These are the most famous books set in each state

When a local attorney is asked to defend an African American man accused of rape, he has to decide between doing what's right and doing what society expects of him, launching his children right in the middle of the conflict.

This Pulitzer Prize winner is set in Maycomb, a community divided by racism and inspired by Lee's hometown of Monroeville.

ALASKA: "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

ARIZONA: "The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver

ARKANSAS: "A Painted House" by John Grisham

CALIFORNIA: "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion

Joan Didion's 1970 novel established her as a master fiction writer in addition to an already-acclaimed nonfiction one. Set in Nevada, New York, and, most importantly, Hollywood, it's " target="_blank"an indictment of Hollywood culture" in the 1960s and utterly gripping in its intensity. Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, also adapted the book into a movie in 1972.

COLORADO: "The Shining" by Stephen King

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired the fictional Overlook, offers a Ghost Adventure Package for guests.

CONNECTICUT: "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates

Considered the original anti-suburban novel, "Revolutionary Road" follows a

DELAWARE: "The Saint of Lost Things" by Christopher Castellani

FLORIDA: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston

A classic work of African-American literature, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is about Janie Crawford, a woman living in the town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston was one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s, publishing the novel in 1937. But she slipped into obscurity in the later years of her life and "Eyes" went out of print until Alice Walker championed her in the 1970s. Now, the book is taught in classrooms around the country.

GEORGIA: "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

HAWAII: "Hawaii" by James Michener

IDAHO: "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson

ILLINOIS: "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair

The story of a Lithuanian immigrant employed in Chicago's stockyards, where Sinclair worked undercover to research for the book, revealed the

INDIANA: "The Magnificent Ambersons" by Booth Tarkington

Written by a native Hoosier, the novel centers on characters struggling to preserve their status during rapid industrialization between the Civil War and 20th century. The aristocratic Amberson family loses its prestige and wealth as "new money" tycoons take over.

Woodruff Place, Indianapolis' earliest suburb, was the setting for Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons," which Orson Welles later adapted as a movie.

IOWA: "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley

Smiley's narrator describes the farm in Zebulon County as

KANSAS: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum

There's no place like the Great Kansas Plains.

Baum's imaginative tale of Dorothy Gale from Kansas and her Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion friends was the best-selling children's story of the 1900 Christmas season and spawned the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

KENTUCKY: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe

LOUISIANA: "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

"A Confederacy of Dunces" is one of the funniest American novels ever published. It's hard to describe, but it's basically about a 30-year-old man named Ignatius J. Reilly who lives with his mother in New Orleans. Reilly is educated and philosophically opposed to having a job, but has to confront reality when his mom makes him get one.

The story behind the novel is as famous as the novel itself. It was Toole's first published novel, published 11 years after his death, after being championed by his mother and the writer Walker Percy. It was released to instant acclaim, winning a rare posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

MAINE: "Carrie" by Stephen King

MARYLAND: "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" by Anne Tyler

Another Baltimore-based novel by Tyler, "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" tells how three siblings remember growing up with their perfectionist mother as she lies on her deathbed. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel examines how the siblings' recollections vary drastically.

Tyler's characters live in Charles Village, near her long-time residence.

MASSACHUSETTS: "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau

"Walden" is the product of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau's two-year retreat into the woods, an experiment in isolation, simple living, and self-reliance. By immersing himself in nature, he hoped to understand society more objectively.

Encompassing 61 acres, Walden Pond is the crown jewel of the greater Walden Woods ecosystem in Concord.

MICHIGAN: "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Eugenides said he was inspired by the deterioration of the state's auto industry and the "feeling of growing up in Detroit, in a city losing population, and in perpetual crisis."

MINNESOTA: "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis

MISSISSIPPI: "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

MISSOURI: "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

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MONTANA: "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean

NEBRASKA: "My Ántonia" by Willa Cather

NEVADA: "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson

NEW HAMPSHIRE: "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving

Containing all the classic John Irving tropes — a bear, rape, body-building, and social privilege — "The Hotel New Hampshire" follows a peculiar family as they open hotels in New Hampshire, Vienna, and Maine.

The book evokes Irving's upbringing in the back woods of New Hampshire.

NEW JERSEY: "Drown" by Junot Díaz

NEW MEXICO: "Cities of the Plain" by Cormac McCarthy

The final book in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, "Cities of the Plain" is about a doomed romance in the American frontier between a man and a prostitute who runs afoul of a pimp.

The novel's New Mexico setting makes it a classic western, on the border of the United States and Mexico and filled with the types of characters and atmospherics you'd expect there.

NEW YORK: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

NORTH CAROLINA: "A Walk to Remember" by Nicholas Sparks

NORTH DAKOTA: "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich

OHIO: "The Broom of the System" by David Foster Wallace

OKLAHOMA: "Paradise" by Toni Morrison

Morrison conceived the idea for "Paradise" after researching the all-black towns in Oklahoma that formed when newly freed men left plantations under duress.

OREGON: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey

PENNSYLVANIA: "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

RHODE ISLAND: "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult

SOUTH CAROLINA: "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd

SOUTH DAKOTA: "A Long Way From Home" by Tom Brokaw

TENNESSEE: "A Death in the Family" by James Agee

"A Death in the Family" is, unfortunately, the only novel by the polymath writer James Agee. It's a semiautobiographical book about the emotional reverberations in a family after a father dies in a car accident. Set in Knoxville, it lyrically captures the feelings of every character, from the inner mind of a child to the tragedy of a widow.

The novel was published posthumously, after Agee died of a heart attack at 45, and won the Pulitzer Prize. He was also an acclaimed screenwriter, critic, and journalist.

TEXAS: "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy

UTAH: "The 19th Wife" by David Ebershoff

VERMONT: "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

Tartt's debut novel was a sensation when it was released in 1992, telling the story about six classics students at a fictional Vermont college. It's narrated by Richard Papen, one of the students, years later, telling the story of a murder that happened among them.

The story beautifully takes a classic whodunnit premise and situates it in an coming-of-age story and intellectual world of classic literature. "Forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled, "The Secret History" achieves just what Ms. Tartt seems to have set out to do: it marches with cool, classical inevitability toward its terrible conclusion," Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times in her review of the novel.

VIRGINIA: "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Patterson

WASHINGTON: "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

WASHINGTON, DC: "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown

WEST VIRGINIA: "Shiloh" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

WISCONSIN: "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

WYOMING: "The Laramie Project" by Moises Kaufman

These are the most famous books set in each state

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