“On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool, delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth, spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.” ~Jack London, “The Valley of the Moon” (1913)

NONFICTION

A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth, and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma, Alan Deutschman, 2003 — An engaging look at the rivalry between the two valleys and their distinct atmospheres and controversies.

The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley, James Conaway, 2002 — A riveting account of how this agricultural paradise has been divided over issues of land use, conservation and status by a contributor to National Geographic and Food & Wine, who has studied the area for decades.

Food Lover’s Guide to the Napa Valley: Where to Eat, Cook, and Shop in the Wine Country, Plus 50 Irresistible Recipes, Lori Lyn Narlock, 2003 — This book by a food writer and former chef contains a forward by Thomas Keller, the famous chef from the French Laundry, and suggestions for dozens of great addresses for foodies.

Harvests of Joy: How the Good Life Became Great Business, Robert Mondavi, 1998 — The autobiography of America’s greatest winemaker and how he single-handedly changed the world view of California wines.

Napa: The Transformation of an American Town, Lauren Coodley, 2003 — A history of the town by a history professor at Napa Valery College from when Spanish explorers arrived and met the resident Wappo Indians to modern times.

The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection, Michael Ruhlman, 2001 — One of the three parts of this book chronicles working in the kitchen of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry.

FICTION

Velocity, Dean Koontz, 2005 — Napa Valley bartender and wood sculptor Billy Wiles finds himself targeted by a fiendish killer in a nail-biter of a suspense novel.

Sharpshooter: A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery, Nadia Gordon, 2002 — Local color saturates the investigations of organic chef Sunny McCoskey, who must clear her friend’s name following the murder of a wine family heir.

“Whenever I come here (…) San Francisco strikes me as being at once the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful and the most tantalizing of all the great cities of the world.” ~Jan Morris

FICTION

The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth, 1986 — This brilliant early novel by the author of A Suitable Boy is written as a narrative poem about five contemporary San Francisco residents.

Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin, 1978 — Before Sex and the City, there were these tales of San Francisco set in a Russian Hill apartment house—vibrant, gay, sentimental and funny.

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930 — Tough but tender Sam Spade gumshoes his way across the city, helping a beautiful woman get her manicured paws on a golden bird.

NONFICTION

San Francisco Almanac: Everything You Want to Know about the City, Gladys Hansen, 1995 — An indispensable reference with inside info on everything from the 1906 earthquake to cable cars to famous locals.

The World of Herb Caen: San Francisco 1938–1997, Barnaby Conrad, 1999 — The newsprint voice of San Francisco for over half the 20th century, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Caen is the consummate crusty insider driven by an insatiable curiosity for his home town.

Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters, eds., 1998 — A sweeping, diverse essay collection that includes the perspectives of historians, writers, architects, geographers and artists.

“New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village—the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!” ~E.B. White

NONFICTION

1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir, Anne Roiphe, 1999 — Roiphe’s carefully observed memoir of growing up rich, Jewish and isolated on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is intense and powerful.

Manhattan, When I Was Young, Mary Cantwell, 1996 — Cantwell’s tale of arriving in Greenwich Village in the 1950s to work on a glossy is the pre-Sex and the City in the era of the two-martini lunch.

Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Luc Sante, 1991 — A pop culture classic chronicling the dives and lives of the Lower East Side, 1840 to 1920—well before the neighborhood became the home of the Gap and Starbucks.

Greenwich Village: A Guide to America’s Legendary Left Bank, Judith Stonehill, 2002 — Full of delightful illustrations, maps, quotations, walking tours and tales of such luminaries as Walt Whitman, Edward Hopper and Willa Cather.

FICTION

Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin, 1983 — Futuristic New York that takes its title from the Shakespeare play and shares a central character who disappears and returns many years later, a changed man.

The Alienist, Caleb Carr, 1994 — Carr’s best historical mystery follows a doctor pursuing a serial killer of boys through the well-etched streets of Victorian New York.

House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905 — Single artistic Lily Bart desperately seeks a rich husband in this Gilded Age tragedy.

POETRY

Poet in New York, Federico Garcia Lorca, 1940 — Poems written in and about New York between 1929-1930, when Lorca was a student at Columbia University.

FOR CHILDREN

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Bernard Waber, 1965 — The classic tale of a crocodile raised on 88th Street and his metropolitan adventures. For children up to 8.

Mishoo: Cosmopolitan Cat, Emily Fisher Landau, 2000 — Published by the Whitney Museum of Art, this illustrated tale features a cat who belongs to an art collector who lives between New York, Palm Beach and Santa Fe. It was written by well-known art collector and philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau and includes reproductions of Warhol and Georgia O’Keefe paintings.

Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City, Janet Schulman, 2008. The illustrated true story of the hawk couple that made a nest on Fifth Avenue apartment building. When the coop owners removed their home, protesters picketed and proved how the birds had captured the heart of New Yorkers.

New York State of Mind, Billy Joel, 2005 — The well-known singer wrote this ode to New York in 1976; almost thirty years later, the text (with accompanying illustrations) was published. For children up to 6.

The Old Pirate of Central Park, Robert Priest, 1999 — A sweet picture book about a cranky New York City pirate who brings his toy ship to the boat pond in Central Park. For children up to 8.

“…so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability . The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.” ~ Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

NONFICTION

Los Angeles: People, Places and the Castle on the Hill, A.M. Homes, 2002 — New York-based novelist, short-story writer and memoirest Homes checks into the star-larded Chateau Marmont (where James Belushi overdosed) to get an insider’s, bricks-and-mortar look into L.A. and its celebrity culture.

Where I was from, Joan Didion, 2004 — Didion is the nonfiction poet of California, and her piercing view of the state’s history in light of the 1993 Spur Posse sex scandal scours the state for meaning hidden and latent.

