The Best Books About Travel for Those With Wanderlust

1. A Trip of One’s Own by Kate Wills

Travel journalist Kate Wills wasn’t expecting to be divorced after less than a year of marriage, or to be forced to restart a life that had seemed so stable for so long.

Luckily, her job as a writer offered her the perfect opportunity to escape from it all. But this time, with no deadlines to hit or all-expenses-paid trips to absorb in a few days before churning out copy for a travel magazine, her jet-setting felt different.

There were no photographers working alongside her or assistants booking her flights. For the first time ever, Kate was traveling alone.

Read my review of A Trip of One’s Own here.

2. You and Me on Vacation by Emily Henry

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends.

For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Read my review of You and Me on Vacation here.

3. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

PROBLEM: You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would all be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less. Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Read my review of Less here.

4. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career.

But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone.

Read my review of Eat Pray Love here.

5. The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend’s wedding in the north of Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.

But, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie’s ex, Dylan, who she’s avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.

Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they’ve totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride.

Will they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly… is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?

Read my review of The Road Trip here.

6. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy.

When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America–to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood “just like Ireland”–she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

Read my review of Brooklyn here.

7. The Catch Me if You Can by Jessica Nabongo

In this inspiring travelogue, celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo—the first Black woman on record to visit all 195 countries in the world—shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections.

Beautifully illustrated with many of Nabongo’s own photographs, the book documents her remarkable experiences in each country, including:

8. One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone.

To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

Read my review of One Italian Summer here.

9. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Read my review of Crying in H Mart here.

10. Siracusa by Delia Ephron

New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine—Finn; his wife, Taylor; and their daughter, Snow.

Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities, past and present.

Snow, ten years old and precociously drawn into a far more adult drama, becomes the catalyst for catastrophe as the novel explores collusion and betrayal in marriage.

11. Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh

When Monisha Rajesh announced plans to circumnavigate the globe in eighty train journeys, she was met with wide-eyed disbelief.

But it wasn’t long before she was carefully plotting a route that would cover 45,000 miles – almost twice the circumference of the earth – coasting along the world’s most remarkable railways; from the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express.

Packing up her rucksack – and her fiance, Jem – Monisha embarks on an unforgettable adventure that will take her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, and beyond.

12. The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw

A rich, immersive, funny and heartbreaking memoir of the charming bookseller who runs two tiny bookshops in the remote village of Manapouri in Fiordland, in the deep south of New Zealand.

Ruth Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life.

13. Not Afraid of the Fall by Kyle James

After purchasing one-way flights from New York City to Paris, Kyle James and his girlfriend Ashley quit their day jobs, planned futures, and their daily paradigms to see as much of the world as they could.

In 114 days, they trekked across 15 countries and 38 cities with nothing but their backpacks, their smartphones, and each other.

Not Afraid of the Fall is the unvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey: From cliff-jumping on Croatia’s untouched coasts to bathing with rescued elephants in Thailand; from crashing mopeds on mountainous gravel roads in Santorini, to hitchhiking with strangers in rental cars in Hungary.