The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
- Location(s): Botswana
- Genre(s): Crime, Humour
- Era(s): Modern
“There is no problem so great it cannot be solved by a cup of bush tea.” The prolific Alexander McCall Smith is the undisputed king of cosy crime, the antithesis of the much-touted Tartan Noir movement. His Precious Ramotswe...
- Location(s): Africa, Sahara
- Genre(s): Nonfiction
- Era(s): Turn of 20thCentury
Born to Russian emigres and brought up in an atmosphere of intellectual and aristocratic anachism, in her short life Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) came to be known as the ultimate enigma and a representative of everything that seemed dangerous in...
- Location(s): Japan
- Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery
- Era(s): Current
Minoru Aose is an architect whose greatest achievement is to have designed the Yoshino house, a prizewinning and much discussed private residence built in the shadow of Mount Asama. Aose has never been able to replicate this triumph and...
- Location(s): Arctic, Greenland
- Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
- Era(s): 19th Century
A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp and highly original tale that grips like a thriller. Behold the man: stinking, drunk, brutal and bloodthirsty, Henry Drax is a harpooner...
- Location(s): South London, India
- Genre(s): Fiction
- Era(s): 1960s
A story of racial violence on the streets of south east London in the 1960s. First published in 1972, the book still has contemporary resonance. Features an extensive new introduction from Paris Review columnist Emma Garman. Srinivas, an elderly...
- Location(s): Austria, France, Spain
- Genre(s): Fiction
- Era(s): 20th Century
The discovery of photographs in an album – of her Spanish grandfather who joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht and her father in the uniform of Franco’s army- leads Caterina Pascual Söderbaum to explore her family’s links to some of the most...
- Location(s): Korčula
- Genre(s): Fiction
- Era(s): Contemporary
Antonia Butler is on the brink of a life-changing decision and a job advert looking for a multilingual housekeeper at a beautifully renovated Croatian farmhouse, Vila Maslina, is one she can’t ignore. Arriving on the tiny picturesque island of...
- Location(s): South Shields, The North East (England)
- Genre(s): Fiction
- Era(s): 1940 1954
The tear-jerking wartime tale of an orphaned baby who needs a home, and the woman who risks everything to provide it. England, 1941: Life has always been cruel to Ethel. Raised in an orphanage by a merciless mistress, she never knew...
- Location(s): Cuba (Republic of)
- Genre(s): Travelogue
- Era(s): 2000s
Change looms in Havana, Cuba’s capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliche, 90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years,...
- Location(s): French Riviera (Cote d'Azur), Northumberland
- Genre(s): Historical, Fiction
- Era(s): 1920s-1960s
LONDON 1921 – Jean Buckman, a young and innocent American heiress arrives in England to find a society decimated by war but resolutely clinging to the status quo. She marries Edward Warre an engaging but complex man and the...
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