The most recommended books on the Pyrenees mountains

This is a story of ghosts and romance but it exceeds any horror or paranormal storyline because of its beautiful prose and the supernaturalism.

Freddie is introspective and endearing. His relationship with Fabrissa becomes unforgettable as they discover each other. They are in the French Pyrenees in 1928 (World War I). There are hidden caves that reflect the hidden secrets in the story and within the characters. That kind of symbolism and theme are always intriguing for me.

Kate Mosse is skilled in her evocative prose. Ex: "He walked like a man recently returned to the world. Every step was careful and deliberate. Every step to be relished . . . For every step was a little too careful, too deliberate, as if he were unwilling to take even the ground beneath his feet entirely for granted."

That image, that feeling, was profound for me. Even though it is a… show more.

I love books about women who don’t hear the word ‘No.” And A Spy Above the Clouds is just such a book.

Constance Vivier-Clarke, “Viv” is a young American, a once hopeful Olympic downhill skiers whose pampered life is on the skids. World War 2 had broken out and she’s been shoved to the sidelines, told to go home and get married. 

But Viv has other ideas and talks her way into driving an ambulance for the American Hospital in Paris, and eventually, because of her skiing abilities, becomes a member of “Churchill’s Angels” working with the resistance to carry secret messages across the French Alps. 

This is a book that inspires. A book that challenges. And at the end of the day a book that readers will not soon forget.  

One of the most inventive novels I’ve read in recent years, this beautiful Pyrenean patchwork is supposed to evoke the orchestra of voices of the mountain region in which the book takes place.

Thus, you have the points of view of local farmers and their families, but also of the mountains themselves, of storm clouds and baskets of mushrooms and plenty of animals, wild and domesticated. The Deer takes us on a delightful tangent, but the most memorable chapter might be the one from the point of view of the spirited, breathlessly energetic dog.

A gripping personal account of an airman’s adventurous escape through France and over the Pyrenees. After Herbert Spiller’s Halifax bomber crash-landed to the east of Paris in October 1942, he had the good luck to be helped by the priest and abbot of St-Dizier. They saw him safely on to a train to Paris, where he was taken under the wing of the Comet escape line and then passed south down the line and eventually over the Pyrenees … sometimes at a high cost. Several of the French people who assisted him later died either by execution or in the concentration camps. “You can imagine ... the sense of debt that hangs over me when I ponder on the fact that nine people died through helping me to live and return to duty,” Spiller writes, dedicating his book to all those who risked their lives to help him.

I love stories in which the characters are thrust into unusual and unexpected circumstances. This was the case for Samantha Arias, who had to carry a heavier load than most middle-aged moms. Early widowhood, a chronic sleep disorder, a serious lack of self-esteem, and a close friend gravely ill with cancer were just a few of her challenges that made me empathize with her plight.

When Samantha and a third estranged friend embarked on a mission to rescue their sick friend’s dog, they took us on a long road trip that was both comical and action-packed. I laughed and cried as Samantha slowly opened herself up to embracing both new love and old friendship.  

In this short beautiful novel, Conxa looks back on a life blasted apart by the Spanish Civil War. The Pyrenean setting of the story is as magnificent and brutal as the action here, but what I love most is the calm, timeless voice of Conxa as she tells her story of love and war and family. This is a brilliant book about what it means to live a long life and the lingering effects of the past.

I adored the film version of this book when I was about ten, and I still remember the saintly Bernadette limping around the monastery, refusing treatment for her deathly disease. The novel’s author was a Czech Jew who left 1930s Vienna and found refuge in the town of Lourdes, where Bernadette Soubirous saw the Virgin in 1858.

As thanks, he wrote this tearjerker about Bernadette and the beautiful lady who appeared to her eighteen times in a grotto outside town. Word got around, and both religious and civic officials challenged Bernadette’s story, mostly because she was uneducated and came from a wretched family. They threatened her with hell and an insane asylum. Yet hundreds of people seemed to be miraculously healed by the waters of the grotto, and most of the skeptics were persuaded. Werfel romanticizes Bernadette’s life, but the story follows the visionary into a convent where she eventually… show more.

This is the middle book of a series of novels by French archaeologist and historian Fred Vargas. Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is a Parisien Chief of Police, although he comes from the Pyrenees. It is a crime novel, but so much more than that.

I would recommend reading this book first and then going back to the first in the series. I found Adamsberg instantly engaging, as is the whole weirdly original story. It might not be for everyone.

The crimes are bizarre (but never disturbingly explicit), and Vargas, who is female, creates a cast of eccentric and loveable characters who are never clichéd. This is a novel that feels foreign and yet wonderfully familiar. I literally couldn’t put it down. 

During WW2 members of the Resistance guided Allied service personnel -- and others, including compromised agents, resisters, and Jews -- escaping from occupied France along what were known as escape or evasion lines, the majority leading over the Pyrenees to safety. In this book, BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton walks one of those ‘cruel crossings’, the Chemin de la Liberté, while at the same time telling the stories of those escaping and the courageous men and women who helped them, drawing on interviews with some of the last remaining survivors. It makes for compelling reading.

Mystery, quest, treasure, and historical adventure, this novel has it all.

Labyrinth links a twelfth-century French heroine in a land of legends, castles, and knights with a present-day heroine who finds two ancient skeletons at an archaeological dig and is drawn into a quest for the Holy Grail.

I love mystical, historical quests, and mysterious symbols, especially when the setting is so real you feel you are there. This one kept me reading far into the wee hours and I enjoyed learning more about medieval France.