The bookshelf

Books worth travelling with.

Find a title, an author, a place, or a time you would like to visit.

Florence
Literary Atlas

Guides for this destination

12 books

Aaron's Rod cover

Aaron's Rod

D.H. Lawrence

Florence becomes the setting for Lawrence's exploration of unstable convictions, as impulse and fractured moral assumptions unsettle the direction of a life.

Literary fiction
Literary Cities of Italy cover

Literary Cities of Italy

William B. Whitman

Walks and waterways guide readers through literary Rome, Florence and Venice, connecting the cities' streets with the writers who knew them.

Nonfiction
Stones of Florence cover

Stones of Florence

Mary McCarthy

McCarthy explores Florence through its art, architecture and people, setting the Renaissance city's celebrated stones within a lively historical portrait.

History
The Dante Game cover

The Dante Game

Jane Langton

Dante lessons at a Florentine school acquire a darker accompaniment when murders draw a teacher and his students into investigation.

Crime & mystery
The Grey Beginning cover

The Grey Beginning

Barbara Michaels

A widow visits her husband's ancestral home outside Florence, where unfamiliar family territory becomes the setting for a disturbing mystery.

Crime & mystery
The free Starter Passport

Your first journey. Your own pace.

Choose a free reading guide and receive literary Postcards in your inbox.

Get your Starter Passport ↗