Black Dahlia Avenger: the True Story, Steve Hodel, with a foreword by James Ellroy, 2003 — Former detective Hodel traces the blood-trail of the murder of an innocent extra straight back to the doorstep of his kinky doctor father in this true-crime classic about one of the city’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

FICTION

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 1939 — Sure it’s one of the best mysteries of all time, but Chandler sings the rhythm of Los Angeles, the smell of “hard wet rain” on cement, the weight of bougainvillea on the portico of a decadent rich man’s house – and it’s a pleasure to read.

The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh, 1947 — Who knows California better than a detached Englishman? Novelist Waugh’s dead-on satire of Hollywood dissects how Los Angelenos revere their late pets at the “Happier Hunting Ground.”

Greetings from the Golden State, Leslie Brenner, 2001 — Food writer and debut novelist Brenner produces an off-beat Southern California family saga that spans the Kennedy Assassination to the Bush Administration.

Literacy and Longing in LA, Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack, 2006 — An amusing chic lit take on modern L.A. about a woman who is torn between two men and her love for reading.

NONFICTION

The Road from Coorain: Recollections of a Harsh and Beautiful into Adulthood, Jill Ker Conway, 1992 — An incredible memoir about growing up in the outback, coming of age in Sydney of the 1950s and coming into her own as a historian and educator. Ker Conway ultimately became Smith College’s first female president.

The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1987 — This brilliant meditation on why men wander and tell stories by one of the best travel writers of the 20th century illuminates much more than just the aboriginal culture.

Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James, 1981 — The prolific, award-winning Australian author’s acerbic memories of growing up in suburban Sydney.

Sydney, Jan Morris, 1992 — The author of numerous travel books, Morris gives a historical and social look at Australia’s largest city, founded in 1788 as a run-off for British convicts…

FICTION

Bliss, Peter Carey, 1981 — A satiric and highly entertaining novel delves into a Sydney ad-exec’s spiritual crisis.

The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel, Richard Flanagan, 2007 —A page-turner about a Sydney pole-dancer whose one-night-stand puts her under suspicion for abetting a terrorist in the attempted bombing of Sydney’s Olympic stadium.

Lillian’s Story, Kate Grenville, 1986 —A poetic first novel that creates a fictional autobiography for Lil Sanger, a trouble Sydney homeless woman; the emotional survival story won the Austalian/Vogel award.

“[We] ran up the hills where, as you looked down toward the sea, the flooded rice fields lay shining in the sunlight like a broken mirror.” ~ Colin McPhee

NONFICTION

Eat, Pray, Love One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006 — The last third of the book, which covers “Love”, is set in Bali and wonderfully evokes the island and its residents.

A House in Bali, Colin McPhee, 1944 — A Canadian composer and musicologist and “ultra-modernist”, the author became interest in gamelan music, traveled to Bali in the 1930’s and wrote a classic memoir about the island, it’s people and it culture – and captured the “sensory overload” that still characterizes the island today.

Fragrant Rice: A Taste of Passion, Marriage and Food, Janet DeNeefe, 2004 — The Australian author lives with her Balinese husband and four children in Bali where her experience running a restaurant and other businesses inspired this recipe/lifestyle book.

FICTION

Painted Alphabet, Diana Darling, 1992 — The American sculptor and Bali resident re-imagines a classic local folktale about a Balinese witch as a fantasy novel.

Bali Behind the Seen: Recent Fiction from Bali, Various — A short story collection by contemporary Balinese fiction writers confronting the forces of tourism and modernization in paradise.

A Little Bit of One O’Clock, William Ingram, 1998 — A westerner’s warm, intuitive, witty novel about living with a local family, and their spiritual link to their community and ancestors.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. ~ Mao Zedong

NONFICTION

Foreign Babes in Beijing: A Portrait of the New China, Rachel DeWoskin, 2005 — An American ex-pat’s explores of modern China.

Wild Swans Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang, 1992 — The inspiring biography tells the story of three daughters their struggle and survival against Communism in China.

Mao The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, 2006 —The authors recast Mao’s ascent to power and subsequent grip on China in the context of global events.

The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Li Zhi-Sui, 1996 —The book reconstructs Dr. Li’s extraordinary time when he served as Chairman Mao’s personal physician.

One Billion Customers, James McGregor, 2005 — Considered by some to be the bible for anybody doing business in China, the book reveals indispensable, street-smart strategies, tactics, and lessons for succeeding in the world’s fastest growing consumer market.

FICTION

Mr. China, Tim Clissold, 2004 — Based on a true story, a British student of Chinese with a few years of experience at an accounting firm, teams up with an experienced Wall Street banker to invest in China in the early 1990s.

Peking: A novel of China’s Revolution 1921-1978, Anthony Grey, 1988 —Historical epic about the Long March of the Chinese Communists.

“The place is haunted by a sense of the hugeness and fertility and brute strength of Asia.” ~Jan Morris

NONFICTION

East and West, Christopher Patten, 1999 — The last British colonial governor relates the time up until the 1997 handover to China.

Hong Kong, Jan Morris, 1997 — Strong on colonial history and style but the British author falters on the street’s Cantonese beat.

Gweilo, Martin Booth, 2005 — The author recalls his experience of growing up as a blond-haired British lad in a Chinese community.

FICTION

The World of Suzie Wong, Richard Mason, 1958 — The original and best HK novel about the gold-hearted hooker.

Noble House, James Clavell, 1986 — HK-set rollercoaster yarn – and great airplane read – peopled by a tattooed triad – Four Finger Wu – a canny Brit trader, a smooth American capitalist, a slinky Chinese babe, and a Communist spy.

The Monkey King, Timothy Mo, 2000 — A hilariously funny novel of family dysfunction set in 1950’s Hong Kong.

“I have seen places that were, no doubt, as busy and as thickly populous as the Chinese city of Shanghai, but none that so overwhelmingly impressed me with its business and populousness. In no city, West or East, have I ever had such an impression of dense, rank, richly clotted life.” ~Aldous Huxley, 1927

NONFICTION

Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng, 1968 — A harrowing account of life during the Cultural Revolution.

