26 Best Books Set in Hawaii for Your Next Island Vacation
I recently stumbled across an online discussion where people were sharing their favorite books set in Hawaii.
I just love the idea of sitting on a Hawaiian beach reading a book that actually takes place on that island. It brings both the book and island more to life.
After sorting through all the recommendations, I’ve organized this list by island as best as I could as some of the stories take place on multiple islands.
Books Set on Oahu
1. The Islands at the End of the World by Toby Neal
Young Adult Sci-Fi | 4.2⭐
A global electronics failure isolates Hawaii completely and fills the sky with a strange starscape, plunging the islands into chaos. Leilani and her father undertake a harrowing journey from Oahu back to their home on the Big Island, as the islands revert to older, pre-technological ways of life.
Leilani’s epilepsy may hold a key clue to the cause of the disaster, if she and her father can survive long enough to uncover it.
This is book #1 in the Islands at the End of the World series
2. A Song for the Stars by Ilima Todd
Historical Fiction Romance | 4.5⭐
As the second daughter of a royal chief, Maile is free to marry for love, and her fiancé, Hawaii’s finest navigator, has taught her everything about reading the ocean, winds, and stars, along with how to love.
When English sailors arrive on her island, a misunderstanding sparks a battle that leaves Maile widowed before her wedding. Caught in the fighting, she takes the wounded John Harbottle, the man who killed her fiancé, prisoner, intending to let him die, but ultimately heals him instead, and begins to see her supposed enemy differently.
John, who has served as Captain James Cook’s translator across three Pacific voyages, proves kind and genuinely captivated by Maile, her homeland, and her people, but guilt complicates their connection: his over the death he caused, and hers over a hidden truth about what really triggered the battle.
As Maile teaches John celestial navigation so he can sail home to England, the two must also navigate their cultural differences, in a journey that may lead them toward an unexpected peace and love.
Inspired by a true story.
3. Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
Historical Nonfiction | 4.3⭐
Sarah Vowell turns her attention to what she sees as the most fascinating story of American expansion in 1898: the Americanization of Hawaii.
The narrative spans from the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820, intent on Christianizing the islands, to the 1893 coup, led by the missionaries’ own sons, that overthrew the Hawaiian queen and paved the way for American annexation.
Along the way, Vowell introduces a colorful and often unsettling cast: whalers clashing with missionaries over access to local women, an incestuous princess torn between her newfound Christian faith and her brother-husband, sugar barons, opportunists, and Theodore Roosevelt. The story closes with Queen Lili’uokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch and composer of “Aloha ‘Oe,” whose song was performed at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, the first Hawaiian-born U.S. president.
4. Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands, Hawaii in the 1860’s by Mark Twain
Autobiography | 4.6⭐
This collection of Mark Twain’s writings on Hawaii is drawn from the 25 newspaper articles he wrote as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union during a four-month visit in 1866, shortly after he’d adopted his now-famous pen name. He later expanded on this material with personal notes for his 1872 narrative Roughing It.
The young Mark Twain traveled to the islands aboard the steamer Ajax, and though his money ran out by the trip’s end, forcing him to sail home on the Smyrniote, the experience left a lasting mark on him.
His accounts cover old Honolulu, Hawaiian royalty and customs, Maui, native surfing, the City of Refuge on the Kona Coast, and Kilauea volcano, all delivered with the wit that earned him the nickname “the Huckleberry Finn of foreign correspondents.”
Though he never returned to Hawaii, he held onto deep affection for the islands throughout his life, once calling them “the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean,” and the book notes that his 1866 perspective offers a striking contrast to how a visitor might see the islands today.
5. Honolulu: A Novel by Alan Brennert
Historical Fiction | 4.5⭐
A young picture bride travels to Hawaii in 1914 seeking a better life, only to find that the wealthy, educated husband she’d been promised is instead a poor, embittered laborer who takes his anger out on her. Renaming herself Jin, she sets out to build her own future in this unfamiliar place, encountering both opportunity and prejudice along the way.
