DC By the Book

Ever wanted to know what books are set in the District? The crowdsourced project DC By the Book has a map of scenes from fiction set within the District. Search for a book or books, click on the location on the map, and you get an excerpt.

For example, here's the text from one of the 21 locations from David Swinson's 2011 police-detective retrospective, A Detailed Man: "So I walk 5th Street to H and head west through Chinatown...I feel like this neighborhood – afflicted with dilapidated, vacant row homes and thriving Asian-owned liquor stores. The streets are dark for lack of working lamps. But the liquor stores shine through like beacons."

The project also includes collections of short stories, like Edward P. Jones' All Aunt Hagar's Children.

From the web site: "DC By the Book is the brainchild of Tony Ross and Kim Zablud of DC Public Library. The project explores the richness of non-Federal civic life in Washington and its character as a city, as brought to life by fiction. The project goal is to highlight and crowd-source passages from the (largely undiscovered) rich body of literature set in DC that illuminate its social and geographic history."