John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley,” Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” William Least Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways”: The American literary canon is full of works celebrating the road trip, one of life’s greatest pleasures, no matter what time of year it is.

There’s something elemental about packing the car with some snacks, drinks and changes of clothes, and heading out to explore whichever part of the nation strikes your imagination.

Late spring and early summer are popular times to set out on the highways (or country roads, if you prefer). But if you can’t get on the road anytime soon, there are plenty of authors who are willing to bring it to you.

We talked to the authors of 12 books, either out now or coming soon, that feature people behind the wheel, seeing where the days and nights take them.Ariel Courage, ‘Bad Nature’ (out now)

The debut novel follows Hester, a 40-year-old woman who has recently learned she has terminal cancer and plans one last road trip from New York to Los Angeles … to kill her father. She agrees to take on a passenger, John, an activist who wants to visit America’s various Superfund sites — badly polluted areas that are in need of remediation (there are almost 100 in California alone).

“I knew where she’d start and where she’d end up, so I researched Superfunds along the route and mapped it out in a way that took her westward,” Courage says. “I lived near one for a time and started trying to learn more about it, which led me to learn more about others across the country. There are quite a few!”

Sarah Kendzior, ‘The Last American Road Trip’ (out now)

Journalist and author Kendzior (“The View From Flyover Country”) wanted to show her children the real America despite the troubles that were tearing the nation apart: the COVID-19 pandemic, political division and just general chaos. So she and her husband took their kids on the road, visiting parks, historical sites and other locations that have become American icons. “The Last American Road Trip” is her chronicle of these forays.

Does Kendzior urge other Americans to take their own road trips to explore the country? “Yes, and the travel doesn’t need to be far,” she says. “Driving an hour or so from your home in any direction will bring you an adventure. I encourage people to explore the outdoors and to read about the history of small towns and sites nearby. The more you know, the more interesting everything becomes — even places that at first seem unremarkable.”

Daryl Gregory, ‘When We Were Real’ (out now)

Award-winning author Gregory (“Spoonbenders,” “Revelator”) has never let himself be tied down by genre, and his latest book infuses a compassionate study of friendship with science fiction. The novel follows JP and Dulin, two friends who travel on a bus filled with other pilgrims to tour the “Impossibles” of North America: astounding glitches that popped up after life as we know it was revealed to be a simulacrum.

“At the same time, the people on the bus are learning to love each other, fight with each other, support each other, demonstrating one of the recurring ideas in the book: Whether we’re made out of zeroes and ones or a cloud of quarks, our emotions are real,” Gregory says. “Our love is real. By the end of the book (and the trip), each member of the group will play a role in saving the others. I think that’s true in our own lives, too. Our job is to take care of whoever we’re on the bus with.”

Zee Carlstrom, ‘Make Sure You Die Screaming’ (out now)

The narrator of Carlstrom’s debut novel isn’t having the best time. They’ve lost their corporate job and sustained possible brain damage from a fight with their ex-boyfriend, and to top it all off, they recently learned that their father — a Donald Trump supporter with a taste for conspiracy theories — has gone missing. With a new friend in tow and a stolen car, they head from Chicago to Arkansas to try to find some answers.

Using Google Maps, Carlstrom plotted the road trip taken by the characters. “My parents moved down south as soon as Trump was elected in 2016, so I’ve been forced to drive from Chicago to Arkansas a great many times,” they explain. “To really plan my novel’s trip, though, I had to factor in a lot of stops, detours and chaos along the way (given that the narrator’s got a pretty serious head injury and they’re driving a stolen car). It took some trial and error to get the route right because I wanted the actual drive time to match the elapsed time in the story, but I think I got pretty close to a real drive you could actually experience if you’re ever seized by the urge to stare at cornfields for 13 hours.”

Kirsty Capes, ‘Daughters’ (out now)

British author Capes decided to have the protagonists of her latest novel, Mattie and Nora, come to the U.S. for their road trip. The sisters are grieving the death of their mother, a famous Norwegian artist, when they learn that their aunt is planning a retrospective of their mother’s paintings — against the late woman’s wishes. They race up the West Coast to try to stop it, with their mother’s ashes and Mattie’s daughter in tow.

Asked why she decided to set the novel in California, Capes says, “Some of Los Angeles and San Francisco are so visually familiar — even to people who have never visited — that it felt right to slot the story into an environment where the characters could be allowed to map their hopes and fears onto the landscape around them, in a way that felt like an atmospheric shorthand for the reader. … I also loved visiting and researching some of the coastal towns along the West Coast like Morro Bay, where I was lucky enough to visit while writing the novel, and enjoyed a windy evening on the boardwalk, similar to the evening the characters spend in the book, only with the added bonus of a burger and some delicious local beer.”

Andrew Porter, ‘The Imagined Life’ (out now)

Texas-based author Porter (“In Between Days”) returns with a novel following Steve, a man reeling from the departure of his wife and son, who takes a road trip up the California coast to try to find out what happened to his father, who disappeared decades before.

The trip was a familiar one to Porter, who made it himself a few times before. “Once when I moved to Berkeley in my early 20s and again when I moved back down to Southern California, and then once more on the book tour for my first book, ‘The Theory of Light and Matter.’ It’s a beautiful trip, especially if you follow the PCH, and I have a personal fondness for central California, though I believe those trips were the only times I’ve spent time there.”

Annie Hartnett, ‘The Road to Tender Hearts’ (out now)

Hartnett (“Unlikely Animals,” “Rabbit Cake”) tells the story of PJ Halliday, a 63-year-old lottery winner in Massachusetts who learns that his high-school girlfriend is now single, and plans to drive from his home to Arizona to reconnect with her. Joining the trip are his daughter, his two orphaned grandchildren and — because what’s a road trip without a furry companion? — Pancakes, a cat who can tell when people are about to die.

