Kick Your Vacation Reading Up a Notch
Your best vacation reading nudges dreams, tickles curiosity, and sets your course for wonderful destinations...some you can visit, others you can only imagine.
Because you know...
Once you open a book's cover, the story inside whisks you away quicker than an airplane takes flight.
Hi, I’m Susan – a reader and traveler who has learned that memorable journeys often begin in books. I share Beyond Beaches with Literary Cats who represent contributions to this site and who delight in wrapping stories and settings around vacations. Read more about us.
Beyond Beaches helps you find vacation books for the way you actually travel—long flights, quiet mornings, relaxing on a beach, or curled in a comfy chair at home.
Our Literary Cats work behind the scenes, acting as quiet companions—happy to point you toward books befitting your vacation.
We don't review books or tell you what to read... because the joy of reading belongs to you.
Cherry-Pick Books for Vacation Reading Trips
Vacation books have a way of infusing the tone, rhythm, and mood of a story into your experience...sometimes reshaping a vacation in unexpected ways.
So, how do you pick the right book for your vacation... so that unexpected shifts become welcome delights rather than disappointing moments?
Use Beyond Beaches where Literary Cats roam through plot twists and literary settings, guiding you toward books that match your vacation place, pace, and desired mood.
Let the Cat Out of the Literary Bag
Your best choice for reading on vacation is a story that is easy to carry and to read, not mentally taxing, and makes you happy.
Whether you’re unwinding with a cozy mystery or embarking on an epic fantasy adventure, we recommend reading stories that let you escape without straining your mind – perfect for reading while you relax.
Stories that make you happy work magic on a vacation. No matter what type of book you enjoy, or how the story talks to you, from a page or a screen, or in your ear, lightweight reading helps you make a day more fun.
There's no wrong way to travel with a book.
Put books that make you happy in your bag.
Spill the Beach Vacation Beans
It's no secret, fortune places Literary Cats on Alabama beaches, smack dab in the middle of a Gulf Coast vacation paradise.
Perfect for relaxing...and reading.
Gosh! Where else would a Literary Cat read?On beaches this beautiful, you'll find no limit as to what you can read or how far you can travel.
Far beyond beach books and bestsellers, Gulf Coast stories reach from Hemingway's Key West to Harry's South Padre mysteries, exposing tall tales, local lore, and cultural charm.
Picture yourself relaxed with toes deep in warm sand, reading a fun cozy mystery set where Alabama and Florida shake hands – or reading a gothic fantasy that sends you through time as well as space.
On a beach vacation, reading can take you anywhere.
Our obvious big beach secret is...
Neither you nor your vacation (or book) needs to stay only on the beach. Because just a step beyond any Alabama beach places you in the Heart of Dixie, where nearly every story told about the South is only a short trip away.
Poke Your Nose into Southern Settings
Southern stories don’t live only on the page — many unfold in real places.
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is but a day trip away.From courthouse squares in small towns shaped by history and hospitality, to big city chaos tangled in mysteries, these settings weave texture into the stories you love, and they beckon you to experience the South beyond our sandy shores.
Some settings you will recognize from well-known books and famous authors; other settings may not be so familiar, from titles and authors lesser-known but whose words ring just as true.
Enjoy discovering places through the stories that brought them to life.
Leap from Page to Place
Ever closed a book and thought, Wow — I want to go there!
Some stories jump from pages, sparking curiosity and tickling imaginations…and then some quietly grow into vacation journeys.
Such trips to places you first meet in a story, we call Inspired Vacations. It's happend to us. On a vacation reading The Thorn Birds planted the seed that became an adventure, whisking Literary Cats from Alabama to all the way to Alice Springs.
You can read about our book-inspired adventures. Or have more fun and tell us how a book’s setting called your name to visit an irresistible destination. (You too could be a Literary Cat.)
Tell us about your Inspired Vacations→
New Here? Start with Southern Settings
Some of the South’s most memorable stories unfold just beyond the beach — in small towns, courthouse squares, and places rich with history and heart.
If you love discovering real locations through the books that brought them to life, Southern Settings is the perfect place to begin.
Happens to us wherever we read, on vacation or not.