With the support of three fellow picture brides, Jin manages to prosper alongside Honolulu itself, as the city transforms from a small territorial capital into the vibrant, multicultural metropolis it becomes. Yet paradise has its shadows too, from the grinding hardship of tenement life to a notorious crime that would become one of the most infamous in Hawaiian history.
6. Six Months in the Sandwich Islands by Isabella L. Bird
Autobiography | 4.4⭐
Isabella Lucy Bird, renowned as one of the 19th century’s most remarkable woman travelers, recorded her 1873 stay in Hawaii in Six Months in the Sandwich Isles, widely regarded as a standout work of Pacific literature. This book consists of thirty-one personal letters Bird wrote to her sister Henrietta back home in Edinburgh, lending the narrative an intimate, conversational charm.
Set during the brief reign of King Lunalilo, not long before Queen Liliuokalani’s eventual overthrow, the letters offer an authentic glimpse into daily Hawaiian life at the time, capturing Bird’s encounters with royalty, missionaries, cowboys, and everyday Hawaiians. Her account stands as a vivid, firsthand record of this period in Hawaii’s history.
7. The Lieutenant’s Nurse by Sara Ackerman
Historical Romance | 4.4⭐
In November 1941, Eva Cassidy, who has never seen the ocean, sails to Hawaii to begin her service as a newly enlisted Army Corps nurse, carrying reasons for the journey that go far deeper than escaping a Michigan winter. Aboard the steamship SS Lurline, she’s struck by the beauty of the voyage and drawn to Lt. Clark Spencer, a navy intelligence officer who clearly has secrets of his own, even as her own complicated past and the future she’s trying to build keep her from fully following her heart.
Clark warns Eva that American involvement in the war is coming soon, but neither of them is prepared for the surprise attack that follows. In the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Eva and her fellow nurses are thrust into the overwhelming task of caring for the wounded, while a danger closer to home threatens everything and everyone she loves.
Amid the chaos, Eva must decide who she can trust and what she’s willing to risk to protect the people she cares about most.
Books Set on Maui
8. Coconut Wireless by Toby Neal
Cozy Mystery | 4.6⭐
A Secret Service agent is appointed postmaster of a Maui village, a job she never wanted, mainly hoping to lay low in paradise while her career troubles back home blow over. She quickly learns she’s taken the position from beloved local fixture Auntie Pua Chang, making her an unwelcome outsider before she’s even unpacked.
On her first day in town, the post office cat brings her a grisly clue: a piece of the previous postmaster, who turns out to be dead. Pulled into a murder investigation, she realizes she could be the next target if she doesn’t find the killer herself. A fortune-telling shop owner, a charming Hawaiian pilot, her own cat, and two friendly local cops offer to help, though their loyalties lean toward Auntie Pua.
With the village split into rival factions, she’s left tracking a killer largely on her own, with only a reluctant cat for company.
This is book #1 in the Paradise Crime Cozy Mystery series.
Books Set on the Big Island
9. Molten Death by Leslie Karst
Cozy Mystery | 4.0⭐
Retired caterer Valerie Corbin, grieving her brother’s death, is vacationing on the Big Island of Hawai’i with her wife Kristen when she witnesses a man’s body being swallowed by an active lava flow. With no proof a victim ever existed, she’s the only one who believes a murder happened. She sets out to investigate alone, getting drawn into a side of Hawaiian culture far removed from the tourist version and starts to fear she might become the killer’s next target.
This is book #1 in the Orchid Isle Mystery series.
10. The Codebreaker’s Secret by Sara Ackerman
Historical Romance | 4.6⭐
This story weaves together two timelines connected by war, secrets, and Hawai’i.
In 1943, codebreaker Isabel Cooper works alongside her colleagues at Pearl Harbor’s Station HYPO, racing to crack Japanese naval codes as the Pacific war rages. Driven by a desire to avenge her brother’s death, Isabel finds her plans complicated when she meets his best friend, a daring pilot harboring his own secrets, and falls into an unexpected romance.
In 1965, journalist Lu Freitas returns home to Hawai’i to cover the opening of Rockefeller’s lavish new Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. When a prominent guest disappears, Lu teams up with a formidable veteran photographer to investigate, and their search leads to a shocking discovery tied back to a long-buried wartime secret, one that only a codebreaker could ever fully unravel.
11. Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek
Thriller | 4.7⭐
A visiting astronomer falls for a Hawaiian anthropologist, who introduces him to Polynesian traditions of volcanoes, gods, and ancestors. When a long-dormant volcano begins stirring above Kona’s resort-lined coast, developers and politicians scramble to hide it and the couple gets pulled into murder and intrigue.
The anthropologist teams up with an elderly seer and a young activist, and the three women draw on ancestral tradition to take on the island’s newest, most lavish resort, as the eruption and the murder crack open the deeper tensions simmering beneath paradise.
12. Big Island Sunrise by Shayla Cherry
Contemporary Women’s Fiction | 4.6⭐
Fleeing a frightening marriage, Lani King returns with her daughter to her childhood home in Pualena, hoping family and familiar shores can offer safety and a fresh start. As she rebuilds her life, staying with her cousin Emma while sorting out a looming custody battle, she reconnects with an old friend, now a single dad, and romance starts to stir, even as her ex refuses to let go.
Meanwhile, Emma is dealing with her own challenges: her six-year-old has just inherited his late grandfather’s rundown property, complete with a leaky roof, escaped goats, and an overgrown orchard. But since losing his dad, it’s the first thing that’s made him laugh again, making the messy old house feel like exactly what both families need.
This is book #1 in the Big Island series.
13. He Huli ʻUlaʻula: A Study in Scarlet (The Adventures of Kamaka Holmes) by Leilehua Yuen
Mystery | 4.2⭐
Set during Hawaii’s Monarchy era, this Sherlock Holmes pastiche centers on Kamaka Holmes, a distant cousin of the famous detective, with her own cousin Fevronia Watkins serving as the Watson figure who narrates the tales.
Fevronia explains her own background: born in 1872 in Worcester, Massachusetts, to liberal-minded parents who supported emancipation and suffrage, she was raised at home on the family farm. Her mother, born Cairistiòna Muire Holmes in Scotland, had married her father, Jonathan Bearnard Watkins, after they met during his travels there.
In 1884, both of Fevronia’s parents died of consumption, and with no relatives willing or able to take her in, her small inheritance paid for her passage to Hawaii, where she went to live with her mother’s brother. He had recently lost his wife and had a daughter, Lydia Kamakaʻimiʻike Kāwau Holmes, close in age to Fevronia.
The two girls, bonded by shared loss, became close friends and companions, and Fevronia’s chronicles recount the adventures of her cousin Lydia, who becomes the story’s Holmes-like detective.
14. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides
Biography | 4.7⭐
This narrative nonfiction account follows Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage, which began in 1776 and ended two and a half years later when Cook was killed on a Hawaiian beach. Already celebrated as Britain’s greatest explorer, Cook had built his reputation on exceptional seamanship, humane treatment of his crew, scientific rigor, and a respectful curiosity toward the Indigenous peoples he encountered on earlier voyages, including extensive mapping of the Pacific and first contact with numerous societies.
On this final journey, however, Cook grew erratic, using harsher discipline aboard ship and repeatedly steering his crew into danger, including ordering violent reprisals over alleged theft by native peoples.
Hampton Sides suggests this shift may connect to Cook’s secret orders: to claim territory ahead of Britain’s imperial rivals and search for the Northwest Passage, work that placed his scientific mission in service of colonial ambition with devastating consequences for Indigenous communities. The breaking point came in Hawaii, where an initial peaceful landing gave way, after Cook’s return from charting the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, to exploitative treatment of Hawaiians that culminated in the fatal confrontation.
15. Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson
Thriller | 4.2⭐
The director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory uncovers a buried secret: decades earlier, the U.S. military hid a cache of radioactive material deep within the volcano Mauna Loa, and if the eruption proceeds as predicted, it could trigger a catastrophe reaching far beyond Hawaii.
As the eruption accelerates, volcanologists, military officials, and emergency responders race against the clock to evacuate communities and avert a disaster that could endanger millions.
