China, Southern Sea of. A young soldier's passion for an underage girl entangles him in a net of deceit and despair. Set in the hot, wet jungles of the endless islands lying west of Sumatra, east of Borneo, the story examines closely the erosion of morality and normallacy by a primitive lifestyle.

China. From the novel by Lilian Lee, filmed 1993, a complex story of love, faithfulness and betrayal, set in Beijing during the early twentieth century.

Columbia. Cholera can mean the disease, or a state of anger, and both are present in this tropical story of love and denial. I can't improve on a reviewer, who says that The city’s "steamy and sleepy streets, rat-infested sewers, old slave quarter, decaying colonial architecture, and multifarious inhabitants" dot the text and mingle amid the lives of the characters.

England, in Cornwall, whose rugged and legend-riddled coast adds to the story's drama. Published 1938, probably the most successful of Daphne Du Maurier's novels, and filmed severa times.

France. Published 1844, filmed many times. Young D'artagnan's romance with the Queen's seamstress involves him in The Queen's dangerous affair with The Duke of Buckingham. Adultery, politics, chivalry and swordplay, aided by much hearty consumption of french cheese and claret wine.

Greece. Second World War. Published 1994, filmed in 2001. Italian Captain Correli and Pelagia, a Greek girl, fall in love in wartime Greece, yet this is only one of a complex series of relationships shattered by the conflict.

Hawaii.

Israel. Romantic interest between archeologist is the thread holding together a series of stories telling the history of an ancient jewish town's rise and fall.

India. Set during the time of British rule, an attempt by people of different cultures to come together socially ends in a hysterical accusation of rape, resulting in a trial and the shattering of friendship between an English and an Indian man.

Iran. Or, as it was know in the days of its greatness, Persia. An always entertaining mixture of intruige, love, adventure and magic, often set in the ancient capitol of Baghdad.

Venice, famed city of canals and gondolas, treasury of ancient art, and probably Italy's most famous city after Rome. In this voluptuous place is acted out Thomas Mann's classic story of the fascination of unspoilt youth to jaded old age.

Kenya, in East Africa. Pub. 1987. Seeking a lost city in Africa, young Leo encounters Ayesha, immortal ruler of an enslaved tribe, the legendary "She who Must Be Obeyed," a lover both beautiful and terrifying.

Mediterranean Sea, the eastern part. Another take on the romance that brought down a kingdom, set in the warm climes to which chilled northerners still flock for romance and a good tan.

Pacific, Southern Sea of. Filmed as "South Pacific," a collection of short stories dealing with the war there between the USA and Japan, 1942 - 1945.

Romania, in eastern Europe, in the dark forests of Transylvania. Whilst usually considered a horror novel, Dracula's enduring fame rotates around its power as a story of satanic attraction and corruption.

Scotland, a rugged country of moors and glens (valleys) the setting for many a love story. Cartland (born 1901, died 2000) was the author of an incredible number of novels of romance, 664!

Time, not physical location, is the exotic setting through which Niffenegger's hero pursues his variably aged lover.

Turkey. Bond always had a girl, and his mission was always to save all the world from freedom-denying russian communists, while seducing the female half in celebration of that freedom. But in this case double agent Natasha Romanov is both the enemy and the prize, as Bond rendezvous with her in ancient Istanbul, by the Bosphorus' sparkling waters.

United States of America. Amid the empty glamour of the Jazz Age in New York city, Gatsby and Daisy work through to the tragic end of their romance.

India. The fifth and possibly the best of Frasier's "Flashman" novels, his hero as he evades murderous thugees to charm and bed The Queen of Jhansi. All for the purpose of preserving British rule in India of course: a chap must do his duty. But whether Flashman did or did not get the girl remains uncertain, and British rule took a sharp and bloody nosedive into the horrors of The Indian Mutiny.