Ariel Dorfman is no stranger to exile. Before his 30^th birthday he had fled with his parents from Argentina to the U.S. and then later to Chile. After the military coup of 1973, Dorfman fled Chile for Europe, and later resettled in the U.S. where he now teaches at Duke University. Intensely personal, this is his elegant meditation on language, exile and memory. Alternating between Chilean political events in the early 70's and his own life story, Dorfman reflects on his search for true citizenship. After much soul searching, Dorfman finds the inherent power of language, eventually incorporating both English and Spanish into his writing life. We are grateful for his eloquence, passion, and intimate exploration of speech and culture.

Lisa St. Aubin de Teran was a romantic seventeen-year-old when she married a South American aristocrat twenty years her senior. Seduced by tales of his ancestral home, she leaves England for his family's vast plantation deep in the Venezuelan Andes only to confront an unstable husband and the daily challenges of an exotic, unfamiliar terrain. Soon, her closest companions become a pet vulture, two pedigreed beagles, and la gente, the peasants who live and work on the estate. Magically enhanced by the Amazon's lush scenery and delectable tastes, this is a tragic tale of a failed marriage marked by terror and mayhem. Be careful what you wish for...

This affectionate story brings a quixotic and boisterous band of young Italian athletes to life. In the summer of 1996, Joe McGinniss set out for the remote Italian village of Castel Di Sangro, located deep within the forbidding and isolated region of Abruzzo. He spent the summer with the village soccer team, which had recently won promotion to the second-highest professional league in the land. For a town of 5,000 inhabitants, this feat was indeed remarkable-and soon to be the work of great travel writing. Already a staff favorite, McGinniss' tale captivates and inspires long after its final pages.

The brightly colored homes, elegant street cafes, and soulful, sexy steps of the tango present a luminous picture of Buenos Aires and yet, the city is also a place of suffering, lost hopes, and lingering nightmares from the Dirty War. Intriguing, complex and ever vivid, France's memoir paints a portrait of both cities: old and new, haunting and magical. Her laugh-out-loud adventures of daily life in the "Paris of the South" combine historical narrative with journalistic insight and arresting spontaneity. Miranda France explores everything from the legend of Eva Peron's well-traveled corpse, to the reasons behind why Buenos Aires has three times as many analysts per person as New York City.

He just couldn't stay away. Four years after leaving France for East Hampton, the American friendliness, and eight glasses of water a day, gave way to memories of Sunday-morning markets and the smell of thyme. Peter Mayle had to return to his beloved Provence, and in this case, our loss is our gain. We are invited to a school for noses, an unforgettable meal in a converted gas station, and Halloween Provence-style. We learn the secret of the over-sexed butcher and the genetic effects of two thousand years of fois gras. In other words, we hitch a ride, once again, on Peter Mayle's magic carpet, touring with unabashed pleasure, his still-to-be discovered country.

After twenty years away, best-selling American author Bill Bryson recently moved his family from England back to the United States. Perhaps it was reading that nearly three million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens -- as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me." His reunion has proven to be a hilariously disconcerting tour of life in America. Along the road, he delivers an unconventional commencement address, makes friends with a local skunk, vents his frustration with tax return instructions, and reveals his rules for life. To see our world through Bryson's eyes is to take a delightfully offbeat vacation in our own backyard.

The author of Gorky Park takes us to a Cuba that stands alone in its communist idealism, abandoned by it's revolutionary forefathers. The very morning Arkady arrives in Havana from Moscow in search of a missing friend, the Cubans tell him that the man's body has been found floating in the bay, and they have no plans to investigate. When two more murders follow, Arkady decides to take on what the Cubans will not. Though he speaks no Spanish in a country where he is now considered pariah, there is something about detective Ofelia Osorio and Havana's faded dangerous beauty that plunges him back into life.

Geraldine Brooks spent her girlhood in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia. Longing to discover faraway places, she found pen-pals in the Middle-east, Europe and America. Twenty years later, Brooks, now an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a journey to locate her long lost friends. She found men and women whose lives had taken drastic turns through war and hatred, fame and notoriety, and the ravages of mental illness. Enormously moving, surprisingly funny and endlessly fascinating, her story speaks to the power of time, perspective, and the restlessness felt by everyone who has ever yearned to travel the world.