Shanghai, Harriet Sergeant, 1998 — A portrait of the city in the 1920s and ’30s during its waning days of decadence.

Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City, 1842-1949, Stella Dong, 2001 — Story of Old Shanghai with tales of drugs, prostitution, and gang warfare.

FICTION

When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005 — A Cambridge graduate whose parents disappeared in Shanghai, where they lived when he was a boy, travels east from England in the 1930’s as a detective to determine what really happened to his mother and father.

See also Library for Beijing

“One only has to be a few days in Prague before fully realizing the genius of Kafka. The air is impregnated with his spirit. Thirty years ago he wrote of everything that has happened here and is happening today. It is a town that is locked and has only the wrong keys, the keys that won’t fit the locks; things are not ruined and spoiled so much as banked.” ~Cecil Beaton, The Parting Years, 1964

NONFICTION

The Coasts of Bohemi: A Czech History, Derek Sayer, 1998 — A cultural and political history of the Czech people by a Canadian professor.

Exit into History: A Journey through the New Eastern Europe, Eva Hoffman, 1994 — Hoffman recounts her travels across Eastern Europe following the fall of communism.

The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague, Timothy Garton Ash, 1993 — An account by a British journalist of the fall of communism, which he witnessed first hand: He was actually standing next to Vaclav Havel in Wencelas Square on the eve of his assuming power.

Nightfrost in Prague: the End of Humane Socialism, Zdenek Mlynar, 1980 — An account of Prague Spring by a close ally of Dubcek’s who was later transferred to Russia where he was closely monitored by the KGB.

Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Ernst Pawel, 1984 — A biography of Franz Kafka, Prague’s most famous literary figure.

Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990, Vaclav Havel, 1992 — A broad collection of writings by the former president of the Czech Republic, who turned from a playwright to a dissident and then an inspirational leader for Eastern Europe.

Prague Farewell, Heda Magolius Kovaly, 1988 — This memoir is no longer in print but well worth checking out of the library if you can. It tells the story of a woman who escaped a Nazi concentration camp, survived her husband’s execution in the 1950s and witnessed the Soviet tanks roll into Prague.

Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City, Peter Demetz, 1997 — A Prague native who left in 1949 and became a Yale literature professor returned to his birthplace after the Velvet Revolution, and researched this unsentimental portrait of the city.

Prague Pictures: A Portrait of the City, John Banville, 2003 — Recollection of the city’s past and present.

The Spirit of Prague, Ivan Klima, 1998 — The essay collection explores totalitarianism’s inner logic and workings.

Kafka’s Prauge: A Travel Reader. Ed. Klaus Wagenbach, 1996 — A walking tour of Prague built around places of importance to the city’s most famous native author.

FICTION

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera, 1999 — Milan Kundera’s sexy, innovative masterpiece about the disappearance and reappearance of Czechoslovakia.

The Cowards, Josef Skvorecky, 1972 — The story of an uncomplicated, talented youth caught up in momentous historic events who refuses to be bored to death by politics—or to lie down and die without a fight.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, 1984 — Set first in Czechoslovakia, then in Switzerland, Kundera’s story tells the sometimes laborious story of a womanizing Czech surgeon forced to flee the Russian invasion and take on menial roles.

Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, Ivan Klima, 1994 — A novel about the Velvet Revolution

Utz, Bruce Chatwin, 1988 — A novel by one of the century’s best travel writers, this story is set in Prague about Kaspar Utz, a collector of Meissen porcelain, who hides his treasure through World War II and the Soviet era.

“By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.” ~ Samuel Johnson

NONFICTION

Life of Johnson, James Boswell, 1791 — Considered among the great biographies, this 18th century English-language classic is something every well-read soul should vow to read someday. Why not now, when you have the time to connect with this shrewd diarist whose own personality so greatly casts a shadow on his French-hating literary subject?

London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd, 2006 — Novelist/biographer Ackroyd’s encyclopedic, anecdotal – and weighty – take on the capital from pre-Roman history to the present.

Changing Stages: A View of British and American Theater, Richard Eyre, Nicholas Wright, 2001 — Ignore the American portion of the title and indulge in this fascinating, exhaustive, insider’s look at 20th century British theater, from London’s Royal National Theater’s Eyre and Wright.

FICTION

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, 1850 — In the author’s most autobiographical work, the title character comes of age in 19th Century England – and survives to find a measure of marital happiness against many, many odds.

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-48 — A satirical novel, which was first published in serial, about the opportunistic heroine Becky Sharp, whose steep rise in society comes at great cost.

Saturday, Ian McEwan, 2004 — One day in the life of McEwan’s well-to-do neurosurgeon who collides with a London thug reveals the shaky underpinning’s of London’s modern man in accessible, sophisticated fiction.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1986 — Give meaning to your stroll down Baker Street, and re-awaken your rational powers of observation, by reading this grand-daddy of all detection fiction that still reverberates today – even TV’s “House” is wordplay on our hero “Holmes.”

The End of the Affair, Graham Greene, 1951 — Greene’s heady spiritual romance (made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore) follows the adulterous liaison between a novelist and a married woman, brought together by WWII, and separated by German bombs and God’s will.

FOR CHILDREN

This is London, Miroslav Sasek, 1959 — This children’s classic, which introduced a generation of children in the 1960s to London, was reissued in 2004. Its charming illustrations and text provide a wonderful tour of the city, its inhabitants and its monuments.

Madeleine in London, Ludwig Bemelmans — The escapades of the charming young French schoolgirl’s first visit to England.

“To know Paris is to know a great deal.” ~Henry Miller

NONFICTION

Hungry For Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City’s 102 Best Restaurants, Alexander Lobrano, 2008 — A thoroughly delightful guide to eating in the gastronomic capital.

Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann, David P. Jordan, 1995 — Few men have had such an enormous impact on an entire city’s landscape as the 19th century architect and urban planner, Baron Haussmann. This is an academic but very readable biography.

Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik, 2001 — The New Yorker writer, who lived in Paris for several years, muses on the city.

Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, Adam Gopnick, 2004 — A collection of writings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine to M.F.K. Fisher and Diana Vreeland.

Women of the Left Bank, Shari Benstock, 1987 — The interesting account profiles female artists living in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century.

A Corner in the Marais: Memoir of a Paris Neighborhood, Alex Karmel, 2002 — The history of the charming walk-up he and his French wife bought in Paris’s Marais district in 1982.

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, A.J. Leibling, 1986 — A thoroughly delightful account of a gourmet’s progress in pre-war Paris.

Quiet Days in Clichy, Henry Miller, 1956 — The celebration of love, art, and the Bohemian life at a time when the world was simpler and slower, and the sexual pioneer Miller was an obscure, penniless young writer in Paris.

Travelers’ Tales: Paris, James O’Reilly, 2002 — The book captures the city’s romance through stories that entertain, inform, and touch the heart.

The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, Edmund White, 2001 — Witty and thoughtful musings on Paris by a writer who lived in the city for many years.

Fragile Glory: A Portrait of France and the French, Richard Bernstein, 1989 — An incisive survey of contemporary France.

I’ll Always Have Paris: A Memoir, Art Buchwald, 1980 — Buchwald sums up the joie de vivre of Paris during the fifties.

A Traveller’s History of Paris, Robert Cole, 1997 — An excellent all-purpose history of the city.

Is Paris Burning?, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, 2000 — A gripping history of Paris during World War II.

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, Noel Riley Fitch, 1983 — Fascinating account of literary life in Paris during the twenties and thirties.

Paris: The Collected Traveler, Barrie Kerper, 2000 — Good all-purpose read.

French or Foe? Getting the Most out of Visiting, Living and Working in Paris, Polly Platt, 2003 —Platt, an American in Paris, shares her knowledge of the intricacies of French etiquette and social life.

Love and Louis XIV, Antonia Fraser, 2006 — The best-selling British historian turns her keen eye and narrative gifts to examining the influence of the women in the Sun King’s life. Wonderful, engaging history.

FICTION

City of Darkness, City of Light, Marge Piercy, 1997 — The story reveals three women and their prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution alongside their more famous male counterparts.

Perfume, Patrick Süskind, 1989 — A gripping, beautifully written mystery about an orphan with an incredible nose for scents set in medieval Paris.

Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky, 1941-42 — Extraordinary lost work of fiction about the German occupation of France from the perspective of a Jewish novelist embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one.

The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen, 1935 — A lesser-known but brilliant and influential jewel box of a novel that begins with two children meeting in the parlor of a narrow, teeny Parisian townhouse – and the slow revelation of the secrets it harbors.

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway —Hemingway’s love letter to the city.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, 2003 — The monster bestseller marries the gusto of an international murder mystery with a collection of fascinating esoterica culled from 2,000 years of Western history.

Le Divorce/Le Marriage, Diane Johnson, 1998/2000 — Twin novels set in contemporary Paris offer an astute social portrait of the city.

FOR CHILDREN

Madeline series, Ludwig Bemelmans, 1984 — These charmingly illustrated books are a great way to get children excited about going to Paris.

This is Paris, Miroslav Sasek, 1959 — This charming illustrated tour of the city was reissued a few years ago, and it’s a wonderful introduction to the city, its residents and monuments for young readers.

Nicholas, Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé, 1959 — A series of illustrated chapter books about the misadventures of a French school boy that will make you and your children laugh out loud.

“Berlin. I found it dazzling. The city had a jewel-like sparkle, especially at night, that didn’t exist in Paris. The vast cafés reminded me of ocean liners powered by the rhythms of their orchestras. There was music everywhere.” ~Josephine Baker, 1925

NONFICTION

The Last Jews in Berlin, Leonard Gross, 1988 — Describes the ordeals of several Jewish escapees who lived “underground” in wartime Berlin and managed to survive.

Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945, Marie Vassiltchikov, 1988 — The wartime diary of an émigré Russian princess who was secretary to Adam Von Trott, mastermind of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, Anonymous, 2005 — The sobering diary of a woman who recorded the day-to-day hardships of the mostly female population of Berlin following the end of the war, when the city was under Russian occupation.

FICTION

The Good German, Joseph Kanon, 2002 — A fun-to-read romantic thriller set in post-World War II Berlin.

The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood, 1963 — Two novels that are based on the authors experiences of living in Berlin from 1929 to 1933. The play and the film “Cabaret” are loosely based on the book.

The Innocent, Ian McEwan, 2005 — The British Booker Prize-winning author’s suspenseful thriller was published in 1990 and is set in Cold War Berlin.

The Tin Drum, Günther Grass, 1990 — Considered the voice—and conscience—of post-World War II Germany, Grass published his most acclaimed novel, set in the years leading up to the war on the German-Polish border, in 1959.

SAINT-TROPEZ

“And we laughed, because it is good to laugh, and because one laughs easily in a climate where there is a real long, hot summer with soft breezes, and leisure to state with confidence: “Tomorrow, and the next day too, we’ll have days no different from this when the blue and golden moments glide by…merciful days where shadows come from a drawn curtain, a closed door, or leafy trees, and not from an overcast sky.”—Colette

NONFICTION

Break of Day, Colette, 1928 — Written in the artists’ colony of Saint-Tropez when the author was in her fifties, the mature work followed the collapse of her second marriage and reflects her desire to re-establish her independence, and repudiate romantic love, while celebrating the natural beauty of her surroundings.

Edith Wharton on the French Riviera, Philippe Collas, 2002 — A fascinating look at the Golden Age of the French Riviera between the wars during the time the American writer visited and found it both a writing paradise and socially shallow – with vintage photographs.

Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera, Michael Nelson, 2001 — A well-researched account of Queen Victoria’s love affair with the French Riviera.

