Here are 100 books that Desiree fans have personally recommended if you like
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In 2019, I spent a year traveling around the world with my husband and two small kids. These days, we still travel whenever we get the chance, soaking up as many cultures, landscapes, and experiences as possible. Wherever we go, we read books set in our destination, usually by local authors, which deepens our connection to the places we visit. But you don’t need a plane ticket for a good book to transport you overseas. Here are a few of my favorite reads guaranteed to immerse you in faraway lands, even as you sit on your favorite couch at home.
Just as I turned to Trevor Noah’s memoir for answers about apartheid while in South Africa, I devoured this book while in China to more deeply understand how the country was shaped by Communism.
The author’s personal history is frightening and raw—at times hard to read—but it is important to understand a few layers deeper than what the news can offer or, in my case, what tourists get served on visits to China. It’s a wrenching story that has stayed with me for years.
Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular bestseller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.
Through the story of three generations of women in her own family - the grandmother given to the warlord as a concubine, the Communist mother and the daughter herself - Jung Chang reveals the epic history of China's twentieth century.
Breathtaking in its scope, unforgettable in its descriptions, this is a masterpiece which is extraordinary in every way.
Even though I was born and grew up in the Kenyan Highlands (which taught me the value of storytelling in Technicolor!) and studied in Paris (where I won a short-story competition) before moving to London, the Germano-Russian ambivalence runs straight through my family: my father grew up in the GDR. He still remembers the people’s terror when the US tanks withdrew one morning, and the Soviets rolled in after renewed territorial negotiations. On the other hand, my cousin owns a high-brow publishing house that publishes nothing but latter-day Russian intellectuals. My fascination for the early Romanov women and their unique century of female reign started when I was thirteen – I'm theirs ever since!
Who would have thought that one of the most important rulers of Egypt’s powerful eighteenth dynasty was a woman, who was never intended to rule, yet eclipsed them all – had not her (male) successor diligently erased all literary & visual traces of her reign. I love the first-person narrative, adopting the same today for my own novels. Also, Gedge’s fine plotting teaches us that the ups and downs of life are not enough to keep a reader enthralled. It takes a red line with a good hook to pull the reader in. This brilliant novel about Pharaoh Hatshepsut spawned my life-long passion for ancient Egypt. I cried when I first visited her temple in Deir-El-Bahari, which still inspires modern Architects.
Thirty-five centuries ago the sun had a daughter: Hatshepsut. Youngest daughter of the Pharaoh, she was a lithe and magical child. But when her older sister died, it became her duty to purify the dynasty’s bloodline. She was to wed Thothmes, her father’s illegitimate son, who was heir to the throne. But fearing his son’s incompetence, Hatshepsut’s father came to her with startling news. She was to be Pharaoh, ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known--provided, of course, that the unprecedented ascension by a woman did not inspire the priests to treason or instill in her half-brother…
I have been writing for years and reading forever. Fantasy books have always been my number one go-to as far as genres. I loved how they would teleport me to a new world, allowing me to leave behind reality. The characters became my friends. The worlds became my home. I couldn’t get enough and still can’t. As I got older, my imagination never stopped. I was constantly creating dreamworld and character plots in my head. Eventually, I started writing, needing the characters to stop talking. The only way to do that was to get them on paper. Since then, I haven’t been able to stop.
This story made me fall in love and then hate my lover all in the same breath. The mixture of history and fiction led me on a roller coaster of emotions.
I loved how Anne was so strong and knew how to get what she wanted and work her way through a world built by men for men, yet, in the end, her inability to birth a male heir was her downfall. The king framed her in order to remove her from the throne and move on to the next youngest thing. I was enraged!
This book makes me so angry, but I couldn’t stop reading Gregory’s work after this one. It totally hooked me and forced me to buy all her books written about this specific timeframe.
The acclaimed international bestseller of the Tudor court, during the years of Henry VIII's pursuit of Anne Boleyn - and the revolutionary sequence of events that followed.
1521. Young Mary Boleyn arrives at court, maid in waiting and favourite to Queen Katherine of Aragon.
Yet Mary catches the eye of the capricious king and - propelled by the ambitions of the powerful Boleyn family - she betrays her queen, and takes her place as Henry VIII's new mistress.
But while Mary is in childbed, a rival comes to court - her sister Anne, a…
I’ve been a reader and writer of historical fiction for as long as I remember. As a writer, my goal is to bring these figures from the past alive again. These were real people and I want my readers to see that they are not just photos or stories in a history book.
