Explorations in Reading: Books from Outside the US

An operative jumps back into the world of espionage when his former supervisor is attacked while researching the truth behind the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been hoarded by the Knights Templar.
Setting: France

A story about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.
Author is from South Korea

Hired to rescue a man's daughter from a convent where a powerful corrupt priest is forcing her to be his personal concubine, Alatriste finds himself thrust into a religious and political conspiracy with ties to the highest levels of the Inquisition.
Setting: Spain

Cambridge historian Elizabeth Vogelsang is found dead and her son Cameron asks his former lover, Lydia Brooke, to ghostwrite the final chapters of his late mother's book, but in the process, they uncover disturbing secrets that may have cost Elizabeth her life.
Setting: England
Author: England

One-time Washington power broker Joel Backman who may have acquired secrets to a sophisticated satellite surveillance system is pardoned by the outgoing President under orders from the CIA and is given a new identity in Italy; however, the CIA then reveals his whereabouts to the Israelis, Russians, Chinese, and the Saudis in hopes that someone will assassinate him.
Setting: Italy

Jugnu and Chanda have broken Pakistani law by living together, and their sudden disappearance has thrown suspicion upon Chanda's brothers who are arrested for their murders.
Setting: England

Former Beijing investigator witnesses the death of the Chinese Minister of Tourism who was shot while in her car, and is promptly arrested for the crime, but he convinces authorities to release him only to be forced to go in search of the real killer.
Setting: China

This young man's rite of passage is traced through jungle combat to malaria-induced fever visions to the purgatory of life in military-occupied Saigon.
Setting: Saigon

Two boys, moved to the country for "re-education" as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution, find little to amuse them, but things change when they discover a stash of Western classics in Chinese translation.
Setting: China

Selene, having grown up in a palace with her parents, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, is forced by war to build a new life in the household of Roman emperor Octavianus, where she finds herself torn between two young men and two possible destinies.
Setting: Ancient Egypt

Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.
Setting: Nigeria

Afghan women Mariam and Laila grow close, despite their nearly twenty-year age difference and initial rivalry, as they suffer at the hands of a common enemy--their abusive, much-older husband, Rasheed.
Setting: Afghanistan

Seventeen-year-old Lev Beniov, having been arrested for looting the corpse of a German paratrooper, is given the opportunity to be released from jail if he, along with a soldier imprisoned for desertion, can secure twelve eggs to be used in the colonel's daughter's wedding cake by traversing the dangerous streets of Leningrad.
Setting: Leningrad

When Bibi Chen, the leader of a group of twelve American tourists, mysteriously dies while on an art expedition in the Himalayan foothills of China, the remainder of the group discover that the Burma Road is filled with danger and uncertainty.
Setting: China

When she is tricked by her stepfather and sold into prostitution, Lakshmi becomes submerged in a nightmare where her only comfort is the friendship she forms with the other girls, which helps her survive and eventually escape.
Setting: India

William E. Dodd becomes the American ambassador to Germany, where he witnesses first-hand the atrocities of Hitler's regime and watches his daughter fall in love with a Nazi officer.
Setting: Germany

Contains black-and-white comic strip images in which the author shares the story of her life in Tehran, Iran, where she lived from ages six to fourteen while the country came under control of the Islamic regime.
Setting: Iran

In October 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.
Setting: Germany

Sixteen-year-old Ava does not know who she is or where she belongs, but when she tries out a new personality--and sexual orientation--at a different school, her edgy girlfriend, potential boyfriend, and others are hurt by her lack of honesty.
Setting: Australia

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
Setting: Vietnam

Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL, recounts his life and military experiences, and provides an eye-witness account of war in Iraq, shares the strains of war on his marriage and family, and honors his fellow soldiers.
Setting: Middle Eastern countries

Wounded in Iraq while his Army unit is on convoy and treated for many months for traumatic brain injury, the first person Ben remembers from his earlier life is his brother who has autism.
Setting: Iraq

Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton feels alienated from the Chinese and British cultures that rule his community, until he forms an unexpected friendship with a Japanese diplomat who is renting an island from Philip's father, but as World War II erupts around him, Philip slowly realizes his new friend is a Japanese spy.
Setting: Malaysia