“I put (Pancakes) in the car so I could achieve what I wanted to tonally with the book, which is to cover really heavy subject matter with a light delivery,” Hartnett says. “My goal for this book was to write about every single possible bad thing that can happen to a family, and make it my funniest book yet. The cat gives me a lot of comedic freedom.”

Jess Walter, ‘So Far Gone’ (June 10)

Rhys Kinnick, the protagonist, does not want to go on a road trip. He’s been off the grid for years, with no Internet and a car that has seen better days. But when his grandchildren are kidnapped by members of a militia, he recruits some friends to help get them back.

“I wanted ‘So Far Gone’ to be fast and funny but also kind of unrelenting and scary — the way the world feels now — and to give Rhys a clear mission: rescue his grandchildren and find his daughter,” Walter says. “The road trip was inspired by the books of Charles Portis, especially ‘The Dog of the South.’ Even though Rhys’ journey only takes place over a couple of days, like any good odyssey, I wanted him to cross borders (Idaho and Canada), to seek the help of unlikely allies, and face at least one real monster. And the journey had to come back to the place where it started.”

Walter will discuss his novel at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena with actor and author David Duchovny at 4 p.m. June 28.

Shoshana von Blanckensee, ‘Girls Girls Girls’ (June 17)

In her debut novel, Berkeley author and oncology nurse von Blanckensee takes readers back to 1996, when Hannah and Sam — two best friends who are dating each other in secret — take a road trip from New York to San Francisco, where they believe they can live openly as partners. Things don’t quite work out once the two hit their new city, though.

“In 1996, I drove most of the way across the country, and then again in 1998, I spent six weeks on the road when I toured with Sister Spit, a queer-feminist spoken word and performance art collective (yep, you heard that right),” von Blanckensee says. “While I had to do a bit of online research about specific locations, I relied on memory for much of it. What I remember most was the importance of a Rand McNally road atlas and a highlighter, quarters for pay phones, at least a full shoebox of mixtapes if you were driving something from the ’70s, or a zipper binder full of CDs if you were lucky enough to be driving something more reliable. In the late ’90s, nobody was tracking your location or texting and expecting a response. Travel had a different level of freedom and many more unknowns along the way. I aimed to capture that thrilling and slightly terrifying feeling.”

Von Blanckensee will be in conversation with David Goren at 7 p.m. July 11 at L.A.’s Skylight Books.

Christina Dotson, ‘Love You to Death’ (July 22)

Some road trips are more stressful than others. Dotson’s debut novel follows Kayla and Zorie, two best friends who make ends meet by crashing weddings and absconding with the gifts, which they then pawn. One such heist goes very, very wrong — they’re the only Black guests at a plantation-themed wedding, and someone is killed as they flee. The friends hit the road to dodge the authorities — and Kayla realizes that there’s more to Zorie than meets the eye.

Dotson’s novel has already received a glowing review from Publishers Weekly, which called the book “gleefully unhinged” and “criminally good” as well.

“I planned Kayla and Zorie’s road trip using Google Maps,” Dotson says. “During my second round of edits, my editor suggested adding a timestamp to the chapters, thinking it would make the reader feel like they’re on a clock and amp up the stakes. But since I’ve never been good at math, trying to calculate time and distance across those states was way too confusing. And while I’ve been to those states before, I’ve never taken Kayla and Zorie’s route. Honestly, I’m more of a travel by plane type of person, but I do enjoy road trip snacks.”

Ellie Palmer, ‘Anywhere With You’ (Aug. 5)

Minnesota author Palmer (“Four Weekends and a Funeral”) casts the Land of 10,000 Lakes as the setting for her latest romance novel. The book follows Charley, a woman who is determined to stop her sister from eloping and goes on the road in Minnesota’s Northwoods alongside her childhood best friend — for whom she’s beginning to harbor feelings.

“The moment I decided to put these two characters on a road trip, I knew it had to be on Highway 61, also known as North Shore Scenic Drive,” Palmer says. “It’s a stunning stretch of northern Minnesota, showcasing pine tree forests, historic lighthouses, imposing cliffsides and, of course, the wild and mercurial Lake Superior. It’s the perfect backdrop for a romantic comedy van trip!”

We couldn’t resist asking Palmer a controversial question for upper Midwesterners: What’s the better road trip stop: Dairy Queen, which is headquartered in Minnesota, or Culver’s, based in Wisconsin? “I have to give it to Culver’s,” she says. “Nothing beats a Butterburger and a cup of frozen custard on a summer road trip.”

Martha Barnette, ‘Friends With Words: Adventures in Languageland’ (Aug. 5)

Not all road trips have to be fictional. Barnette, the San Diego-based co-host of the popular radio show and podcast “A Way With Words,” takes readers on a virtual road trip across the U.S., showcasing the dialects that make American English so much fun. “I collect vocabulary the way other people pick up souvenirs — and it doesn’t take up space in my suitcase!” Barnette says. “Recently, I was in Arizona and was surprised to learn that I wasn’t on a street or an avenue, but a ‘stravenue,’ a road running diagonally between an east-west street and a north-south avenue. This term, which is unique to Tucson, is a combination of ‘street’ and ‘avenue.’ ”

She urges everyone to pay attention to dialect changes when they’re on their own road trips. “Dialects don’t stop and start at state lines, of course, but in the same way that the scenery out your window gradually changes as you drive along, you can listen for changes in pronunciation and vocabulary as you travel across the country,” she says. “We don’t all sound or talk alike, and to me, that’s a wonderful thing.”