I loved Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir because it focuses solely on a much-forgotten woman of Tudor History. Weir gets across that Jane Gray was simply used as a political pawn. She was such a young girl, at only 17, and her parents gave no thought as to her happiness. She was scared and felt utterly alone and was handed the crown. If only for nine days, this young girl was Queen of England before her execution. She truly was an innocent traitor.
_____________________________________ A wrenching novel about the life and death of Lady Jane Grey, one of the most complex and sympathetic figures in Tudor England, by popular historian Alison Weir: ideal for fans of Wolf Hall
Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour.
Jane's astonishing and essentially tragic story was played out during one of the most momentous periods of…
I’m a writer and a teacher of writing who fell in love with France after my first visit fifty years ago. I was lucky enough once to spend a year in a small village about thirty miles west of Avignon in the south where I was able to observe, and eventually participate in, the daily life of this village. I wrote my book, French Dirt, about that experience. I have read intently about the South of France ever since with an eye for those books that truly capture the spirit and character of these people who are the heart of this storied part of France.
M.F.K. Fisher was not only one of our greatest food writers, she was one of our greatest writers, period. Fisher lived for long periods in France, and the result of two of these sojourns is Two Towns in Provence, which is about Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. These two iconic towns are a mere forty miles apart in distance but worlds apart in temperament, character, and spirit. Fisher captures both of their personalities with her exquisite prose, guided by her sympathy and love for these cities and their people. She is especially wonderful at capturing Marseille, a city that has been called mysterious, even unknowable. You cannot have a better guide to two of France’s most renowned and remarkable cities.
This volume brings together two delightful books—Map of Another Town and A Considerable Town—by one of our most beloved food and travel writers. In her inimitable style, here M.F.K. Fisher tells the stories—and reveals the secrets—of two quintessential French cities.
Map of Another Town, Fisher’s memoir of the French provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence is, as the author tells us, “my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself,” and a vibrant and perceptive profile of the kinship between a person and a place. Then, in A Considerable Town, she scans the centuries to reveal the ancient sources that…
Until I did my own animal-accompanied journey with Mollie and Peggy in 1984, my only association with animals on the trail was inadvertently with a collection of cockroaches in my backpack. It was when Bradt decided to add to their anthologies with a collection of stories about travelling with animals in 2018, Beastly Journeys, that I was able to read a wide variety of books on the topic. A delightful exercise!
I discovered this fascinating and extraordinary story when I was researching tales about travelling with animals for Beastly Journeys. Unlike the other four books in my list, this one has the animal as the central character. And what an animal! Zarafa was captured as a calf in what is now Ethiopia in a plan to cement relationships between the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt and Charles V of France. The year was 1826 and a giraffe had never before been seen in France. Zarafa did the first part of her journey strapped to the back on a camel, and then – surely more comfortably – down the Nile and across the Mediterranean on a brigantine.
A hole was cut in the deck which allowed Zarafa to travel with her body in the hold, while her head and neck enjoyed the human company on deck. From Marseille she was walked, with…
In October 1826, a ship arrived at Marseille carrying the first giraffe ever seen in France. A royal offering from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, to King Charles X, she had already traveled 2,000 miles down the Nile to Alexandria, from where she had sailed across the Mediterranean standing in the hold, her long neck and head protruding through a hole cut in the deck. In the spring of 1827, after wintering in Marseille, she was carefully walked 550 miles to Paris to the delight of thousands of onlookers.
The viceroy's tribute was politically motivated: He commanded the Turkish…
I’m a writer and a teacher of writing who fell in love with France after my first visit fifty years ago. I was lucky enough once to spend a year in a small village about thirty miles west of Avignon in the south where I was able to observe, and eventually participate in, the daily life of this village. I wrote my book, French Dirt, about that experience. I have read intently about the South of France ever since with an eye for those books that truly capture the spirit and character of these people who are the heart of this storied part of France.
No one wrote about the South of France with more affection and understanding than Marcel Pagnol. He was a novelist, playwright, director, and memoirist. Pagnol’s family had a small house in the hills near Marseille where they spent summers. His book,My Father’s Glory, is about those months Pagnol spent there as a child and about his family, mostly his father. (The companion book, My Mother’s Castle, concerns his mother more.) The story of his aunt’s sweet, delicate courtship with his eventual uncle is worth reading the book alone. If you’re like me, you will come away from reading this book wishing you’d been part of Pagnol’s kind and joyous family and his life in this little corner of France. The good news is that with this book, you very nearly are.