Artists and their Museums on the Riviera, Barbara F. Freed, 1998 — See the region through the eyes of its most famous artists, like Paul Signac, Renoir, Matisse, Chagall, Picasso and Cocteau.

FICTION

Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan, 1955 — Seventeen-year-old Cecile pokes around in her widowed father’s affairs, with tragic results.

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1933 — Fitzgerald’s most ambitious novel about a glamorous couple coping with his frustrated career ambitions and her mental problems against the Riviera in the 1920’s.

Epitaph for a Spy, Eric Ambler, 1952 — A terrific spy novel about a man at the end of his Riviera vacation who drops his film off at the drugstore – and finds himself arrested and under suspicion when the photos that come back aren’t his.

BARCELONA

“The lamps along the Ramblas sketched an avenue of vapor that faded as the city to awake…The brightness of dawn filtered down from balconies and cornices in streaks of slanting light that dissolved before touching the ground.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

NONFICTION

Homage to Barcelona, Colm Toibin, 2001 — Histories and travel essays on Barcelona.

Catalan Cuisine; Europe’s Last Great Culinary Secret, Colman Andrews, 1999 — White beans, marinated salt cod, rabbit – a cookbook and so much more!

Barcelona, Robert Hughes, 1993 — The cultural history of the city, from its days as a Roman outpost to the present takes a comprehensive look at the architecture, art, religion and literature of the area.

Barcelona: The Great Enchantress, Robert Hughes, 2007. An ode to a favorite city by the famous art critic.

Antoni Gaudi, Ignasi de Sola Morales, 1992 — Spectacular color photographs and classic text join to make this examination of 16 of the architect’s works, from houses to cathedrals, richly accessible.

FICTION

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 2001 — Young Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to a place called the Cemetery of Lost Books where he is told to adopt a book to keep its memory alive.

Gaudi Afternoon: A Cassandra Reilly Mystery, Barbara Wilson, 1990 —Lesbian translator-turned-sleuth Reilly scours Barcelona seeking a missing person of “indeterminate gender” in a witty, feminist, fast-paced book.

Nada, Carmen Laforet, 2007 — The story of a young woman struggling to survive after the Civil War.

The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda, 1986 — Gabriel Garcia Marquez called this book about one woman’s life during the Spanish Civil War and beyond: “The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War.” High praise!

TRAVEL GUIDES

Cool Restaurants Barcelona, Cuito Aurora. Browse beautiful places to eat and get a sample of their menus so you don’t have to take chances on how attractive the surroundings are for your meals.

Cool Shops Barcelona, 2005. Heavy on the pictures and light on the text but when it comes to cool shops, the focus should be on style not substance anyway. Think of it as a black book with images.

Lonely Planet Barcelona, 2006. A great all-around guide to the city with maps and solid historical and factual information.

StyleCity: Barcelona, 2007. This large format paperback series focuses on the city’s high style spots with sections on shopping, eating, staying and seeing.

Time Out Barcelona. The guidebook to the city by the staff of Time Out with great tips on sights, shops and restaurants.

Wallpaper City Guide: Barcelona, 2006. A hip pocket guide to the city by the editors of Wallpaper magazine.

EAST AFRICA

“There’s no sky as big as this one anywhere else in the world. It hangs over you, like some kind of gigantic umbrella, and takes your breath away. You are flattened between the immensity of the air above you and the solid ground. It’s all around you, 360 degrees: sky and earth one the aerial reflection of the other.” —Francesca Marciano

NONFICTION

Africa in my Blood, Jane Goodall, 2000 — Autobiography of the author in Kenya.

Coming of Age with Elephants: A Memoir, Joyce Poole, 1996 — This fascinating account of an elephant specialist’s work in Kenya over more than a decade is also a very personal tale of a woman’s struggle with sexism, violence and the conservation crisis, particularly as it effects her beloved elephants.

Emma’s War: An Aid Worker, A Warlord, Radical Islam, and the Politics of Oil: A True Story of Love and Death in Sudan, Deborah Scroggins, 2002. — A fascinating account of an idealistic young British woman who went to the Sudan as a relief worker and married a rebel warlord before her tragic death.

Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway, 1935 — This novel includes wonderful evocations of safari days in Kenya and Tanzania, where the Nobel-prize winning author went on numerous shooting safaris in the 1930s.

Hemingway in Africa: The Last Safari, Christopher Ondaatje, 2004 — The best-selling British biographer followed in Hemingway’s footsteps to trace the trail of two of his safaris through Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to gain a deeper understanding of one of his literary heroes and his love of Africa.

I Dreamed of Africa, Kuki Gallmann, 1991 — The incredible memoir of an Italian woman who moved to Kenya where she fell so in love with the land and the wildlife that even after she tragically lost her husband and her son, she stayed on.

Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, Emily Ruete, 1998 — This out-of-print memoir is hard to find but provides an interesting glimpse into life in the palace of a sultan in the 19th century by one of the princesses.

The Tree Where Man Was Born, Peter Matthiessen, 1972 — The New Yorker writer visited East Africa multiple times over the course of a decade to create this incredible portrait of the landscape and people and animals. The writing demonstrates why he is considered one of the best nature writers of the century, and what a perfect topic for him to mine.

West With the Night, Beryl Markham, 1942 — Compared favorably to Out of Africa, the controversial but acclaimed memoir(some attribute the writing to her publicist husband)is a passionate aviator-and-equestrienne’s poetic account of flight and discovery in Kenya, where she moved when she was three.

Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa’s Natural Treasures, Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell, 2001 — A memoir by the famous paleontologist about the years he spent as director of the Kenyan Wildlife Department from 1989 to 1994, witnessing first-hand the difficulty the country faces to save African wildlife.

FICTION

Rules of the Wild, Francesca Marciano, 1998 — Literary chick lit of the best kind, this novel is set in Kenya in the 1990s and is people with expat relief workers, journalists and artists looking for love against the backdrop of Africa’s wilderness and modern Nairobi.

