The author of such classic novels as The Portrait of A Lady, The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller, Henry James (1843-1916) here takes readers from the American towns of upstate New York to villages in rural Tuscany. Our guide is a curious, engaged observer not only of streets and landscapes and cathedrals but also of paintings and plays and the characteristics, national, social and individual of the people we encounter at his side. He is a formidable travel companion whether on a trip to Lake George or an afternoon visit to an art exhibition in Paris from Burlington, Newport and Niagara, a European summer in Lichfield and Warwick, North Devon, Wells and Salisbury, from Chambery to Milan, from Venice to "Strassburg", the after-season at Rome, autumn in Florence, Tuscan cities, Ravenna, London sights and theatres and Scotland. The period of travel around Europe in 1869 lasted 15 months and when he came home again to Cambridge Massachusetts, Henry James was 27. He writes particularly lovingly of Italy and we travel with James in these pages in an unhurried holiday with a thoroughly seasoned, supremely cultivated, acutely intelligent companion. Word by word, phrase by phrase, James's long, purposefully meandering, beautifully detailed sentences will guide you around the curves of country roads, up the steps of a mouldering castle, into the quiet of a rural inn or the bustle of a grand hotel. Don't forget your deerstalker hat, bonnet and steamship tickets! US first edition 2016 with 280 desirable roughcut pages and chapter heading illus.

A beautifully observed and lyrically written account of seven years' worth of travels through the world's fifth largest country, Bryson fills her narrative with characters, culture and history and creates vivid scenes. Here is all the football, samba, voodoo, carnival and ayahuasca from Brazil, where you can commune with spirits and dance with gods and learn a lot about life's possibilities. Seven years in Brazil saw Fran Bryson's fascination with the country develop into something of an obsession with its culture, religions and history. During many journeys from her island home in Australia she explored the glittering modern city of Brasília to small, deeply religious towns, from the inner reaches of the Amazon jungle to the vibrant back lands - home to outcasts and the possessed - and finally to the sweat-drenched streets of Rio during Carnaval. The travel writer and former literary agent took psychedelic drugs in the middle of the Amazon and sought out ancient and modern-day religious cults during her travels. 301pp with guide to sites and events, large paperback.

Dom Joly sets off around the world and this time he's monster hunting. He explores the Redwood Curtain in Northern California in search of Sasquatch. In Canada he visits Lake Okanagan hoping to catch a glimpse of the 30ft snake-like creature called Ogopogo. Near Lake Tele in Congo he risks his life tracking the vegetarian Sauropod Mokele-mbembe. And naturally he heads to Loch Ness, but for this hunt he has his family in tow. He treks across the Khumbu Valley in Nepal looking for Yeti, and in the hills above Hiroshima in Japan he enlists the help of a local man to find the Hibagon, a terribly smelly 'cave man ape'. Is there a slither of truth somewhere in the madness of monster hunting? From the safety of our armchairs we can dive into six fascinating destinations exploring the cultures that gave rise to these monster myths and ending up in some pretty hairy situations with our jolly Joly companion. 260pp, paperback.

A wrenching account of African horrors, particularly those of Somalia and Rwanda but also at the same time a loving and often evocative account of East Africa where the author grew up. Combining literary reportage, memoir, family history and a quest to piece together a decades-old mystery, the book is an enthralling narrative of men and women meddling with, embracing, and ultimately being transformed by other cultures. In his final days, Aidan Hartley's father said to him, 'We should have never come.' Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back through four generations of one British family - from a great-great grandfather in 19th century New Zealand to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa who later returned to raise a family there. These were intrepid men who travelled to exotic lands to conquer, build and bear witness. And there is Aidan, who becomes a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s, marked by terror and genocide. After living through and reporting on the violence in Somalia, Uganda and Rwanda, Aidan retreats to his family's house in Kenya where he discovers the Zanzibar chest his father left him. The hand-carved chest contained the diaries of his father's best friend, Peter Davey, who had died under obscure circumstances 50 years earlier. Travelling to Southern Arabia, Hartley embarks on a journey not only to unlock the secrets of Davey's life, but his own. The Oxford educated author now lives on a cattle ranch in Kenya with his family. 475pp, paperback, illus.

Not many people would choose to tour what is arguably the most dangerous part of the world amidst what was (up until recent events) the deadliest war of the 21st century, but that is exactly what award-winning explorer, photographer and author Levison Wood did. Setting out in September 2017 from Al-Malikiyah in Syria, just 2 miles from the Turkish border and 160 miles from Raqqa, then the last stronghold of ISIS, his was a 5,000 mile trek through the most violently contested region on the planet. For six months he travelled, from ISIS occupied Iraq, through Kuwait and the jagged coastlines of the Emirates and Oman, across civil-war-torn Yemen and on to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel before eventually ending on the Mediterranean Sea in Lebanon. Geographically he encountered some of the harshest and most beautiful environments on earth, from snow-capped mountains to lifeless, scorched deserts, photographed and reproduced in plenty here, but it is the people he meets that force us to reconsider our perceptions. Here are Kurdish freedom fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan, Arab Christians in Palestine, fishermen in Oman, border guards of all hues and allegiances among many others. Through the relationships he forges with those he meets he examines how the region has changed over thousands of years and in just a few years, bearing witness to an amazing mosaic of a land. At once a thrilling (and often quite terrifying) personal journey and a skilled work of cultural reportage, this is a breathtaking chronicle of the root of all civilisation, one that is at times uplifting and also shockingly heart-breaking. 354pp paperback with 16 pages of superb colour photos, US edition.