This book originated as a passion project Michael Crichton was developing before his death in 2008; his wife, Sherri Crichton, later found his notes and partial manuscript and, after more than a decade of searching, partnered with bestselling author James Patterson to complete it.
16. Beach Club Bloodshed by Christine Wellert
Cozy Mystery | 4.3⭐
The director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory uncovers a buried secret: decades earlier, the U.S. military hid a cache of radioactive material deep within the volcano Mauna Loa, and if the eruption proceeds as predicted, it could trigger a catastrophe reaching far beyond Hawaii. As the eruption accelerates, volcanologists, military officials, and emergency responders race against the clock to evacuate communities and avert a disaster that could endanger millions. Blending real volcanic science with a high-stakes, blockbuster plot, the novel carries the hallmarks of Crichton’s signature style. It originated as a passion project Michael Crichton was developing before his death in 2008; his wife, Sherri Crichton, later found his notes and partial manuscript and, after more than a decade of searching, partnered with bestselling author James Patterson to complete it.
17. Beach Club Bloodshed by Christine Wellert
Cozy Mystery | 4.3⭐
Summer Jenkins’ day takes a turn for the worse when she stumbles on a stab-wound-covered body, then learns her best friend Lani has gone missing and become a suspect in the murder. As everyone, including attractive detective Cole Peterson, looks to Summer for answers, she finds herself drawn deeper into the mystery, especially after surviving a hit and run that puts Cole’s protective instincts on high alert.
As more “accidents” pile up, Summer takes the investigation into her own hands, landing herself in dangerous territory with a Yakuza boss, a Russian oligarch, and a formidable local auntie. Set against the Kohala Coast on the Big Island and populated with offbeat characters, the story follows Summer and her friends as they race to solve the murder, clear their names, and stay ahead of escalating danger before time runs out.
This is book #1 in the Barefoot Sleuth Cozy Mystery series.
18. The Color of Air: A Novel by Gail Tsukiyama
Fiction | 4.2⭐
This historical novel follows a Japanese-American family against the backdrop of Hawaii’s sugar plantations. Daniel Abe, now a young doctor in Chicago, returns to his childhood home in Hawai’i for his own private reasons, not to dwell on the past the way his Uncle Koji does. Koji, who has long carried memories of Daniel’s late mother Mariko, the love of his life, knows it’s finally time to tell Daniel the truth about his parents.
Daniel’s return coincides with Mauna Loa’s volcanic eruption threatening their village, an event that stirs up both old and new tensions within the community. Moving between 1935, the year of the eruption, and decades earlier, the novel weaves together the intertwined stories of Daniel, Koji, and Mariko, exploring their lifelong bonds to one another and their immigrant community.
As the volcano endangers their lives and livelihoods, it also surfaces long-buried secrets that connect past and present and open a path forward for the family.
19. Death of a Messenger by Robert McCaw
Mystery | 4.6⭐
A brutal murder in Hawaii draws Chief Detective Koa Kane into an investigation that uncovers ancient rituals, cultural tensions, and long-buried secrets. As dangerous weather closes in and another life hangs in the balance, Koa must confront both the case and his own criminal past to stop a second killing.
This is book #1 in the Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery series.
20. Bones of Hilo by Eric Redman
Thriller Mystery | 4.1⭐
Kawika Wong, a young and untested detective from the Big Island’s working-class wet side, is eager to prove himself to his more experienced colleagues when he gets an unexpected break: the murder of Ralph Fortunato, a mainland developer behind an unpopular resort, found dead on a luxury golf course with an ancient Hawaiian spear through his heart.
With the rest of the department tied up investigating a separate string of brutal killings, Captain Terry Tanaka assigns the case to Kawika. Teaming up with his father and girlfriend to decipher the ritualistic crime scene, Kawika uncovers secrets reaching deep into the island’s ancient past, while a journalist who discovered the body has her own theory about what really happened, one that may or may not match the evidence.
The investigation takes Kawika from the Big Island all the way to Washington State and back, putting him in increasing danger as he races to learn the unfamiliar terrain, both cultural and literal, fast enough to catch a killer who’s gaining ground on him.
This is book #1 of the Kawika Wong Mystery series.