SOUTHERN AFRICA

“’The story,” the Bushman prisoner said, “is like the wind. It comes from a far-of place and we feel it.” ~Laurens van der Post

NONFICTION

Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela, 1994 — From political activist to prisoner, then president and Nobel Prize winner, Mandela’s story is a journey of modern Africa. Here, it is in his own words.

Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Negotiated Revolution, Alistair Sparks, 1995 — As a journalist at South Africa’s preeminent newspaper, Sparks bore witness to the end of Apartheid and wrote this fascinating account of the government’s dealings with Nelson Mandela. It reads like a spy novel but is based entirely on real events.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller, 2001 — An incredibly moving memoir about growing up in Rhodesia in the 1970s, marked by nasty tensions between white settlers and native Africans.

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village, Sarah Erdman, 2003 — A moving memoir by a Peace Corps. Volunteer who was sent to a small village in the Cote d’Ivoire. In observing everything from the ancient rituals of sorcerers to AIDs affliction, she reveals the tensions and problems of modern Africa.

FICTION

A Story Like the Wind, Laurens van der Post, 1972 — A boy comes of age on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

Blood Kin, Ceridwen Dovey, 2008 — Dovey, a current graduate student in social anthropology at New York University, had originally wanted to film a documentary on South African president Thabo Mbeki through the lens of his chef, barber and portraitist. Instead, she wrote a fable about an overthrown president whose chef, barber and portraitist are held hostage by the new ruler.

Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton, 1948 — This classic novel about racial injustice in South Africa is as moving today as when it was first published and instantly became a best-seller.

Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee, 1999 — This novel, which won the 1999 Booker Prize, is a subtle exploration of South Africa post-Apartheid and all of its new complexities by the Cape Town born Nobel Prize winner now living in Australia.

EGYPT

“We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.” —Naguib Mahfouz

NONFICTION

Cairo: The City Victorious, Max Rodenbeck, 1999 — The fascinating history of the city from ancient times, through the Middle Ages to modern days by a Cairo-based correspondent for the Economist.

Echoes of an Autobiography, Naguib Mahfouz, 1994 — A slim volume of meditations and memories by the Nobel-prize winning Egyptian novelist with a foreward by Nadine Gordimer.

A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam, Mary Anne Weaver, 1999 — A chilling look at Egypt by the astute New Yorker writer who predicts that Islamic fundamentalists will defeat the secular state with a profound impact on the Middle East.

Flaubert in Egypt, Gustave Flaubert, 1996 — The French author visited Egypt in the 19 century and letters and journal entries show how much the place inspired him when he visited in 1849. A year later he wrote Madame Bovary.

Out of Egypt, A Memoir, Andre Aciman, 2006 — A wonderful, multi-generational memoir, beautifully written, of a Jewish family in Cairo.

FICTION

Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively, 1987 — An absolutely beautifully written novel, which won the Booker Prize, about a love affair that unfolded in Cairo during the Second World War.

The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz, 1957 — Born in Cairo in 1911, the first and only Arab Nobel Prize winner (who was stabbed in the neck in an unsuccessful assassination attempt by Islamic extremists) authored this splendid trilogy chronicling three generations of a Muslim family during the British occupation of Egypt in the early 20th century.

Cairo Modern, Naguib Mahfouz, 1945 — Mahfouz brilliant novel first published in the 1940s appeared in English for the first time in 2008.

The Map of Love, Ahdaf Soueif, 2000 – This story of a British widow’s Egyptian love affair was Soueif’s first novel and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

MARRAKECH

“This place, more than any other, has a special gift for concealing poverty, almost as if to heighten the natural beauty that cradles the country.” ~ Pierre Loti

NONFICTION

A Year in Marrakech, Peter Mayne, 2003 — Mayne spent much of his life in India and Pakistan before moving to Marrakech. Here he describes everyday life in the city.

Hideous Kinky, Esther Freud, 1992 — Freud travelled to Morocco in the Sixties at the age of five with her hippy mother and this evocative book covers her travels.

Cooking at the Kasbah, Kitty Morse, 1998 — The basic techniques of Moroccan cooking and Moroccan eating rituals.

Good Food from Morocco, Paula Wolfert, 1990 — Having lived in Morocco for two years Wolfert brings together traditional Moroccan recipes.

FICTION

The Spider House, Paul Bowles, 2006 — Bowles spent many years traveling before settling in Tangiers in the late 1940’s. The Spider House, set in Fes is probably his best Moroccan book.

INDIA: GENERAL

“India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps…the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.” ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator.

NONFICTION

Gandhi An Autobiography of Gandhi: the Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1927 — Not a literary book, or a fulsome objective biography, but an excellent insight into Gandhi, the man.

Desert Places, Robyn Davidson, 1996 — A fascinating travelogue about following nomadic tribes in India on their annual trek across the desert.

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia, Paul Theroux, 1995 — The famed travel writer’s descriptive, episodic view of Asia as seen by rail will delight train-addicts as well as travelers to India.

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, Edward Luce, 2007 — The ex-Financial Times South Asia Bureau Chief address the radical economic changes since 1991, and its roots in Indian culture, with an eye to the country’s future potential to become the globe’s third largest economy.

FICTION

Burmese Days, George Orwell, 1934 — Drawing from the Animal Farm author’s years in Burma, the novel mines the comic potential arising from the day the whites-only European Club is mandated to open its doors to one, and only one, token native Burmese.

A Passage to India, E.M. Forster, 1924 — Set against the 1920’s Indian independence movement, Forster’s crisp, insightful novel – considered one of the top 100 in the English language—tells the story of Adela Quested, a young Englishwoman who enters the Marabar Caves and is changed by the experience.

