Let's start here in the most unlikely place for travel or literature--at the top of the world. Our first stop is today's Greenland. Keep this for our next two stops: Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

A circumnavigation around 3000 plus miles of Greenland coast to see if it could be done and to show his students what such travel would be like. A thrilling, but dangerous adventure.

Back to modern times, but still in Greenland and and now Denmark. The main character is a product of a marriage between Inuit and Danish. This journey is a murder mystery which is solved through knowing how to "read" ice and snow..

Written by an Icelander, the only to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. A fine story filled with snowstorms, coffee by the gallons, and, well, independent people. One chapter contains one of the most frightening stories I've ever read. This is required reading in Iceland--and for good reason.

Too bad this is priced so high. Tells the story of living on one of the islands of the Icelandic group

A travel guide for a little background on this subtropical country.

O'Reilly collected stories of various kinds of adventures available in Thailand. Do you want to spend time on the boats in the many canals in Bangkok? This story tells how.

A novel of the dark side of Bangkok, this one with sex changes/identity at its center. Thailand/Bangkok is one of the leading countries in the world for such an operation. In fact, there is at least one hospital dedicated to such operations.

The direct voice of an outsider (the English Anna, teacher of king's children) towards the privileges/rights of kings in Siam (now Thailand)

A delightful story of father and daughter playing a universal child's game

Many Thai women choose not to marry because of the custom that men can beat their wives and have mistresses upon whom they bestow their gifts.(Of course, not all Thai men practice this.) Some Thai women wait for European and American men to take them away from this. I don't know if this information is in this book, but I wanted to relay it.

Our next destination is the Deep South, an amalgamation of people as similar and dissimilar as possible. No matter how Americans are similar, Southerners are always set apart.

Yes, a good man is hard to find, but the title character is definitely not it! Here is a perfect example of the Grotesque!

The voice of the South. Listen to Ms Welty read her stories in her Mississippi voice, adding the southern inflection to her characters' voices.

Considered his best book yet, this Robicheaux novel is set during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

One of the premiere books on the development of women's independence written by a transplant from Missouri, who spent much of her adult life on a small plantation near Natchitoches, LA, and Grand Isle off the coast and south of New Orleans.

An excellent collection of short stories pre- and post-Katrina, the two New Orleanses.

This book has the stamp of approval by New Orleans' own natives.