I NEED A RECOMMENDATION PLEASE THREAD

This is a place where readers can ask the group for recommendations.

I'm travelling the world alphabetically and will arrive in the Bahamas and Bahrein soon. Does anyone have any suggestions for these countries as I can't find any fiction? Thanks!

depressaholic and charbutton have both been reading in the Caribbean region and might have some suggestions. I did find this on the web—an excerpt from Bahamas, Turks and Caicos By Christopher P. Baker, which has a column about Bahamian literature and names a few titles.

Thanks Lois, I looked it up but unfortunately none of the books mentioned are available in my part of the world and do not seem interesting enough to make the effort anyway. I think I'll just skip both Bahrein and the Bahamas until something comes up. But I really appreciate your help!

I've been trying to read books for the northern part of Europe (think Scandinavia & Iceland) but I'm having a hard time with it. I like mysteries, detectives, thrillers, and I figured there are plenty of nordic authors who write these kind of novels. Unfortunately, most are just too gritty and slow-paced for me, very dark, with desolate main characters who are often very passive for a big part of the beginning of the book.

So, I'm hoping someone here will have some recommendations here that are more to my tastes. I like cozy mysteries (think Susan Wittig Albert, Gayle Trent), historical mysteries (like Robin Paige amd Anne Perry) and fast paced thrillers on the light side of the spectrum like Atlantis by David Gibbons and Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston, or Tom Clancy.

So I'm looking for books like that and while I would like authors who set the book in their own country, I am mainly concerned about setting of the book, not nationality of the author. So Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden settings recommendations that are the type of books I like would be most welcome.

This isn't a mystery, but I can't recommend The Long Ships highly enough. It is a lively, fun, rollicking Viking adventure and easily became one of my favorite novels after I read it last year.

Have you tried Yrsa Sigurdardottir? She is an Icelandic mystery author and I have enjoyed two of her books: My Soul to Take and Last Rituals. Not exactly cosy, but not slasher either. And there is a bit of humor.

I’m currently engaged in a Czech reading project but am finding it hard to find female Czech authors – can anyone recommend some? Their works would need to have an English translation available.

Some female authors who are already familiar to me –

Barbara Konig
Iva Pekarkova
Petra Hulova

Several people have read Jar City this year - that's set in Iceland.

#6, 7 & 9> thanks for your recs, I'll check them out.

um, I found this neat 'Atlas of Novels' in one of our newspapers...

Romanatlas

Is there anything like that in English?

>11 aquascum:
Nice, as far as it goes! Direct link doesn't seem to work, but you can get to it from this page: http://www.faz.net/artikel/C30712/neu-f-a-z-romanatlas-virtuelles-handgepaeck-fu...

I'm not sure how accurate or updated this one is but it's worth a shot.

Hope to have fixed the link ;)

13 thank you for your link!

#11 > Here's one: http://www.bibliotravel.com/

I bookmarked this a long time ago when there wasn't much to it, but your question made me revisit it, and I'm glad I did. It 's been greatly expanded and looks quite useful.

>10 Samantha_kathy: Samantha_kathy, judging from your tastes, I'd go with Yrsa Sigurdardottir rather than Indridason. The former, which DowntownLibrarian notes, is a bit lighter generally. The protagonist is Thora, a lawyer and struggling single mom. She always slips a bit of Icelandic history into each book. The Indridason is urban, sometimes gritty police procedural featuring a lone wolf type protagonist, not really a thriller.

If you want stand alone psychological thrillers, Swedish author Karin Alvtegan should fit the bill. The Boy in the Suitcase by two Danish women is a pretty straightforward thriller featuring a nurse as protagonist (a nurse who is used to going into dangerous areas. I believe). I wasn't terribly impressed with this, but then again, I don't find thrillers very satisfying literary fodder. I imagine a thriller fan would get much more out of it:-) It's a new book, just out, or just coming out.

>16 avaland: avaland: thank you very much. I will definitely check out Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Her first two novels are available in my library, so that'll be easy to do :D.

#10, Samantha_kathy, thanks for asking this question... I feel exactly the same way as you about the much-hyped Scandinavian crime genre. (Incidentally I didn't much like Jar City for many of the reasons that you mention). Let us know what you think of the Sigurdardottirs!