Bathed in the warm clarity of the summer sun in Provence, Marcel Pagnol's childhood memories celebrate a time of rare beauty and delight.Called by Jean Renoir "the leading film artist of his age," Pagnol is best known for such films as The Baker's Wife, Harvest, Fanny, and Topaze, as well as the screen adaptations of his novels Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs (North Point, 1988). But he never forgot the magic of his Provencal childhood, and when he set his memories to paper late in life the result was a great new success. My Father's Glory and…
One has to learn about France's Military history to understand the Legion. I served in her ranks, and my efforts are to help educate those interested in facts. That is why I wrote the book Appel: A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion and continue to laisse with the Legion to try and help increase recruitment.
This was ‘the book’ that ultimately led to my joining the Legion to attain the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2e régiment étranger de parachutistes).
I had the distinct honour to interview Mr. Simon Murray, and discuss his meaningful book. Mr. Murray's compelling first-hand account of his time with the REP during the Franco-Algerian war (1960s) is the example of what a Legionnaire represents. Mr. Simon Murray, CBE is a British Hong Kong-based businessman, adventurer, and author.
'One of the greatest adventure stories in years.' - Chris Patten
'The drama, excitement and colour of a good guts-and-glory thriller.' - Dr. Henry Kissinger
The French Foreign Legion - mysterious, romantic, deadly - is filled with men of dubious character, and hardly the place for a proper Englishman just nineteen years of age. Yet in 1960, Simon Murray traveled alone to Paris, Marseilles, and on to Algeria to fulfill the toughest contract of his life: a five-year stint in the Legion. Along the way, he kept a diary.
Legionnaire is a compelling, firsthand account of Murray's experience with this…
When I joined the Peace Corps in the early nineties, I wasn’t allowed to take much luggage. I decided to bring a Tarot deck, figuring I’d finally have time to learn it while parked in an Estonian forest. That Tarot deck opened up a world of Renaissance mysticism and magic, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Tarot cards and readings feature prominently in many of my cozy mystery novels, not the least of which are the Tea and Tarot mysteries. Now my imaginary Tarot reader from that series, Hyperion Night, has recently written his own Tarot guidebook,The Mysteries of Tarot.
Today’s Tarot decks tend to be clones of one of the three main “models”: The Rider-Waite-Smith, the Marseille, and the Thoth Deck.
Most books on reading Tarot reference the former, the Rider-Waite-Smith. But if you’re going to get serious about reading, it’s useful to have an understanding of the Marseille deck.
When I first picked up a Marseille deck, however, I put it down pretty quickly. No symbols on the Minor Arcana? How was I supposed to read the cards without rote memorization (which I hate)?
But the Marseille style is based on the original Tarot decks from Renaissance Italy, and they’re more typically used in Europe. This deck is important. So when I found this book, despite my misgivings about ever understanding the deck, I decided to give it a read.
What a revelation. There actually aresymbols on the Minor Arcana—they’re just subtle. Using numerology and an explanation…
Discover the Marseille Tarot! This book explores the fascinating history of this often misunderstood deck and provides practical insights into using it for readings on a variety of questions. Yoav Ben-Dov shares the meaning of the classic Marseille symbols and specific reading techniques that help you tap into your own intuition. The Marseille Tarot Revealed explains everything you need to know to start or deepen your Marseille Tarot practice, including history, decks, reading, spreads, symbols and much more.
I have been a tarot devotee since my early teens and have offered both training and divinatory sessions using the tarot. My book on the fifteenth-century tarot deck known as the Sola-Busca, The Game of Saturn, was nominated The Best Esoteric Book of the Year and was reviewed in two of the world’s leading academic journals. My non-fiction is published by Inner Traditions and Scarlet Imprint; literary prose and poetry by Corbel Stone Press and Paralibrum. My essays on energy healing appear in the peer-reviewed Paranthropology Journal and the Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology as well as on my academia.edu page.
The famed filmmaker and esotericist, Alejandro Jodorowsky, has poured decades of profound spiritual and divinatory understanding into this text to create one of the most significant systems for using the cards as a divinatory tool. Based on the Tarot d’Marseilles - arguably the stylistic form that constitutes the tarot’s most fundamental iconography - the text includes a comprehensive training system that can be used to provide a foundation for professional divinatory work.
Alejandro Jodorowsky's profound study of the Tarot, which began in the early 1950s, reveals it to be far more than a simple divination device. The Tarot is first and foremost a powerful instrument of self-knowledge and a representation of the structure of the soul. The Way of Tarotshows that the entire deck is structured like a temple, or a mandala, which is both an image of the world and a representation of the divine. The authors use the sacred art of the original Marseille Tarot--created during a time of religious tolerance in the 11th century--to reconnect with the roots of…
