Sicily
John Hersey
American soldiers enter wartime Italy, where the experience of occupation and responsibility brings military power into contact with local lives.
Literary fiction Paris
Françoise Sagan
A young student's affair with an older married man brings pleasure and disillusion into tension, exploring the uncertain boundaries of romantic freedom.
Nonfiction Mexico City · Veracruz
Carlos Fuentes
A Holy Week journey from Mexico City toward Veracruz exposes four travellers' relationships and the histories carried beneath their conversations.
Literary fiction Russia · Siberia
Stuart M. Kaminsky
A Siberian investigation tests Rostnikov’s judgment against political expectations.
Crime fiction Spain
Henry A. Kamen
A concise historical survey introduces the major transformations of Spain.
History Russia
Richard Pipes
Pipes examines the events and decisions behind Russia’s revolutionary transformation.
History Marseille
M.F.K. Fisher
Fisher explores Marseille's history, legends and everyday mysteries, revealing the layers of an energetic city that resists easy explanation.
History Vietnam · Japan · Cambodia · Portugal · Mexico
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain sets off in search of the perfect meal, a quest that takes him from the streets and kitchens of Vietnam to Japan, Cambodia, Portugal, Mexico and beyond.
Travel writing Mexico
John D. MacDonald
An old friend's murder sends Travis McGee to Mexico, following a gold Aztec idol through a pursuit tangled with betrayal and violence.
Crime & mystery Spain · Zamora
Ramón Sender Barayón
A son investigates his mother’s murder during the Spanish Civil War.
Memoir Japan
Mary Fraser and Hugh Cortazzi
Mary Crawford Fraser’s memoir powerfully evokes a vivid sense of place by immersing readers in the shifting landscape of Meiji-era Japan.
Nonfiction British India
Paul Scott
The Raj Quartet’s concluding volume follows lives entangled in the final wartime years, as personal consequences emerge from colonial divisions and conflict.
Crime & mystery Colombia
Robert Daley
Robert Daley enters the dangerous world surrounding Colombia’s drug trade, where investigation crosses boundaries between policing, private loyalties and criminal power.
Crime fiction World War I
Ernest Hemingway
An American serving in wartime Italy falls in love with an English nurse, finding intimacy increasingly vulnerable to the demands of war.
Literary fiction Paris
Noel Barber
An American journalist witnesses love and resistance in occupied France, where private relationships develop against the dangers and divisions of war.
Literary fiction Russia · Moscow
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Rostnikov investigates deaths surrounding a Moscow circus aerialist.
Crime fiction Venice
Timothy Holme
A gondoliers' betting syndicate draws Venetian police into investigation, bringing a procedural mystery into the working life of the city's waterways.
Crime & mystery Russia
Amor Towles
Confined to Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, Count Rostov discovers a wider life through the people who pass through it.
Historical fiction Paris
Patty Lurie
Day trips follow the landscapes that inspired Monet, Cézanne and fellow Impressionists, connecting paintings with the places beyond Paris.
Biography Tuscany
James Bentley
Bentley guides readers through Tuscany with a personal eye, connecting the region's pleasures to the history behind its familiar landscapes.
History Across France
André Maurois
Maurois surveys France's changing institutions and historical turning points, offering an accessible route into the events that shaped the country.
History Spain · Portugal
Joseph F. O’Callaghan
Medieval Iberia unfolds through its kingdoms, institutions and religious communities.
History Mexico
Ignacio Bernal
Mexico's vanished civilizations emerge through the changing work of travellers, conquerors and archaeologists who sought to understand their surviving traces.
History Russia
Joel Carmichael
A historical survey traces the development of Russian society and state power.
History Russia
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky
A broad history connects Russia’s political transformations with institutions and cultural life.
History South Africa
Leonard Thompson
A concise political history traces the forces behind South Africa's crisis, connecting present divisions to the struggles of its past.
History Venice
John J. Norwich
Venice's thousand-year history unfolds through naval conflict and political intrigue, with the city's beauty inseparable from its ambitions and reversals.
History Bordeaux
François Mauriac
Five novels explore Bordeaux and its surroundings, offering Mauriac's searching attention to desire, belief and the pressures of provincial society.
Nonfiction Paris
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway remembers youthful Paris through cafés, friendship and precarious meals, making daily rituals part of a city's enduring imaginative hold.
Memoir Across India
Stanley Wolpert
A wide-ranging historical survey follows India from its earliest societies into the modern era, tracing change across a long span of time.
History 
