Brilliant green birds and sweet-faced sloths. Turquoise blue water and treetop hotels. Fried plantains and ceviche. The photos on these Instagram accounts are everything you need to fully understand the pura vida.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got how fiction improves vocab, Ruth Ozeki's new novel, beautiful abandoned places, the onus of good book translations, and more.
This story travels back and forth in time and place with a pleasingly dizzying effect. Set in the forests of British Columbia, modern Tokyo, and a timeless monastery, it's challenging, entertaining, and impactful.
Costa Rican meals are usually a rainbow of fruits and veggies with rice and black beans making an appearance on almost every plate. This comfort food is gussied up with the ubiquitous elixir known as Salsa Lizano.
Costa Rica offers a sweet combination of chill (sunny beaches, pura vida) and action (volcanoes! ziplining! surfing!). Join us on a virtual trip to Central America and prepare to blow up your TBR with great books.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got iconic poems, weird English spelling, UNESCO World Heritage sites, fictional magical schools, reading at the beach, and more.
Summer camp should be a time to make memories and lifelong friendships. But in 1978, Camp Wonder Falls was the site of a brutal murder in the woods. Now Stevie Bell is out to solve the cold case and a new murder.
By sharing his sharply-observed moments with a touch of poignancy, Dick Allen's poem invites you to wander through warm, nostalgic memories of your own. It's a meditation on the welcome weight of snapshots in time.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got an ode to in-flight magazines, fiction from Erik Larson, Prague architecture, being a good hotel guest, blackhouses, and more.
This novel has all the elements of an ideal escapist read: Gothic atmosphere on a school campus, a mysterious diary, a creepy 19th-century story, possible ghosts, an intrepid detective, and an unreliable heroine. Yes.
We cannot resist an epic family saga: Secrets kept and revealed. Half-truths passed through the generations. Expectations and sacrifice. Tales of bravery, love, and loyalty that defy the odds. These books have it all.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got a 'confusing words' quiz, nighttime travel photos, Q&A with Matt Haig, summer sandwiches, rose windows, LeVar Burton, and more.
Time travel to Dublin, Ireland, during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 in the company of three remarkable women. This is historical fiction with a page-turning plot that hinges on quiet moments and heroic feats.
Our podcast has been MIA since May. In this mini-episode of our show, we explain where we've been and why. Unfortunately, it wasn't an exciting vacation. David had emergency cancer surgery — but don't worry: He's OK.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got Chuck Wendig's new haunted house novel, 'the pavement surgeon,' where lost luggage goes, nerding-out with rare books, and more.
Found on the southwestern tip of England, Cornwall is known for its dramatic stone cliffs, crashing surf, and hiking paths — a brilliant setting for this story of a summer holiday that's not all sugar and sunshine.
A room service menu and stocked mini-bar, five-star service, a posh guest room, perhaps even a swim-up bar; these are things of which dream vacations are made. But it's so much fun when fictional holidays go awry.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got 'Jane Eyre' as a sacred text, bookstore cats, a chat with Daniel Silva, crossword puzzle secrets, European must-see, and more.
This novel has so much good stuff: a foreboding lighthouse and a secret society dinner, tall ships and sooty London streets, love-to-hate-'em villains and heroes with undeniable mettle — plus mystery and adventure.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got surfing with Agatha Christie, a beautiful Budapest flat, mythical spots IRL, who versus whom, Dick Francis novels, and more.
This novel has everything a dramatic adventure requires: compelling characters making (very) questionable decisions, the timeless conflict between haves and have-nots, an opulent setting at sea, and impending peril.
