Fancy taking a journey without leaving the comfort of your sofa? We have just the ticket! If you like your fiction dark and hard-boiled, we can show you St. Petersburg, Mumbai, Havana, and Singapore, courtesy of Akashic Books’ groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. And if you’re keen for a jaunt through twentieth-century Europe, we highly recommend the story collection Life Embitters by prolific Catalonian critic, reporter, and writer Josep Pla.

For fans of meditative mysteries, we recommend the enchanting Distant Light by Italian author Antonio Moresco. And if you prefer your existential capers served with a side of humor, you have to check out Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, which Charles Baxter called “the funniest, and scariest, book ever written.”