all of you brave horror fiction lovers!

“Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that.”

-Stephen King, The Shining

Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

4. Psycho

Author: Robert Bloch
Genre: Horror book set in a hotel

“Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream.

And her head.”
― Robert Bloch, Psycho

This classic was inspired by the real-life story of Ed Gein, a psychotic murderer who led a dual life. If you are braver than I, you can stay the night at the Bates Motel. (Yea, I’ think I’ll pass on this one!)

Norman Bates loves his Mother. She has been dead for the past twenty years, or so people think. Norman knows better though. He has lived with Mother ever since leaving the hospital in the old house up on the hill above the Bates motel. One night Norman spies on a beautiful woman that checks into the hotel as she undresses. Norman can’t help but spy on her. Mother is there though. She is there to protect Norman from his filthy thoughts. She is there to protect him with her butcher knife.

5. The Hotel New Hampshire

Author: John Irving
Genre: Romantic fiction book set in a hotel

“The first of my father’s illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.” So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel.

6. These Foolish Things (aka The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)

Author: Deborah Moggach
Genre: Literary fiction set in a hotel

When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: “Can’t we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.” His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi’s entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in an old hotel in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisticated hotel has stalled, and that such amenities as water and electricity are . . . infrequent. But what their new life lacks in luxury, they come to find, it’s plentiful in adventure, stunning beauty, and unexpected love. These Foolish Things became a film, which bears little resemblance to the book, but was well received.

7. Hotel Alpha

Author: Mark Watson
Genre: Literary Fiction set in a hotel

Howard York – self-made man and founder of London’s extraordinary Hotel Alpha – is one of those people who makes you feel that anything is possible. He is idolized by his blind adopted son, Chas, and Graham, the inimitable concierge, whose lives revolve around the Alpha. But when two mysterious disappearances raise questions that no one seems willing to answer, Chas and Graham must ask themselves whether Howard’s vision of the perfect hotel has been built on secrets as well as dreams . . .

Alpha is written by a British comedian and novelist. What’s really neat is that once you finish the book, you can visit  hotelalphastories  to read more stories that “shine an alternative light on the plot, show the hidden links between some of its main events, solve mysteries, and give voice to some of the thousands of minor characters and dramas which make up the life of the Hotel Alpha while the main story is playing out.”

8. Suite Scarlett

Author: Maureen Johnson
Genre: Young Adult/ Romance/ Series (#1 of 2)

A “mad cap Manhattan farce” set in a hotel. Scarlett Martin has grown up in a most unusual way. Her family owns the Hopewell, a small hotel in the heart of New York City, and Scarlett lives there with her four siblings – Spencer, Lola, and Marlene.

When each of the Martins turns fifteen, they are expected to take over the care of a suite in the once elegant, now shabby Art Deco hotel. For Scarlett’s fifteenth birthday, she gets both a room called the Empire Suite, and a permanent guest called Mrs. Amberson.

Scarlett doesn’t quite know what to make of this C-list starlet, world traveler, and aspiring autobiographer who wants to take over her life. And when she meets Eric, an astonishingly gorgeous actor who has just moved to the city, her summer takes a second unexpected turn.

Before the summer is over, Scarlett will have to survive a whirlwind of thievery, Broadway glamour, romantic missteps, and theatrical deceptions. But in the city where anything can happen, she just might be able to pull it off.

9. The Rose Harbor Series

Author: Debbie Macomber
Genre: Literary fiction/ Romance/ Beach Read/ Series

The Inn at Rose Harbor is the first book in a series set in a hotel, or rather an Inn, in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Cedar Cove.

Jo Marie Rose first arrives in Cedar Cove seeking a fresh start. A young widow coping with the death of her husband, she purchases a local bed-and-breakfast—the newly christened Rose Harbor Inn—ready to begin her life anew. Her first guest is Joshua Weaver, who has come home to care for his ailing stepfather. The two have never seen eye to eye, and Joshua has little hope that they can reconcile their differences. Jo Marie’s other guest is Abby Kincaid, who has returned to Cedar Cove to attend her brother’s wedding. Back for the first time in twenty years, she almost wishes she hadn’t come, the picturesque town harboring painful memories. And as Abby and Joshua try to heal from their pasts, and Jo Marie dreams of the possibilities before her, they all realize that life moves in only one direction—forward.

10. Hearts of the Lancaster Grand Hotel Series

Author: Amy Clipston
Genre: Amish fiction/ Christian fiction/ Romance

Another series featuring a hotel, in the Hearts of the Lancaster Grand Hotel series, Hannah finds herself at a crossroads in her life. Her Amish community, offers her love and support after the untimely death of her husband, but an Englisher offers her the chance of a new life after her unexpected tragedy.

Wealthy businessman Trey Peterson is surprised by his attraction to the gentle Amish woman who works as a housekeeper in the Lancaster Grand Hotel. They share a common bond of loss and are able to offer each other comfort and support as they journey through their grief.

A Hopeful Heart is filled with surprising twists as Hannah tries to balance her life in the Amish community and her growing love for an outsider. This is book one of the four part series and a must read if you are planning a visit to Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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