One of Eric Newby's classic works, this tells the story of his experiences in an Italian prison camp in 1943, and his escape and evasion of the advancing German army. He was sheltered by an informal network of Italian peasants in the Apennines, and the book is a tribute to those idiosyncratic characters whose courage allowed him to evade capture. During this time he meets and falls in love with Wanda, who would later become his wife. It's an evocative book, beautifully written, and provides an insight into a way of life little known by the outside world. A deserved classic.

A mosaic of short stories, dialogues and fictional diary entries, set mostly in New Mexico, and characterised by their sensual muscularity reminiscent of Hemingway. His characters are mostly lost, searching for redemption but failing to find it, searching for a fictional American Dream. It's a sad but powerful read, the stories are mostly just a few pages, but carry a real sense of place and character.

This limited edition book brings together a selection of writing related to New Mexico by the late Sam Shepard, drawn from various novels, short stories and memoir; and atmospheric photos of gas stations in New Mexico taken in the early 1960s. It's a fitting tribute to the restless Shepard, who lived in Santa Fe in the 1980s and from 2010-15. The writing is powerful, searching and masculine, and has sent me on a quest to acquire the books excerpted here, and the photographs add a nostalgic sense of place.

In this somewhat contentious book, the author and her husband move from high flying jobs in London to a remote, unnamed island in the Scottish Hebrides, buy a croft, and attempt to live an idyllic life. Nothing goes to plan, her marriage breaks down, she fails to make connections with the hostile locals, but is eventually redeemed through ocean swimming and nature. It wasn't well received in Scotland, where the island concerned was quickly identified, and the actions of the locals she described in the book were denied, and there was a minor controversy.

This is a kind of sequel to his earlier account of his war time experience in Italy: Love and War in the Apennines. After the war, he and Wanda, now his wife, buy a small ruined farmhouse in the Apuan Alps on the border of Tuscany and Liguria. This book chronicles the next 25 years of sporadic visits to this very isolated house, it and the farm's restoration, and their relationship with the charming and eccentric locals.

At less than 120 pages of widely spaced, typewriter-style print, this is an incredibly unsettling little book. It is 2022, and in an unexplained event, all power goes off instantly, everywhere. 5 people are gathered in an apartment in New York when this happens, and they discuss recent events, and speculate about what may have happened, while mayhem begins on the streets outside. That's it. It's a dazzling and bewildering piece of fiction, taking place obliquely to the main events. It was written just prior to Covid.