Top Ten Tuesday; Books About/Set In Places on My Bucket List

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and today's topic is books about/set in places on my bucket list.

Here's my ten picks.

The Saffron Trail by Rosanna Ley (Cornwall, UK and Morocco)

Description from Goodreads

Once, there was a girl who loved saffron. She loved its secrets, its mystery, and best of all, she loved its hint of magic.

After the death of her beloved mother, Nell travels from rural Cornwall to the colour and chaos of Marrakech. Her marriage may be on the rocks, but exploring the heady delights of Moroccan cuisine could help her fulfil her dream of opening her own restaurant.

It's there she meets Amy - a young photographer trying to unravel the story behind her family's involvement in the Vietnam War. The two women develop a close friendship and discover a surprising connection between their own pasts.

This connection will take Nell and Amy on a journey to find their own 'saffron trail' - from the labyrinthine medina and bustle of Moroccan bazaars all the way back home to Cornwall and to the heart of their families' origins.

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (Paris, France)

Description from Goodreads

Monsieur Perdu can prescribe the perfect book for a broken heart. But can he fix his own?

 

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Internationally bestselling and filled with warmth and adventure, The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives.

The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak (Istanbul, Turkey)

Description from Goodreads

Sixteenth century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare white elephant destined for the palace menagerie. So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan's court. Along the way he will meet deceitful courtiers and false friends, gypsies, animal tamers, and the beautiful, mischievous Princess Mihrimah. He will journey on Chota's back to the furthest corners of the Sultan's kingdom and back again. And one day he will catch the eye of the royal architect, Sinan, a chance encounter destined to change Jahan's fortunes forever.

Filled with all the colour of the Ottoman Empire, when Istanbul was the teeming centre of civilisation, The Architect's Apprentice is a magical, sweeping tale of one boy and his elephant caught up in a world of wonder and danger.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (The Nile, Egypt)

Description from Goodreads

Agatha Christie's most exotic murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything - until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: `I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.' Yet in this exotic setting' nothing is ever quite what it seems...

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (Japan)

Description from Goodreads

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS DESTINY? AND HOW CAN YOU FIND YOURS?

Under a glittering full moon, a Kyoto coffee shop with no fixed location or opening hours appears only where and when it's needed. Serving fragrant teas, the finest coffees and delicious desserts, it is entirely run by talking cats.

The coffee shop attracts customers who have lost their way in their life, from a down-on-her- luck screenwriter and a lovesick TV director to a misunderstood stylist and a failed video game developer. In the middle of the night, the coffee shop's feline guides take them on an astrological journey which forces the characters to face up to the past, in order to discover their destiny. And as each of them uncovers their purpose, their paths all become somehow intertwined...

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum (South Korea)

Description from Goodreads

There was only one thing on her mind.

'I must start a bookshop.'

Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop.

In a quaint neighbourhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married coffee roaster, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju - they all have disappointments in their past. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop becomes the place where they all learn how to truly live.

A heart-warming story about finding comfort and acceptance in your life – and the healing power of books.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (Japan)

Description from Goodreads

The Japanese bestseller: a tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.

When twenty-five-year-old Takako’s boyfriend reveals he’s marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle Satoru’s offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above his shop.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover’s paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. It is Satoru’s pride and joy, and he has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife left him five years earlier.

Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the shop.

And as summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.

Quirky, beautifully written, and movingly profound, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop will appeal to readers of Before The Coffee Gets Cold, The Cat Who Saved Books, and anyone who has had to recover from a broken heart.

The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag (Mongolia)

Description from Goodreads

In the Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, the nomadic Tuvan people’s ancient way of life is colliding with the pervasive influence of modernity. For the young shepherd boy Dshurukuwaa, the confrontation comes in stages. First his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school, followed by the death of his beloved grandmother and with it, the connection to the tribe’s traditions and deep relationship to the land. But the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog — “all that was left to me” — dies after ingesting poison set out by the boy’s father to protect the herd from wolves. His despairing questions to the Heavenly Blue Sky are answered only by the silence of the wind.

The first and only member of the Tuvans to use written language to tell stories, Galsan Tschinag chronicles their traditions in this fascinating, bittersweet novel.

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner (Cambodia)

Description from Goodreads

Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

Braised Pork by An Yu (China)

Description from Goodreads

Beautiful, dreamlike, and utterly intoxicating, Braised Pork is the beguiling debut of an outstandingly talented young writer who is based in China but writes in English

One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead. One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange watery figure, an image that swims into Jia Jia's mind and won't leave.

The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments to its hidden bars, as her path crosses some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender who may be able to offer her the kind of love she had long thought impossible. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her. Her journey takes her to the high plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns and fears to go.

Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of human connection, and an atmospheric and cinematic evocation of middle-class urban China, An Yu's Braised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of unseen worlds, and the energizing self-discovery of a newly empowered young woman.