When a woman with whom he has shared a harmless flirtation shows up at his hotel door with a gun, travel writer and food expert Will Rhodes discovers the real reason his job occasionally requires him to assume different names and deliver mysterious parcels.

Finding himself embracing domestic life in Bangkok in spite of his love for adventurous travel, writer Poke Rafferty has his world thrown into turmoil by a troubled homeless youth, a distraught woman's missing uncle, and a blackmailing thief.

"The author who captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany expands her horizons to immerse herself--and her readers--in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places. This book is a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. She rents houses among ordinary residents, shops at neighborhood markets, wanders...

Her happiness shattered by her movie director boyfriend's announcement that he intends to reconnect with a woman from his past, travel columnist Annie Adams impulsively marries a charming chef and attempts to restart her life in rural Massachusetts.

The author details her travels to Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, Turkey, Greece, southern Italy, and North Africa, interweaving personal insights with commentary on art, history, landscape, culture, and tradition.

A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayesā celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. An ideal travel companion, Frances Mayes brings to the page the curiosity of an intrepid explorer, remarkable insights into the wonder of the everyday, and a compelling narrative style that entertains as it informs. With her beloved Tuscany as a...

Seeking to retire and settle down with his girlfriend and newly adopted daughter, travel writer Poke Rafferty unexpectedly meets up with his long-lost father, who asks for his help in safeguarding a stolen cache of priceless rubies and forged identity papers.

"Sometimes a familys deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her familys Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, its time to learn the truth. In 1952, Simius...

A happily married woman who is trying to get pregnant realizes that her life needs to go in a new direction. After a very painful divorce, she risks everything and embarks on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery.

"A product of beige California suburbs, Mandel was overlooked and unexceptional. When her father ships her off on a youth group tour of Israel, he inadvertently catapults his seventeen-year-old daughter into a world of angry European backpackers, seize-the-day Israelis, and the fall out of cold war-era politics. Border violence hadn't been on the birthright tour agenda. But then neither had domestic violence, going broke, getting wasted, getting sick,...