The best books about the Black Sea

The Secret Garden meets Jane Eyre in a gothic tale of romantic suspense set in 1890s Yorkshire.

A young woman solicitor accepts a suspiciously lucrative offer of employment to prepare the sale of a crumbling estate, but when she arrives, the mysterious occupants of the house try to drive her away. As she is drawn deeper into the dark secrets of the family, she can’t be certain she’ll escape Morton Abbey with her sanity—or even her life—intact.

Inspired by a true story, this is the tale of one woman's uncharted voyage to freedom. April 1579. When two ships meet off the Pacific coast of New Spain, an enslaved woman seizes the chance to escape. But Maria has unwittingly joined Francis Drake's circumnavigation voyage as he sets sail on a secret detour into the far north. Sailing into the unknown on the Golden Hind, a lone woman among eighty men, Maria will be tested to the very limits of her endurance. It will take all her wits to survive - and courage to cut the ties that bind her to Drake to pursue her own journey. How far will Maria go to be truly free?

The Vandals explores the sudden rise and dramatic fall of a fascinating kingdom which ruled Carthage during the twilight years of the Western Roman Empire. This complete history provides a full account of the Vandals and re-evaluates the social and political structures of the fifth- and sixth-century world. It analyses a complex Vandal ‘foreign policy’, which combined diplomatic alliances and marriages with brutal raiding, an extraordinary cultural renaissance of Latin poetry, and the religious struggles that threatened to tear the state apart. The Vandals conquered North Africa, sacked Rome and inherited some of the richest provinces of the ancient world before being destroyed utterly; this is their story.

The Rhine is one of the world's greatest rivers. Once forming the outer frontier of the Roman Empire, it flows 800 miles from the fun-loving Netherlands, through the industrial and political powerhouses of Germany and France, to the wealthy mountain fortresses of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. For years, Ben Coates lived alongside a major channel of the river in Rotterdam, crossing it daily, swimming and sailing in its tributaries. In The Rhine, he sets out to follow the river all the way across Europe; exploring the impact the river has had on European culture and history, and on the people who live alongside it. From rowing Dutch canals to riding a cow through the Alps, via Cold War nuclear bunkers, raucous Gay Pride parades, tranquil Lake Constance, and snowy mountain climbs, The Rhine blends travelogue and offbeat history to tell the fascinating story of how one river helped our world.

I love the icy beauty of cold climates, which I've written about in several of my cookbooks. For Beyond the North Wind, I traveled to remote regions of the Russian North to explore the true heart of Russian food and show how foods from a harsh climate can be surprisingly sophisticated. The book celebrates whole grains, preserved and fermented foods, and straightforward but robust flavors, with recipes for a dazzling array of pickles and preserves; infused vodkas; homemade dairy products and baked cultured milk; a pantheon of pies; large, lacy blini; and seasonal vegetable soups.

Beyond the North Wind is a home-style cookbook with a strong sense of place that offers a rarely seen portrait of Russia, its people, and its palate.

A detailed and engrossing account of the final year of fighting in Ukraine during World War II, making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers involved in the fighting, as well as partisans behind the German lines, to bring the story to life.

By the end of 1944 the Red Army was poised on the very frontiers of the Third Reich. How had the once-unstoppable, mighty Wehrmacht faltered so disastrously? Certainly it had suffered defeats before, in particular the vast catastrophe of Stalingrad, but it was in 1944 that the war was ultimately lost. It was no longer a case of if but rather when the Red Army would be at the gates of Berlin.

For most people, Istanbul is synonymous with its world-famous sights, the Haghia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and Dolmabahçe Palace. Few tourists manage to go beyond the beauty of the historical district of Sultanahmet to visit the other face of Istanbul. Yet a short ferry ride from the Bosphorus to the Sea of Marmara brings you to the shores of Asia, to the everyday extraordinary. The stories in the 2nd edition of Inside Out In Istanbul take the reader beyond the tourist facades into a suburban world filled with spice sellers, male belly dancers, and Turkish underwear stores, right into homes traditionally supplied with lemon cologne and slippers. Venture deep into the sometimes chaotic, often schizophrenic but always charming city of Istanbul.

The Mediterranean world of 1050–1200 is usually seen as an age of intractable conflict between Christians, Muslims, and Jews – of holy war, Crusades, and religious violence. Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors takes from Christian and Muslim Spain, through North Africa and Italy and on to Egypt, the Holy Land, and Byzantium, surveying the politics and society of this period from the ground up and showing that despite warfare and rhetoric of religious violence members of the three religious communities were deeply embroiled in each other’s affairs.

We find Jews and Christians wielding power in Muslim kingdoms and Muslims and Jews in positions of power in Crusader Europe, and Crusaders and Muslims launching alliances to battle their own co-religionists. Religion may have been the language of conflict but it was pragmatism and personal ambition that drove politics.

White Feathers – a tale of passion, betrayal, war – and resistance.

Young Irish immigrant Eva Downey jumps at the chance to escape her stultifying life in London and attend finishing school in southeast England after a legacy from an old suffragette. There she finds kinship and, eventually falls in love. But when World War I breaks out and the man she loves refuses to enlist, Eva’s family starts pushing her to present him with a white feather of cowardice – an act which will have devastating consequences.

While researching a book on ancient Roman tourists, Pagan Holiday, I discovered that the classical Olympic Games were history's longest-running festival, held without fail, every four years for nearly twelve centuries. It's an astonishing record given that the modern Olympics have been canceled three times due to wars since they were restarted in Athens in 1896, and the 2021 Tokyo Games were delayed a year due to the Covid pandemic. I also realized that the ancient Greek Olympics were chaotic and sprawling events -- the Woodstock of Antiquity -- where 40,000 sports fans crowded in wretched conditions, punished by searing summer heat, plagues of flies, endless dust, and dehydration. But they were also unforgettable spectacles, combining sports with religious rituals, cultural tourism, political grandstanding, and a level of debauchery that impressed Emperor Nero when he competed in the chariot race.

In The Naked Olympics, I set out to recreate what it might really have been like to visit the festival as a competitor, a sports fan, or an official, using firsthand reports and obscure sources, including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the ancient Greeks. My aim was to peel away the layers of myth that cloud our vision of the classical world to understand the experience itself, including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros (all athletes went naked in the Greek world), and history's first corruption scandals involving competitors.