Two Years 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play. From the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre here is an account of the theatre's extraordinary two year tour bringing Hamlet to every country on earth for the 450th anniversary of the play. From performing in sweltering deserts, capital and remote cities, heaving marketplaces and on Pacific islands, and despite food poisoning in Mexico, the threat of ambush in Somaliland, an Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and political upheaval in Ukraine, the Globe's players tirelessly pushed on. They carried their own props, instruments and costumes throughout the journey, and could construct an entire set in less than two hours. Dromgoole introduces this impressive cast of sturdy souls, recounting the highs and lows of their tour, paying witness to Shakespeare's power to transcend borders and bring the world closer together. We are shown why the play's mystery resonates so widely and can touch the lives of men and women in Sudan, citizens of Beijing, and Syrian refugees alike. Along the way he gains new insight into Shakespeare's masterpiece, its history, meaning and pleasures in this heartfelt testament. 390pp, eight pages of colour photos.

A fascinating portrait of China in the 1980s and 1990s, how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country's economic ambitions gave rise to great change. Xiaolu Guo is one of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation. She lives in London and Berlin. Her iconoclastic and completely contemporary voice gave us 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers' and 'I Am China'. Her vivid and poignant memoir is the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. She has travelled further than most to be who she needed to be. Now spurred by the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on her journey which began in a fishing village shack on the East China Sea. There her illiterate grandparents raised her and brought her to the city of Wenling to reunite with parents she had never met. She learned the dangers of being a girl. A young woman and aspiring filmmaker, she got herself to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions - a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home. Eventually, unable to make the films or write the books she wanted to create, Xiaolu determined to see the world beyond China for herself, and now after some 15 years in Europe, her words resonate with the insight of someone who is both outsider and insider. 'A certain nostalgia washed over me, and I try to remember the taste of the roasted silkworms on skewers that I had eaten so often as a child on those desolate afternoons after school. But I couldn't recall the taste on my tongue.' Reading like fiction, she brings to life her lifelong struggles against the chains of poverty, gender and censorship in her coming-of-age story. 366pp, photos.

The symbolism of the English Channel goes way beyond a simple role as a conduit for shipping, trawling and the odd lard-and-lanolin-slathered maniac in goggles and swimming trunks plunging in and making for the other side. It has made us believe we are more separate than we are thanks to 'that strip of sea which severs merry England from the tardy realms of Europe - as the Church and State Review put it in 1863.' A bulwark of invasion, a conduit for exchange and a challenge to be conquered, the Channel has always been many things to many people. Today it's the busiest shipping lane in the world and hosts more than 30 million passenger crossings every year, but this slither of choppy brine, just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, represents much more than a conductor of goods and people. Charlie Connelly collects its stories and brings them to life from tailing Oscar Wilde's shadow through the dark streets of Dieppe, to unearthing Britain's first beauty pageant at the end of Folkestone Pier, won by a chap called Wally! We uncover the fate of the first successful Channel swimmer, learn that Louis Blériot was actually a terrible pilot and discover how, if a man with a buttered head and pigs' bladders attached to his trousers hadn't fought off an attack by dogfish, we might never have had a Channel Tunnel. Here is a cast of extraordinary characters - cheats, dreamers, charlatans, geniuses, visionaries, eccentrics and at least one pair of naked, cuddling balloonists - whose stories are all united by the English Channel to ensure the sea that makes us an island will never be the same again. 297pp.

Sub-titled 'A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan' the book explores the intertwined cultures and often fraught history of these neighbouring countries. Currently China's economic power continues to grow, Japan is becoming more militaristic, and Korea is divided between its westernised South and the dictatorial North. Michael Booth, long fascinated with the region, travels by car, ferry, train and foot, experiencing the people and culture of these nations up close. The burden of history and the memory of past crimes such as the sexual enslavement of women by the Japanese military during World War Two continued to sour relationships. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan ought to be the firmest of allies. All three are democracies with developed economies and significant mutual trade and militarily dependent upon the US. All share grave concerns about China. Although there are obvious ideological and political differences between China and its neighbours, all these countries are deeply intertwined culturally, genetically and historically. China has given its neighbours Confucian philosophy, rice cultivation, Buddhism, porcelain manufacture and tea, as well as the secrets of metallurgy, written language, and the art of calligraphy. In recent times Korea and Japan have also contributed to a great cultural exchange. From Korea have come K-Pop, histrionic TV dramas and very violent movies massively popular throughout China, Japan and beyond constituting the hallyu or Korean wave phenomenon. 'I begin my journey not in a place but a year: 1853. And at this early stage, of one thing I am convinced, if you go back far enough, everything is the fault of the Americans. 315pp, map, US first edition.

When Will Hunt was 16 years old he discovered an abandoned tunnel that ran beneath his house in Providence, Rhode Island. His first tunnel trips inspired a lifelong fascination exploring underground worlds from the derelict subway stations and sewers of New York City to sacred caves, catacombs, tombs, bunkers and ancient underground cities in more than 20 countries around the world. He tracks the origins of life with a team of NASA microbiologists a mile beneath the Black Hills, camps out for three days with urban explorers in the catacombs and sewers of Paris, descends with an Aboriginal family into a 35,000 year old mine in the Australian outback, and glimpses of sculpture moulded by Palaeolithic artists in the depths of a cave in the Pyrenees. Each adventure is woven with mythology and anthropology, natural history and neuroscience, literature and philosophy and told in an elegant and graceful prose. Feel the lure of the darkness and our desire to connect with what we cannot see. 'A fearless, eloquent and truly insightful guide, Will Hunt takes us through the hidden worlds beneath our feet, from guerrilla art galleries to ancient sacred chambers to lost worlds inhabited by lost souls. Along the way, Hunt initiates us into a suite of subterranean mysteries that span geography, culture and time, awakening the dormant but profound allure the underworld holds for us...' - John Vaillant. 276pp, illus, US first edition with tiny remainder mark.