Genre · Curated reading list

Books That Transport You

Ten immersive novels that carry you across the globe... from a Moscow hotel to the Alaskan wilderness, the Italian coast to a Naples backstreet. The best kind of summer travel: the kind you can take from a chair.

10 books

01
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
Step into the gilded corridors of the Hotel Metropol — Towles makes a single building feel like all of revolutionary Russia.
02
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Wander the fog-draped alleys and antiquarian bookshops of 1940s Barcelona in this gothic love letter to the city.
03
Beautiful Ruins
Jess Walter
The sun-bleached cliffs of the Cinque Terre have never shimmered so vividly — pure Italian-coast escapism.
04
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante
Ferrante drops you into the heat and clamor of a Naples backstreet so completely you can feel the dust on your skin.
05
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
The humid green of South India — its rivers, pickle factories, and monsoon light — saturates every page.
06
Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese
Verghese, a physician, renders 1950s Addis Ababa with such tactile detail you'll smell the eucalyptus and the antiseptic.
07
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie brings 1960s Nigeria to roaring life, from university salons to the chaos of a country at war.
08
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
Modern Tokyo turns dreamlike and strange — ordinary alleys and apartments that open onto the subconscious.
09
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
The Congo's overwhelming green — its rivers, heat, and danger — becomes a character in its own right.
10
The Snow Child
Eowyn Ivey
The hush of the Alaskan wilderness in winter — vast, white, and quietly magical — is the whole spell of this book.