The Best Coast

This illustrated travel guide is a celebration of the West Coast’s historic highways—perfect for both the avid traveler and the armchair explorer. Chock-full of unusual facts, hidden history, and Americana, The Best Coast is an offbeat road trip guide that tells the story of the diversity and depth that created the West Coast we know and love today—both the ever-changing present and vestiges of the past for those who slow down to look. A labor of love more than two years in the making, The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas contains over 400 full-color illustrations inspired by my sketchbook drawings created on my many road trips up and down the coast, as well as 99 hand-drawn maps and hundreds of hand-drawn lettering vignettes and illustrated icons.

The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas (Illustrated Adventures Along the West Coast’s Historic Highways)
Published by Sasquatch Books
ISBN 978-1632171740
Paperback, 224 pages
Release date: April 9, 2019

Available wherever books are sold!

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"Greetings from the Best Coast" postcard book by Chandler O'Leary

Also available: a new companion book of postcards!

Greetings from the Best Coast: 32 Postcards
Published by Sasquatch Books
ISBN 978-1-63217-283-9
Hardcover with postcards perfect-bound inside
4.5 x 6 x 0.75 inches
Each postcard 4.25 x 6 inches; mails at the standard postcard rate within the United States
(postage not included)
Release date: March 24, 2020

Want to order a signed copy to be shipped?

My amazing local bookstore, King’s Books, can ship a signed copy anywhere in the world! Simply place your order online, and in the “order comments” box mention that you want a signed copy, and whether or not you want the book personalized to a specific name.

Looking to buy a signed copy directly from me?

I also have signed books available in my web shop, as well as copies of my companion book of Best Coast postcards! If you’d prefer to buy from me in person, I do a handful of live events each year where I sell my work (including books)—here is where you can find a list of my upcoming events.

**Order The Best Coast book from your favorite retailer:**

**Order Greetings from the Best Coast postcards from your favorite retailer:**

Praise for The Best Coast and Drawn the Road Again:

“The Best Coast may be the quirkiest, prettiest, and most enthusiastic guide/love letter to the coast we call home to ever land on our desks.”
—Powell’s Books Blog

“Not just an indispensable guide to the West Coast, this is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind love letter to some of my favorite places in the world.”
—Geraldine DeRuiter, founder of Everywhereist.com

“The Best Coast, Chandler O’Leary’s illustrated road trip atlas spanning San Diego, Calif., and Washington State, taps into a desire among vacationers to see America as it was before chain restaurants and frequent-flyer mileage homogenized and shrunk the landscape.”
—Publishers Weekly

“O’Leary’s bright, delightful watercolors depict worthwhile stops and sights, from the mission architecture of San Diego to the parks of Vancouver, British Columbia. The book is also packed with the kind of dad-approved roadside history (did you know there are wild zebras in California?) that makes for memorable meandering.”
—Seattle Magazine

“Chandler O’Leary’s new book…The Best Coast: Illustrated Adventures Along the West Coast’s Historic Highways, offers…a way to make travel books relevant again…This is a book I’d love to take in the car with me as I navigated the west coast from south to north, the kind of personalized compass that would point me in the direction of adventures, and it identifies a more intimate solution for travel books in an Extremely Online age.”
—The Seattle Review of Books

“In The Best Coast, readers travel with O’Leary from San Diego to her current home state of Washington and back again. In between beautiful, hand-painted illustrations are portraits of roadside attractions, hidden histories, and historic highway guides.”
—Roadtrippers magazine

“Nobody is clear on the exact ratio of picture-to-words worthiness—some estimates have it as high as 1:1000—but it’s hard to argue that your average travel writer could capture the essence of a place as well as Chandler O’Leary does with her . . . watercolor artwork.”
—Fast Company

“O’Leary has a unique perspective on the sense of discovery in the journey as well as the destination.”
—Atlas Obscura