The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott, 1965 – 75 — The four novels dramatize the waning years of the British Raj in India, beginning in 1942. Granada Television adapted the first, Jewel in the Crown, was made into a popular, and addictive, mini-series.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Minstry, 1995 — The epic Dickensian novel – and Booker Prize finalist – is set in India in 1975 – 76 during the corrupt and oppressive government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, 1999 — The stunningly beautiful novel about a Kerala family tackles themes of madness, love and death and evokes the super sensuality of India.

Journey to Ithaka, Anita Desai, 1995 — A spellbinding novel by one of a great contemporary writer who deftly unwinds a narrative while illuminating the country where she herself was born.

Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 1901 — The Jungle Book author’s famous novel traces the amazing Indian adventures of an impoverished, orphaned son of a British soldier – Kim aka Kimball O’Hara.

Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981 — The narrator’s birth at the same time India gained its independence from the British in 1947 launches this major work of magic realism, often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

New Delhi

City of Djinns, William Dalrymple, 1993 — A travel memoir by a wonderful Scottish writer who manages to weave the history of New Delhi into his engaging adventures in the city.

Mumbai

The Death of Vishnu, Manil Suri, 2001 — This debut novel follows the spiritual journey of a handyman in Mumbai and presents vivid glimpses of the modern city.

Sri Lanka

Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje, 2000 — A literary mystery about a forensic anthropologist who investigates a human rights crisis in Sri Lanka.

ITALY: GENERAL

NONFICTION

An Italian Education, Tim Park, 1995 — A portrait of Italian family life, at school, at home, in church, and in the countryside by a British-born writer, married to an Italian wife and living outside Verona.

Desiring Italy, edited by Susan Cahill, 1997 — Twenty-eight women writers’ anthology (such as Kate Simon, Elizabeth Spencer, Shirley Hazzard, etc.) about their stories in Italy, and what makes the country so seductive to women. The stories (some are fiction, others memoirs, and others essays) are organized geographically –from northern Italy to Rome and on to the south.

D. H. Lawrence and Italy, D. H. Lawrence, 1932 — Three travel books: Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia, and Etruscan Places.

Italian Journey, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1786-1788 — The famed German writer’s letters and journals from his 37th year, spent in Italy, a period abroad that saw him writing about literature and art and turning town classicism in his own artistic development.

The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain, 1869 — A satiric look at a citizen of the New World encountering the old, this travel journal — originally published as newspaper dispatches — documents Twain’s cruise on the Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land among religious pilgrims.

Italian Hours, Henry James, 1909 — Spanning nearly forty years, these charming, appreciative, insightful collected essays contain the noted author’s views on Italy, with two new essays and an introduction added for this anthology.

Italian Days, Barbara Grizutti Harrison, 1985 — Divided into 8 chapters, covering Milan to Sicily, the essayist’s critical, detailed, richly observed travel book is comprehensive, revealing and lyrical.

The Italians, Luigi Barzini, 1964 — Called an “invaluable and astringent guidebook,” by The New Yorker, this book by the bestselling Italian author, publisher and politician tries to get a handle on the national character and dissect the myths of Italian charm and living la dolce vita.

La Bella Figure: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, Beppe Severgnini, 2006 — The Italian newspaper columnist presents an episodic, often hilarious, look at his fellow countrymen – including a chapter on entire chapter on car sex in Naples!

QUICK FIXES

Both Traveler’s Tales Italy: True Stories, edited by Anne Calgagno and Italy in Mind: An Anthology, by Alice Leccese Powers, 1997, contain choice excerpts.

Special Guidebooks: Architect Robert Kahn’s City Secrets Rome and City Secrets Florence, Venice and the Towns of Italy.

FICTION

A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway, 1929 — The bracing, semi-autobiographical novel is about a young ambulance driver in WWI, Lt. Frederic Henry, who falls in love with a British voluntary aid, with tragic consequences.

A Room with a View. E.M. Forster, 1908 — A repressed Edwardian young pianist, Lucy Honeychurch, unlaces her corset once she travels to Florence chaperoned by her cousin and falls in love with George Emerson, with whom she elopes.

A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin, 1990 — The intense moral fable charts the turbulent life and times of fictional Roman scion Alessandro Giuliani, whose life was irrevocably altered by WWI.

Casa Rossa, Francesca Marciano, 2002 — A tumble-down Puglia family farmhouse is the site for sexual intrigue and betrayal of three generations of Italian women in this lush, believable and complex page-turner.

Daisy Miller, Henry James, 1878 — The vivacious American abroad meets a tragic end – she catches Roman fever—in this early James novella.

The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales, Elizabeth Spencer, 1960 — The Mississippi-born author writes beguiling, enigmatic stories about intense Southern women visiting Italy who manipulate their situation with charm as they struggle to control their own fates – and sexuality – in the repressive 1950’s. The title novella inspired the Tony-Award-winning play.

Portrait of a Lady, Henry James, 1881 — New York heiress Isabel Arches travels to Italy, and succumbs to a plot by a pair of Machiavellian ex-pats.

Capri

Capri and No Longer Capri, Raffaele La Capria, 1991 — A frank look at the tourist isle’s underbelly, including its reputation as a sybaritic retreat.

Greene on Capri: A Memoir, Shirley Hazzard, 2000 — The author met Graham Greene on Capri when he sat down at the next table and their friendship grew and ultimately inspired Hazzard’s book, a portrait of a literary legend and a beautiful backdrop for their encounter.

Florence and Tuscany

“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence…It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.” ~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

NONFICTION

Bella Tuscany, Frances Mayes, 2000 — California poet does the Tuscan fixer-upper narrative with great charm and grace – and tucks in to such repasts as pasta with wild boar sauce—in her follow-up to Under the Tuscan Sun.

Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, Ross King, 2000 — Exceeding London’s St. Paul’s and Rome’s St. Peter’s, Brunelleschi’s dome with its 140 feet span at the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiori is an architectural achievement, and the story of its 15th century creation is equally fascinating.

Oriana Fallaci: The Woman and the Myth, Santo L’Arico, 1998 — A biography of the famed anti-fascist Florentine journalist.

