Seven Books for Seven Continents
Published on June 03, 2025
By Catherine L.
This is a booklist for the aspiring Carmen Sandiegos.
You want compelling places? Distant lands? Perhaps a corner of the world you've barely thought about in your life? Sure you do.
And yet, are you limited by the meager human lifespan and a not-unending flow of funds to your bank account?
You're in luck, because with a library card, the price of a ticket to these places comes out to $0.00 and the trips take but a few hours of your time.
Anyone and everyone can challenge themselves (and win prizes!) by partaking in the Summer Reading Program, underway now through August 15. To go with the theme “Color Our World,” many of the challenges relate to art, colors, global cultures, and places around the world. These books could satisfy a few different challenges, but especially one of these:
1. Read a book set in a location you've visited or would like to visit
22. Read a book set somewhere in the world that you know very little about
For a measure of authentic local perspective, all of these are by authors actually from the area they write about. Well, with one exception… see if you can figure that out. 😉
North America: Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Location: Territory Mexico ceded to the U.S. in 1848, a.k.a. "Lost Territory"
Luz "Little Light" Lopez, a young tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to navigate 1930s Denver alone when her brother is run out of town by a white mob. She begins to have visions of her ancestral home, the Lost Territory, and the generations of her family who flourished and floundered there.
Location: Argentina
Translated from Spanish (fulfills #18!)
Warning: This is a dark one! In 1981, upon his wife's mysterious death, a father takes his son on a road trip across Argentina to her family estate. Buckle in for supernatural forces, a violent old cult, and the type of inheritance you really don't want.
Europe: Abigail by Magda Szabó
Location: Hungary
Translated from Hungarian (fulfills #18!)
Gina is the spoiled daughter of a general in the Hungarian army. When World War II hits, she’s sent away to a boarding school in the country, and there she butts heads with her classmates, teachers, and the institution’s values. In desperate straits, Gina decides to entrust her fate to Abigail, a classical statue on the school’s grounds, who is rumored to respond to requests for help.
Africa: Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde
Location: Nigeria
Lagos, one of the largest cities in Africa, is brought to life through a wide collection of characters living on the margins. If you like magical realism mixed with grit, try this.
Location: Singapore
Sisters Su and Emerald lead very different lives—Emerald in New York, Su in Singapore. But they share a secret, one that's proving increasingly difficult to protect: once they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang Dynasty China. Inspired by a Chinese folktale.
It's 1960s Australia, and Odette Brown is raising her granddaughter. For years, she's managed to evade the authorities that are systematically removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. But a new police officer has arrived in their small country town, and he plans to enforce the policy. Odette formulates a bold strategy to protect her family.
And you thought South Dakota gets cold... South Pole Station is a place with an average temperature of -54°F and no sunlight for six months a year. Cooper Gosling's life ambitions are falling flat, so she applies for an unusual job with the National Science Foundation in Antarctica. To her surprise, she qualifies. What follows is a comedy of errors amongst the group of strangers thrown together at the South Pole.
A pro tip for more immersive travel-reading experiences: select "strong sense of place" in the Novelist database's appeal mixer. Enjoy your real-life vacations this summer, but remember a trip to anywhere is also a page away.