Simon Vestdijk, De koperen tuin (1950). The great Dutch novel set in Leeuwarden. A young pianist comes of age in a thinly disguised pre-war "H." — instantly recognisable as Leeuwarden — and the city's gardens, canals, and bourgeois society are drawn with affection and a sharp ironic eye. The Koperen Tuin restaurant in the Prinsentuin takes its name from this book.
Pat Shipman, Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (2007). Closely researched biography of Leeuwarden's most famous daughter, with substantial early chapters on her Frisian childhood. Useful background before visiting the Fries Museum's Mata Hari collection.
Hylke Speerstra, It wrede paradys (The Cruel Paradise, 1999). A celebrated Frisian collection of oral histories from emigrants who left Friesland for Canada, the US, and Australia. Translated into Dutch and English. A vivid sense of the Frisian temperament and the rural world that surrounds Leeuwarden.
Theun de Vries, Het rad der fortuin (1938) and other novels. De Vries was a Frisian-born Dutch communist novelist whose long historical fiction sequences are full of the region's character. Look for the early Friesland-set novels.
Cathie Dunsford, ed., The Mata Hari Story (1998). Lighter and more popular than Shipman; available in English translation. Good for a flight in.