Ready to wing your way overseas? Yet, international travel is still fraught and filled with testing restrictions and quarantine uncertainties. So, why not quickly and easily transport yourself to new sights and sounds from the comfort of home with one of these recommended reads, all set beyond Texas?

New Year by Juli Zeh

Lanzarote on New Year’s Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés, the small village with a view all the way to this Spanish Canary Islands coast. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children—yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year’s Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama. Preorder now for November publication. $12.99

No Matter The Wreckage | Poems by Sarah Kay

No Matter the Wreckage presents readers with new and sure-to-be-loved work that showcases Sarah Kay’s knack for celebrating not only travel but also family, love, history, and unlikely love affairs between inanimate objects (“Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire”), among other curious topics. Both fresh and wise, Kay’s poetry allows readers to join in on her journey of discovering herself and the world around her. It’s an honest and powerful collection. $24.99

The New Clean | Poems by Jon Sands

Jon Sands has traveled into a ridiculous world, where nothing is too hilarious to not be honest, and nothing is too honest. Best of all, he’s packed us in his suitcase. He represents an ever-changing population of those raised elsewhere who find themselves beckoned by the history, mystique, and magic-makers of the international melting pot that is New York City. These poems inhabit their own contradictions, and exquisitely navigate the many complicated sides of what it means to be alive. $15

Europes by Jacques Réda

In Europes, Jacques Réda takes the reader on a leisurely, lyrical journey across the continent, from the bucolic pastures of Switzerland to the colorful streets of his beloved Paris. Réda’s encounters and observations subvert preconceived notions of travel and home, and provide an unforgettable glimpse of landscapes in flux. With its sumptuous blend of poetry and prose, Europes is an endearing and idiosyncratic travelogue.$12

The Young Man from Savoy by C-F Ramuz

Set at the beginning of the twentieth century in a French mountainside village overlooking Lake Geneva, The Young Man from Savoy is the story of Joseph Jacquet, “a young man unlike others.” The existence of this village boy, hired out as a hand on a schooner, seems fated to unravel from the moment he glimpses the mesmerizing Miss Anabella, a high-wire artiste with a traveling circus. She becomes the object of Joseph’s fantasizing obsession, and a catalyst for the bizarre and brutal acts that ensue. $15

The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon

Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tire tracks in the mud leading into an almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other cars passed that way until after dawn. By that time the tracks had been washed away by the heavy rain. After being in New Zealand for only five days, the English Chamberlain family had vanished into thin air. The date was 4 April, 1978. In 2010, the remains of the eldest Chamberlain child are discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father’s watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of scored wood marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died? Where is the rest of the family? And what is the meaning of the tally stick? (Preorder for November 2 release.) $16.99

Art Meets Travel | Photography by Robert McCabe

Easily tour the splendor of Greece through the eyes of American photographer/author Robert McCabe, who received honorary Greek citizenship in 2020 for his service to the country. From pre-tourism through its current popular destination status, McCabe’s collection of books transports us to the magical islands of Greece.(Bonus:  At the end of July, a long-awaited Robert McCabe exhibition under the auspices of both the Greek Archaeological Service and the Town of Mykonos will be curated by the former cultural advisor to the President.) Prices vary

For Other Ghosts by Donald Quist

In this collection of short fiction, Donald Quist threads together intimate stories of family and culture with delicate, and emotionally complex, connective tissue. His style is warm and humble, yet polished and poetic. The environments are highly sensory and vivid, whether it’s a cramped twelve-passenger van in Ghana, or a Bangkok street stand selling mango and sticky rice. The smells, tastes, and textures of For Other Ghosts transports readers across the globe while grounding them in the tender and familiar. $20

Cover photo courtesy Gary Lopater on Unsplash

One of the pleasures of publishing a lifestyle magazine like Texas Lifestyle & Travel Magazine is that we receive invitations to attend events, travel and review products. We accept and write about a small fraction of these offers, always with a view to what would be interesting or helpful to our readers. You may notice that our reviews are generally positive, which is because we don’t enjoy writing negative ones, and therefore choose only to write about the things we can recommend without reservation.