Africa

Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrated by 15-year old Kambili, this story reveals the complexities of wealth, religious fanaticism, political unrest, and hope in Nigeria.

Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee
In Capetown after apartheid, a white professor and his daughter experience racial hatred and violence.

Spiral, Joseph Geary
In this suspense thriller set on three continents, writer Nick Greer has a disastrous trip to Tangier in search of a painting.

By The Sea, Abdulrazak Gurnah
Saleh Omar, merchant refugee from Zanzibar, is applying for asylum in England when circumstances bring him together with a surprising countryman.

True At First Light, Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s 1953 fictional memoir of a safari in Kenya.

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
American missionary brings his wife and four daughters with him to the Congo.

Blood Diamonds, Jon Land
Action thriller follows detectives Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea to Sierra Leone, where they battle a rebel leader who trades diamonds for weapons.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
Botswana is the setting and the detective is Precious. First in the delightful mystery series featuring Mma Ramotswe.

Nekropolis, Maureen McHugh
The dictates of the Second Koran isolate Morocco in this science fiction novel of loneliness, friendship, and love in the 22nd century.

Cry The Beloved Country, Alan Paton
Classic, moving story of two fathers, their sons, and tragedy in South Africa amidst racial inequality and injustice.

Children Of The Storm, Elizabeth Peters
Amelia Peabody, now a grandmother, is back in Egypt after World War I, and her family and friends are beset by troubling occurrences.

The Lost Army Of Cambyses, Paul Sussman
An ancient legend about a Persian army lost in Egyptian sandstorm forms the basis of this intriguing thriller.

Sharkman Six, Owen West
Insightful story of the complexity of modern day police duty in Third World countries, in this case, Somalia, where West served as a Marine.

Antarctica

Dark Winter, William Dietrich
Mystery thriller set at the South Pole’s Amundsen-Scott research base.

Ice Age, Brian Freemantle
Absorbing thriller about an SOS from a remote Antarctic research facility, a mysterious virus, and the threat of human extinction.

The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Another thriller starts out in a remote region of Chile as an expedition is driven off-course by a violent storm, into the Antarctic region known as the Ice Limit.

Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson
Science fiction set at McMurdo research base in Antarctica with adventure and amazing descriptions of the icesheet landscape.

Asia

Dreaming Pachinko, Isaac Adamson
Offering a unique blend of crime, anime-style action, and humor, American journalist Billy Chaka travels to Tokyo to interview a Japanese pinball addict.

Bangkok 8, John Burdett
Police detective Sonchai Jitplecheep investigates the murder of U. S. Embassy Sgt. William Bradley, who has died of snakebite on a busy Bangkok street.

Across The Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn
First of a trilogy set in medieval Japan, this novel plunges the reader into the world of mystical powers, martial arts, political intrique, and love.

Dusk, F. Sionil José
First novel in the Rosales Saga of Istak and his Filipino family embroiled in the Philippine’s political quagmire following the Spanish-American War.

Fox Girl, Nora Okja Keller
This is a stark and disturbing though ultimately hopeful portrait of marginalized Korean women & their unwanted offspring by American GIs.

The Game, Laurie King
Mary Russell and husband/partner Sherlock Holmes are in India trying to locate British spy Kimball (Kipling’s “Kim”) O’Hara.

Empress Orchid, Anchee Min
Fictionalized story of the poor rural Chinese girl who became the Emperor’s fourth wife, mother of the “Last Emperor,” and regent, ruling China for 46 years.

Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution two young men, sent to rural China to be “re-educated,” share the prose of European writers through storytelling.

The Death Of Vishnu, Manil Suri
The concerns and problems of the residents of an apartment building in Bombay, India, are the focus of this amazing novel.

The Girl From The Coast, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
In feudal Java, an unnamed young woman is married off to a nobleman and subsequently banished, losing husband, child, and well-being.

Australia

True History Of The Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
Historical fiction based on the life of notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.

The Company: The Story Of A Murderer, Arabella Edge
Historical thriller based on the sinking in 1629 of the Dutch East India Company flagship Batavia, which was run aground in western Australia by a madman.

Death Of A River Guide, Richard Flanagan
Aljaz Cosini, a Franklin River guide in remote Tasmania, reflects on his life, his family and Australian/Aboriginal heritage as he slowly drowns beneath a waterfall.

The Idea Of Perfection, Kate Grenville
Two virtual strangers and outsiders fall in love in the tiny hamlet of Karakarook, New South Wales.

Office Of Innocence, Thomas Keneally
A young and naïve Roman Catholic priest tries to help a lonely wife of a POW as Japan’s army moves ever closer to the Australian coast during World War II.

Gilgamesh, Joan London
A 17-year old woman from a remote corner of Australia is enchanted by her cousin’s stories of an Iraqi archeological dig and Mesopotamian King Gilgamesh.

The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
Of McCullough’s many books set in Australia, this epic saga of the Cleary family living in the Outback is certainly the best known.

Dirt Music, Tim Winton
Three characters seeking to escape their pasts meet with sad results in the seacoast wilderness of northern tropical Australia.

Europe

War Of The Gods, Poul Anderson
Veteran fantasy and science fiction writer Anderson fictionalizes the story of legendary Danish King Hadding, masterfully combining myth, fact, and adventure.

I Am Madame X, Gioia Diliberto
John Singer Sergeant’s immortal portrait of American expatriate Virginie Gautreau scandalized Paris when first exhibited; this is the story from Virginie’s perspective.

The Birth Of Venus, Sarah Dunant
Florentine painters, Savonarola, and the oppression of women during the Italian Renaissance share center stage in this suspenseful and absorbing novel.

