Books Set in France

• M.L. Longworth’s Verlaque and Bonnet series (review of Murder on the Ile Sordou)
• The Whole Fromage by Kathe Lison
• The Magic of Provence by Yvone Lenard
• The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas

Books with an Academic Setting

• By the Book by Julia Sonneborn
• The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• Dead as a Dodo by Jane Langton (and the rest of the Homer Kelly series)
• Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel
• Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe

Rich People Behaving Badly

• Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin
• Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel
• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (and the rest of the series)

Books Set in London

• Death in the Air by Kate Dawson
• Hilary Tamar series by Sarah Caudwell
• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Quiet English Countryside Books

• Miss Buncle’s Book and Miss Buncle Married by D.E. Stevenson
• High Rising by Angela Thirkell
• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
• The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Books with a Sense of Adventure

• Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams
• Mrs. Pollifax on Safari by Dorothy Gilman
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Books about Geology

• Volcanoes: Crucibles of Change by Richard Fisher
• Geology Underfoot in Yosemite National Park by Allen Glazner
• Hard Road West by Keith Mehldahl
• Devil in the Mountain by Simon Lamb
• Glacial Lake Missoula by David Alt
• Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori
• Vesuvius: A Biography by Alywn Scarth

Jane Austen Adaptations

• By the Book by Julia Sonneborn
• Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

Darkly Funny Books

• Cold Comfort Farm and Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
• The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen 83 1/4 Years Old
• Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

Books about Books and Reading

• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• Curiosity’s Cats by Bruce Joshua Miller
• Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby
• On Teaching and Writing Fiction by Wallace Stegner

Books Set in Italy

• Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano (and the rest of the Auntie Poldi series)
• La Bella Lingua by Dianne Hales
• A Vineyard in Tuscany by Ferenc Mate
• Extra Virgin (and the rest of the series) by Annie Hawes

Other Travel Writing

• A Caliph’s House by Tahir Shah (Morocco)
• The Spice Necklace by Ann Vanderhoof (Caribbean)
• The Last Pink Bits by Harry Ritchie (British territories)

Mostly Funny Memoirs/Essays

• Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
• We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
• You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson
• The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae
• I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
• Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

Books About Feminism

• Don’t Call Me Princess by Peggy Orenstein
• Shrill by Lindy West
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
• Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
• Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls
• Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

True Crime Books that Aren’t Scary

• Death in the Air by Kate Dawson
• Conan Doyle for the Defense by Margalit Fox
• The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
• A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

Books about Ancient History

• The Parthenon by Mary Beard
• The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox
• The Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth by Joseph MacGillivray
• The King Must Die by Mary Renault (fiction but based on good research)

Books with Cold Weather

• Through the Evil Days and Hid From Our Eyes by Julia Spencer-Fleming
• A Noel Killing by M.L. Longworth
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
• The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller
• The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss