The best books about Romania

The natural world is filled with clues. The roots of a tree indicate direction; the Big Dipper tells the time; a passing butterfly hints at the weather; a sand dune reveals prevailing wind; the scent of cinnamon suggests altitude; a budding flower points south. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for navigation, forecasting, tracking, and more, gathered from decades spent walking the landscape around his home and around the world.

Whether you’re walking in the country or city, along a coastline, or by night, this is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal—if you only know how to look!

Have you ever thought of giving up work to head off into the sunset with surfboards on your roof? My husband Mark and I did just that, with four dogs in tow. Three years into our travels, we struck south for Spain and Portugal, but decided to turn left...

According to The Spectator, Romania is “Europe’s most overlooked holiday destination.” According to everyone else, it was somewhere we would be robbed, scammed, kidnapped, or eaten–if we managed to avoid the floods and riots. Join us as we tow our caravan through the largest, untouched wilderness in Europe, crossing the Carpathian Mountains via one of the world’s most ‘Dangerous Roads’, guided by a satnav haunted by a revenge complex more pathological than Vlad the Impaler's. This is the third book in my Adventure Caravanning with Dogs series although, like the others, it is a self-contained story. Dogs ‘n’ Dracula was a finalist in the Romania Insider Awards and is described as ‘Armchair Travel Delight’.

Have you ever thought of giving up work to head off into the sunset with surfboards on your roof? My husband Mark and I did just that, with four dogs in tow. Three years into our travels, we struck south for Spain and Portugal, but decided to turn left...

According to The Spectator, Romania is “Europe’s most overlooked holiday destination.” According to everyone else, it was somewhere we would be robbed, scammed, kidnapped, or eaten–if we managed to avoid the floods and riots. Join us as we tow our caravan through the largest, untouched wilderness in Europe, crossing the Carpathian Mountains via one of the world’s most ‘Dangerous Roads’, guided by a satnav haunted by a revenge complex more pathological than Vlad the Impaler's. This is the third book in my Adventure Caravanning with Dogs series although, like the others, it is a self-contained story. Dogs ‘n’ Dracula was a finalist in the Romania Insider Awards and is described as ‘Armchair Travel Delight’.

Have you ever thought of giving up work to head off into the sunset with surfboards on your roof? My husband Mark and I did just that, with four dogs in tow. Three years into our travels, we struck south for Spain and Portugal, but decided to turn left...

According to The Spectator, Romania is “Europe’s most overlooked holiday destination.” According to everyone else, it was somewhere we would be robbed, scammed, kidnapped, or eaten–if we managed to avoid the floods and riots. Join us as we tow our caravan through the largest, untouched wilderness in Europe, crossing the Carpathian Mountains via one of the world’s most ‘Dangerous Roads’, guided by a satnav haunted by a revenge complex more pathological than Vlad the Impaler's. This is the third book in my Adventure Caravanning with Dogs series although, like the others, it is a self-contained story. Dogs ‘n’ Dracula was a finalist in the Romania Insider Awards and is described as ‘Armchair Travel Delight’.

A love letter to the New Orleans gothic underground of the late 1990s, Bloody October takes an old-school pulp mystery and injects vampirism, dark family secrets, and the lingering trauma of war.

Jason Castaing is a journalist when he’s not smoking and drinking all night in New Orleans gothic bars. His best friend, John Devereaux, is the world’s only real vampire—or is he? A supply of blood bags keeps him fed and off the streets, but then there’s a dead girl here, a dead girl there, and all of them lead back to John. Jason doesn’t think his friend has started feeding on the living, but he’s not sure. A vampire-wannabe rotting in a Florida prison may have the answers.

European communal dance developed around farming beliefs about fertility and health, when farming spread to Europe 8,000 years ago. Food crops depended on soil and rain: the ancestors, buried below, could push up the sprouts, but who managed rain? Perhaps the spirits of girls who died before bearing children (many by drowning) and hadn’t used their natural allotment of fertility. Dance rituals appeased spirit-maidens when angry, and told them when it was time to leave their watery homes and shed fertility by dancing across the fields. My book traces traditional seasonal rituals, folklore of the dancing spirit-maidens, wedding customs around those most potent maidens, Brides, plus the matching archaeological evidence, concluding with insights from cognitive science on “Why do we humans just love to dance?”

I am a co-author of the book, Under the Naga Tail. It is an inspirational, true story of my father’s riveting near-death escape from Cambodia’s genocidal regime and survival of the secret second-killing fields that takes place afterward in a place called Preah Vihear. As much as the account is about a terrible moment in history and the horrors of war, it’s also about finding resilience in times of fear, strength in places of despair, and that hope can overcome all obstacles.

In 1996, during the US Satanic Panic, 16-year-old Audre is having trouble fitting into her new town, where everyone seems to believe there's a Satanic cult in the woods. But when the pastor's daughter—Audre's crush—goes missing, she starts to wonder if the town's obsession with evil isn't covering up something far worse.

This account of women’s fight for the vote was meant to be a pamphlet... until I discovered just how much was involved, and how much the Shetland women’s suffrage society was part of the worldwide fight. Women wanted the vote to force male MPs to legislate against abusive husbands, uncaring magistrates and negligent employers. They wanted to keep their own earnings and property; they wanted to be guardians of their children. They wanted education at school level and further... and when war came they proved that they could work in front-line hospitals and drive ambulances under fire. Discover the story of the struggle as it affected “ordinary” women, seen through the lens of one remote community. 

An orphan boy, well versed in the school of hard knocks, meets a country girl who thinks she wants a life of travel and excitement. Together they show how living an honest, but sometimes hilarious life that is essential to a happy family. The Road Home brings fun, laughter, a few tears, and rich recollections of an innocent time of life. From a small farm in Pennsylvania, Daddy and Mom teach their young children lessons such as: Never tarnish your good name, Make wise choices, Know when to get out of dodge and so many more. It doesn't matter if you grew up in a bustling city or on a farm in the country, you will relate to and be able to recall learning the same life lessons.