Rain, Karen Duve
Though it would seem that life could not be better for writer Leon Ulbricht, who is living a quiet existence in an East German village, things fall apart in hilarious fashion.

The Royal Physician’s Visit, Per Olov Enquist
Historical novel set in 1760s Denmark tells of the mad King Christian, his dissatisfied Queen Caroline, and her lover, reformer Dr. Struensee.

The Solitude Of Compassion, Jean Giono
Collection of stories set in the author’s beloved Provence.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Mark Haddon
The exotic locale in this extraordinary British mystery is the mind of the narrator, 15-year old autistic savant Christopher Boone.

Chocolat, Joanne Harris
A newcomer to a tiny French village, confectioner Vianne finds herself in opposition to the Church when she opens her chocolate shop during Lent.

Smilla’s Sense Of Snow, Peter Høeg
In this suspenseful novel, lonely and isolated Smilla is determined to find out the truth behind a young friend’s fall from a roof in Copenhagen.

The Fencing Master, Arturo Pérez-Reverte
In this historical mystery set in late 1860s Spain, famous fencing master Don Jaime Astarloa is hired to teach a mysterious woman.

Little Indiscretions, Carmen Posadas
In this humorous whodunit, Spanish Chef Nestor Chaffino is found dead at the Costa del Sol summerhouse where he was to cater a party.

The Book Of Salt, Monique Truong
A fictional look at the Vietnamese cook “Bonh” who worked for Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein when they lived in Paris.

A Small Death In Lisbon, Robert Wilson
Two fascinating stories intertwined: World War II Nazi pursuit of Portugal’s tungsten, & a mystery surrounding the brutal murder of a young girl.

Hunting Midnight, Richard Zimler
Zimler weaves a story of John Zarco Stewart, descendant of Portugal’s Jews, and the freed slave Midnight, who mysteriously disappears in this compelling mystery.

North America

Daughter Of Fortune, Isabel Allende
Eliza Sommers, adopted at birth by an English brother and sister and raised by them in her native Chile, sets off for San Francisco during the Gold Rush in search of her lover.

Flashback, Nevada Barr
Anna Pigeon is working at remote Dry Tortugas National Park on Garden Key, Florida, which was home to an infamous Union prison during the Civil War.

The Voyage Of The Narwhal, Andrea Barrett
Naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells accompanies his future brother-in-law on an ill-fated Arctic voyage in search of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition.

Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros
Three Mexican-American families from Chicago visit relatives in Mexico City, where youngest child Lala feels lost in the chaos.

Red Water, Judith Freeman
Fictional treatment of Utah’s Mountain Meadows Massacre and the part played by charismatic Mormon leader John D. Lee.

The Good Body, Bill Gaston
Bobby Bonaduce is forty, a minor-league hockey player, and has just contracted multiple sclerosis when he heads home to New Brunswick, Canada to make amends.

Nowhere Else On Earth, Josephine Humphreys
At the close of the Civil War the Lumbee Indians of Scuffletown, North Carolina, suffer abuse at the hands of the ruling Confederate Home Guard.

Centennial, James Michener
Unforgettable chronicle of the American push westward to Colorado and one of several Michener books to bring North American settings to life.

The Miracle Life Of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall
At age 7, half-Apache Edgar is accidentally run over by a postal vehicle, the first of many misadventures in this remarkable novel set in Arizona.

The Last Crossing, Guy Vanderhaeghe
When idealistic Simon Gault disappears in Indian territory along the U.S./Canada border his wealthy father sends his brothers to search for him.

South America

Portrait In Sepia, Isabel Allende
Sweeping saga of a Chilean family, a continuation of Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, featuring Eliza’s daughter Aurora del Valle.

The City Of Your Final Destination, Peter Cameron
Determined to write the biography of a half-Jewish Uruguayan writer, Omar Razaghi travels into a cross-cultural maze on a remote community in Uruguay.

The Moche Warrior, Lyn Hamilton
This entry in the mystery series featuring Toronto antiques dealer Lara McClintoch investigating some artifacts at an archeological dig in Peru.

Tierra Del Fuego, Sylvia Iparraguirre
Historical fiction based on the life of Yamana Indian Jemmy Button kidnapped from Argentina and taken to England for civilizing.

Stone Cowboy, Mark Jacobs
Two American expatriates meet in Bolivia; Agnes, looking for her missing brother Jonathan, is assisted by the knowledgeable though cynical Roger.

The Dark Bride, Laura Restrepo
The town of Tora, on the edge of the Colombian rain forest, is home to the prostitute Sayonara, an exotic beauty of Indian and Caucasian descent.

The Body From Ipanema, J. R. Ripley
Guitarist and detective Tony Kozol is in Rio playing with a Latin pop star when a young woman is found dead.

A Secret For Julia, Patricia Sagastizábal
Mercedes left Argentina pregnant, escaping the “dirty war” and imprisonment as a dissident; she struggles 20 years later to face the truth.

Fordlandia, Eduardo Sguiglia
The title refers to Henry Ford’s rubber plant established in the 1920s in the Amazon. Horacio, chief of personnel at the plant, is at heart an adventurous traveler.

Doña Inés vs. Oblivion, Ana Teresa Torres
Magical realism and Venezuelan history meld in this family saga covering 300 years of struggle.

Death In The Andes, Mario Vargas Llosa
In this novel examining the complicated politics of Peru, the Civil Guard clashes with guerrillas in the Andes.

Blood Lake, K. J. A. Wishnia
Ecuadorian-American private investigator Filomena Buscarsela goes home to visit her extended family, not expecting to re-examine her years as a revolutionary.

This list was revised by the St. Charles Public Library, May 2004.