21. The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Fiction | 4.3⭐
Matt King was once one of Hawaii’s most fortunate men, a descendant of missionary ancestors (one of whom married a Hawaiian princess) and one of the state’s largest landowners. But his life is now unraveling: his daughters are struggling, with 10-year-old Scottie acting out for attention and 17-year-old Alex, a former model, battling drug addiction, while his thrill-seeking wife Joanie lies comatose after a boating accident and is about to be taken off life support.
As the family braces for life without their vibrant, larger-than-life matriarch, their grief is tangled with an unexpected, guilt-inducing sense of freedom, one that pushes them toward surprising choices as they try to come to terms with what’s ahead.
22. Mauna Kea: A Novel of Hawai’i by Tom Peek
Fantasy | 4.4⭐
A young drifter fleeing turmoil on the mainland finds himself on the slopes of the sacred, 14,000-foot Mauna Kea, a mountain steeped in both ancient Hawaiian spirituality and modern scientific exploration.
Forced to confront his own grief and rage, he’s drawn into a world he doesn’t fully understand, that of Native Hawaiians who revere the mountain’s deities, including two wise elders who become his mentors and a young woman carrying a similar weariness of spirit.
Through his encounters with them and a colorful cast of other islanders, he comes to understand the meaning of aloha and rediscovers a deeper well of faith and courage, ultimately renewing his hope in himself and in the wider world.
22. Hawaii: A Novel by James Michener
Historical Ficiton | 4.6⭐
This epic historical novel traces the story of Hawaii from its geological formation through centuries of human history, culminating in the modern multicultural islands.
Rather than following a single protagonist, the novel follows generations of Polynesian voyagers, missionaries, whalers, Chinese laborers, Japanese immigrants, and others whose lives shape Hawaii’s history. Along the way, it explores major events such as the settlement of the islands, the arrival of Westerners, the growth of the sugar industry, and the cultural tensions that emerged as Hawaii changed.
23. Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
Fantasy | 4.2⭐
In 1995, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard during a rare family vacation off Kailua-Kona, and when sharks circle the water, everyone braces for tragedy, only for Noa to be gently delivered back to his mother unharmed in a shark’s jaws.
His family, already struggling as Hawaii’s sugarcane industry collapses, takes the rescue as a sign of favor from the old gods, a belief reinforced as Noa later develops strange, seemingly supernatural abilities.
Years later, the family has scattered and frayed under the weight of that legacy: Noa works as a paramedic in Portland, still grappling with the scope of his powers; his older brother Dean chases wealth and status in elite college athletics in Washington; and younger sister Kaui, in California, buries herself in a brutal academic workload while trying to carve out an identity apart from her family’s story.
When supernatural events resurface back in Hawaii, with devastating consequences, the Flores family is forced to confront what they owe to family, heritage, and survival.
24. Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport
Historical Fiction | 4.3⭐
The story opens with a 19th-century Yankee sailor’s meeting with the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chief, then sweeps across a century and a half of turbulent Hawaiian history.
The novel centers on Pono, a formidable, pure-blooded matriarch and seer, and her four mixed-blood granddaughters, who must each reckon with the contradictions of their mixed heritage and the desires of their own hearts. Their relationships, rivalries, and shared bonds are woven through with the islands’ ancient legends and lore, as past and future intertwine to shape their fates.
Spanning islanders and colonizers, queens and outcasts, the sacred and the profane, the novel offers a sweeping, richly textured portrait of Hawaii’s complex and often painful history.
Books Set on Molokai
26. Moloka’i: A Novel by Alan Brennert
Historical Fiction | 4.5⭐
Moloka’i is a historical novel that follows Rachel Kalama, a young Hawaiian girl who is diagnosed with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) in the 1890s and forcibly separated from her family. At age seven, she is sent to the isolated settlement at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokaʻi, where people with the disease were quarantined for life.
What could have been a story solely about tragedy becomes a sweeping life story. Over nearly eighty years, Rachel grows up, forms friendships, falls in love, becomes a mother, and witnesses major events in Hawaiian history while living within the confines of the settlement.
This is book #1 of the Moloka’i series.