Any recommendations for Czech genre fiction? Most of the stuff I have seems to be classic/literary fiction and I'd like to branch out. I'm interested in Czech sci fi/fantasy and mystery/suspense/crime novels.

I've already read several books by Karel Capek who wrote works that could be categorized in a number of different genres.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

>19 DieFledermaus: DieFledermaus: I've heard good things about The Seven Churches by Milos Urban. It's a dark thriller. It's on my TBR list, but I have not gotten around to it yet, so I can't speak from personal experience.

>19 DieFledermaus: You might enjoy two books by David Herter - On the Overgrown Path and The Luminous Depths (there's a third, but I haven't read it yet). Herter is an American, and has been a genre writer, a good one, but his rate of production is very slow. He seems fascinated with Capek and Janacek, and both books I named are stories using one or both as characters (and Karel Capek's brother). There's a bit of the fantastic, perhaps one might argue SF, but either way, both my husband and I found the books very enjoyable.

Twisted Spoon Press has probably already been suggested to you. They are a publisher of translated European literature, including Czech, and are located in Prague.

I don't think I have seen any crime novels out of the region, at least any which have been translated. But here's something from an article on world crime novels in The Independent: "The former Czechoslovakia is a strange hole in European crime fiction in English. Playwright and novelist Pavel Kohout's The Widow Killer features a Czech detective who must team up with a Gestapo agent in occupied Prague to catch a serial killer.
Read 'The Widow Killer' (Picador US)

>20 Samantha_kathy: – Thanks –I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one. Sounds a little like Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor, which is on the TBR pile.

>21 avaland: – I will definitely check out the Herter series – I have a bit of a Janacek obsession myself.

I did hear about Twisted Spoon on LibraryThing some time ago and have enjoyed a couple of their books (though *enjoyed* might not be the right word for The Maimed) – several others are on the to buy list.

Thanks for the link – it’s a good reference. The Kohout sounds pretty interesting.

I traveled to El Salvador in July to do some work with Habitat for Humanity, and found the history of the country, and Central America in general, really fascinating. As it looks as though this trip will be an annual endeavour, I would love recommendations for Central American authors - I'd like to tour the region a bit through novels. I checked out the Central America thread here, but was wondering if anyone had other recs?

Thanks!

I'm always on the lookout for novels written by Papua New Guinean writers (or any novel set in PNG -- other than Mister Pip). Also, any Polynesian novels written by non-Europeans.

This is not a native author, and it is set in Borneo I believe, but you might like Kalimantan by C.S. Godshalk Joyce.

#24: Joyce, have you come across Quinine by Kelly Ana Morey, she's a New Zealander but spent time there as a child. Here's a review of her book, I haven't read it yet.
Albert Wendt is a Samoan poet/novelist who lives in New Zealand and has had several books published. The adventures of Vela, a verse novel, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Nonfiction - you might like to look at some of historian Anne Salmond's books about early contact between indigenous people and Europeans in the Pacific. Aphrodite's Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti is meant to be fairly outstanding. I went to a talk she shared with Thomas Keneally a couple of years ago and she had him captivated.

A recent YA novel, Telesa : the covenant keeper, by Samoan writer Lani Wendt Young is self published I think and available as an e-book on Amazon.

I'm looking for a fiction book set in the Australian Territory Coral Sea Islands. I know Willis Island is inhabited, so you'd think there would be a novel somewhere set there. Anyone have any suggestions? Author nationality does not matter, only setting.

My 2015 Alphabet read of authors in translation is almost over, but I am looking for suggestions for an author whose family name begins with X. Any suggestions? I seem to have all the others covered many times over.

Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian

>29 MarthaJeanne: Thanks, I think I have that somewhere.

>30 anisoara: I know I have this one and also One Man's Bible, but I was taking Gao for the family name. Will have to check that.

Ooops, I think you're right!!!

>32 anisoara: That's okay, I may have to be "flexible" with this one!

Um not sure how you feel about ancient Greeks but Xenophon wrote a few histories?

Unfortunately, I am no good at knowing which is the family name, but maybe one of these...?

Lu Xun
Cao Xueqin
Qiu Xiaolong
Xinran Xue
Ruiyan Xu

ETA: Oops, missed the in translation part.
Malcolm X

Malcolm X, while fabulous, spoke English.