The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513 — The essential political treatise by Florence’s native son—and early international pundit – which he wrote after Lorenzo de’ Medici fired him from government service.

The Stones of Florence, Mary McCarthy, 1954 — American prose stylist McCarthy’s affectionate tribute to one of her favorite cities includes descriptions of art, famous locals from Dante to Donatello and historical background.

Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes, 1996 — A woman’s enchanting account of her love affair with Italy and the home that changes her life.

FICTION

The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant, 2003 — Dunant’s intoxicating historical novel of 15th century Florence captures the sweep of the Medici’s decadent rule, and the individual coming-of-age of a fourteen-year-old girl, Alessandra Cecchi.

Death of an Englishman: A Marshall Guarnaccia Investigation, Magdalen Nabb, 2001 — An elegant, stylish, character-driven police procedural from the series that makes the city of Florence come alive with Nabb’s description; a Tuscan Maigret.

Milan

“The Alps make you feel all starched and clean as you fly into Milan—they punctuate the long transatlantic sleep of a nighttime flight; groaning bodies stir and strengthen and come to morning life as the mountains exert their rosy magnetic pull that won’t allow you not to pay them compliment of being crisply awake.” Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Italian Days, 1985

FICTION

Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco, 1997 — Conspiracy novel set in Milan. As events progress, the book becomes a study in how fiction can influence reality.

The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni, 1984 — Story of star-crossed lovers in 17th-century Lombardy. It remains hugely popular in Italy, where it has been made into several films and even a stage musical. Better known as “I Promessi Sposi” in its original Italian.

Rome, Umbria and Calabria

“O Rome! my country! city of the soul!” ~Lord Byron

NONFICTION

A Valley in Italy: The Many Seasons of a Villa in Umbria, Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, 1994 — Valley provides yet another vivid narrative of an English writer renovating her dream house – in this case the decrepit Umbrian Villa Orsola – and getting her groove, and walnut liqueur, along the way. How do you say money pit in Italian?

The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone, 1961 — Fantastically readable biography of Michelangelo that renders the Medici era into a veritable soap opera.

City of the Soul, William Murray, 2002 — Informal and personal reflection on Rome: the places, the people who live there, the attractions, etc.

The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Boromini and the Rivalry that Transformed Rome, Jake Morrissey, 2005 — Two of the greatest architects of the Renaissance, who together shaped Rome’s most significant buildings, were archrivals. This is the gripping story of their enmity and how it fueled their works.

The Seasons of Rome: A Journal, Paul Hoffman, 1997 — Points of daily life in Rome.

Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria, Mark Rotella, 2003 — The boot’s toe – drought-ridden, cracked by earthquakes, plundered by royals, riddled by the Mafia – is a lively central character in this funny, romantic and affectionate travelogue.

FICTION

The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1860 — Old and new world collide in a symbol-laden romantic tragedy set among ex-pats in Italy, which includes Hawthorne’s notes on classic sites that still stand today.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, 1955 — Tom Ripley, an amoral American social climber, assumes the identity of a rich college friend to live the high life in Italy in this deft psychological mystery.

Sicily

On Persephone’s Island: A Sicilian Journal, Mary Taylor Simeti, 1986 — Radcliffe College grad Simeti hit Sicily in 1962, fell in love and married a local. This book tells the story of her 42nd year, 1983, and the life she struggles to make work in Palermo and remote Eastern Sicily, where she manages her husband’s farm, with the image of the goddess Persephone standing as a symbol of the author’s split between two worlds.

The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, 1957 — On the eve of Italian unification, Sicilian prince Don Fabrizio confronts change and constancy in his native land, a lonely, sensual observer.

See also Library for Venice

See also Italy General Library

“I saw it as I imagine most people do: as a museum full of tourists, a dead city. But as Venetians well know, it is much more than that. In Venice the past has remained alive in a vivid, disorienting way. It is with you all the time. It blends with the present.” — Andrea di Robilant

NONFICTION

The City of Falling Angels, John Berendt, 2005 — The author does for Venice what he did in his bestselling nonfiction examination of Savannah, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Paradise of Cities: Venice in the 19th Century, John Julius Norwich, 2003 — The author of the acclaimed A History of Venice turns his attention to a particularly fascinating period in the city’s history, drawing heavily on the writings of the writers and artists who visited then such as Browning, Byron and Ruskin.

The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin, 1853 — The eminent English Victorian discusses the art and architecture of the city to highlight principles addressed in his earlier work.

Venetian Life, William Dean Howells, 1866 —The American author, critic, and American consul to Venice (a reward for his favorable biography of Abraham Lincoln?) wrote a 2-volume examination of the city.

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.” —Truman Capote

FICTION

A Venetian Affair, Andrea di Robilati, 2003 — Compared to Les Liasons Dangereuse when it came out, this beautifully evoked love story is written by the descendant of one of the 18th-century Venetian lovers. Di Robilati researched the affair after discovering love letters and brings to life a golden era in the city through a very intimate story.

Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, 1912 —Mann’s tragic novella about a middle-aged author’s trip to Lido and his subsequent fatal obsession with a young boy during a cholera epidemic.

Doctored Evidence, Donna Leon, 2004 — This and the addictive series of urbane Comissario Guido Brunetti mysteries are unusual in that even when the criminal is uncovered, justice often gets tangled in the local corruption and red tape.

The Floating Book: A Novel of Venice, Michelle Lovric, 2004 — Seductive and erudite story which takes place at the time of the Venetian Renaissance.

The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, 1594-97 — In this “problem play,” sometimes known as a comedy, a merchant becomes indebted to the Jewish moneylender Shylock at the cost of a pound of flesh for nonpayment, coining famous expressions in the English language – and giving rise to charges of anti-Semitism.

FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke, 2002 — The New York Times Book Review compared this to a Harry Potter set in Venice. Two orphans, Prosper and Bo, learn the secrets of the city of canals and the ways of a magical “thief lord.”