News & Opinion

Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards Winners

We're pleased to announce the winners of the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year. Grand Prize winner Erin Byrne collected $1000 and the gold award for “Our Ravaged Lady,” her powerful evocation of Notre Dame Cathedral’s symbolism for generations of the French people and for herself personally. Amanda Castleman won the silver award and $750 for “Love in a Time of Abundance,” her poignant account of vanishing cultures and our own mortality on a safari in Botswana. Tom Miller and Chase Nelson shared the bronze award and $500, Tom for his inspirational profile of the “best guitar maker in Cuba” in “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop,” and Chase for his dramatic tale of life and death and conquest en route from Machu Picchu in “Dark Train to Cusco.” Here’s the complete list of winners. Read the Grand Prize Gold winning story in our Editors' Choice section.

Now Available: The Creative Spark

We're very excited about Michael Shapiro's latest collection of interviews, The Creative Spark, on the subject of creativity. In it he talks with 32 of our most inventive individuals from the worlds of music, literature, film, exploration, and cuisine about their process and what creativity means to them. Each chapter is prefaced by a short biography. Among those interviewed: Smokey Robinson • Barbara Kingsolver • Francis Ford Coppola • Jane Goodall • Amy Tan • David Sedaris • Graham Nash • Pico Iyer • Joan Rivers • Merle Haggard • Lucinda Williams • Frances Mayes • Judy Collins • Melissa Etheridge • Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson • Lyle Lovett • Robert Earl Keen • Dave Alvin • SF Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow • Jerry Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals • Ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro • and many more. Order a copy now!
Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards Winners2020-04-29T17:00:06-07:00

Now Available: The Creative Spark

We're very excited about Michael Shapiro's latest collection of interviews, The Creative Spark, on the subject of creativity. In it he talks with 32 of our most inventive individuals from the worlds of music, literature, film, exploration, and cuisine about their process and what creativity means to them. Each chapter is prefaced by a short biography. Among those interviewed: Smokey Robinson • Barbara Kingsolver • Francis Ford Coppola • Jane Goodall • Amy Tan • David Sedaris • Graham Nash • Pico Iyer • Joan Rivers • Merle Haggard • Lucinda Williams • Frances Mayes • Judy Collins • Melissa Etheridge • Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson • Lyle Lovett • Robert Earl Keen • Dave Alvin • SF Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow • Jerry Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals •  Ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro • and many more. Order a copy now!

Now Available: The Creative Spark2020-02-06T08:22:47-08:00

The Girl Who Said No and Strange Tales of World Travel

We’re very excited about our early 2019 books The Girl Who Said No by Natalie Galli and Strange Tales of World Travel by Gina and Scott Gaille. Natalie Galli’s riveting memoir reveals the story of eighteen-year-old Franca Viola, who made history in 1966 as one of the first “#metoo” heroines of modern times, when she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Follow along with Galli as she brings this story to life and shares her observations of Sicilian culture. Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, and wherever they go they ask local people what’s the strangest experience they’ve ever had there. Strange Tales of World Travel presents 50 of these amazing stories.

The Girl Who Said No and Strange Tales of World Travel2019-09-30T17:18:37-07:00

Billy Gogan Sequel Launches Spring Books

We’re getting a jump on spring with the publication of Billy Gogan, Gone fer Soldier, book two in the Billy Gogan series from Solas House Fiction. Follow Billy’s adventures as he flees New York and joins the army and lands in the Mexican-American War where he becomes an aide to the young officer Ulysses S. Grant. Later this spring look for Strange Tales of World Travel by Gina and Scott Gaille (with a foreword by Don George), who recount fifty of the most amazing stories they’ve been told in travels to more than 100 countries. Then get ready for The Girl Who Said No, Natalie Galli’s exploration of Sicily in search of the woman who broke a 1000-year-old Sicilian tradition by refusing to marry her abductor.

Solas Awards Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year. Grand Prize winner David Robinson collected $1000 for “The Mystery of the Sahara,” his poignant evocation of a place and a person both shrouded in mystery. Matthew Félix won the silver award and $750 for “The Citroën and the Pomegranate,” his engaging account of an astonishing set of coincidences on his travels from Istanbul to Barcelona to Hvar. Sivani Babu took the bronze and $500 for “The House on KVR Swamy Road,” her moving reflection on family life and the passage of time on a visit to her grandparents’ house in Rajahmundry, India.
Billy Gogan Sequel Launches Spring Books2019-03-14T14:45:52-07:00

Pick Up a Copy

All of our books are available for order on Indiebound, Amazon, or at your favorite bookstore. Our newest book is The China Option by Sophia Erickson, a guide for Millennials to find success, and pay off student debt, by teaching in China. Late summer brought Conner Gorry's 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go, the latest in our popular 100 Places for Women series. Earlier in the year we released Tania Romanov's Mother Tongue, her poignant memoir of life stretching from the Balkans to San Francisco and back again over three generations. That was followed by Carla Gambescia's La Dolce Vita University, an unconventional guide to Italian culture that is witty, charming, whimsical, and loaded with fascinating insights, truly an A to Z experience. Then came James Michael Dorsey's Baboons for Lunch, a moving, powerful, and sometimes funny series of encounters with the world's remotest places and people.

Pick Up a Copy2019-02-26T11:25:14-08:00

Recent Books

A Hard Place to Leave

A Hard Place to Leave
Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award!

Vogue‘s Best Books of 2022

“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times

Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.

Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.

The Temporary European

“Vivid, funny, perceptive, intimate, and charged with a love of travel and a deep sense of humanity.” —Rick Steves, from the Foreword


20+ Years as Rick Steves’ Right-Hand Man


A candid account of how the sausage gets made in the travel business—told with affection, warts-and-all honesty, and a sense of humor.


What is it like to write guidebooks, make travel television, and lead bus tours for a living? Find out with Cameron as he samples spleen sandwiches at a Palermo street market, stews in Budapest’s thermal baths, survives driving in Sicily without going insane, and much more. Along the way, he shares many lessons learned from his favorite Europeans. You’ll also get a reality check for what seems to be a traveler’s dream job—working with Rick Steves and his merry band of travelers. Not just for Rick Steves fans but for anyone who loves Europe, The Temporary European is inspiring, insightful, and fun.

La Dolce Vita University – 2nd Edition

Come travel with La Dolce Vita University (L◆D◆V◆U) to the heart of Italian culture in the seductive spirit of la dolce vita. L◆D◆V◆U is the perfect sampler to indulge anyone curious about—or already in amore with—Italy and its remarkably rich trove of cultural treasures. In dozens of entertaining yet authoritative mini-essays, including 60 new stories and 40 new illustrations in this fully updated 2nd edition, L◆D◆V◆U lets you explore, at your leisure, fascinating aspects of Italy’s cuisine, history, art, traditions, style, legendary personalities, and so much more.

The book is organized alphabetically, but nothing is ever quite that straightforward when it comes to Italy. Even if you choose to read these mini-essays sequentially, you may very well feel as though you’re wandering the mysterious alleys of a medieval town, the hidden vicoli of a larger city, or even along the serpentine canals of La Serenissima.

The End of the World Notwithstanding

“Every word the right word, this book is a genuine keeper.” —Kirkus Reviews***Starred Review***

Rife with misadventure, brushes with death, and moments of existential insight, The End of the World Notwithstanding is a hilarious and reflective look at the emotional experiences that make everyday life exciting—and the physical ones that remind us we’re lucky to be alive. These nail-biting stories, all true, fill the reader with wonder, as in, “How do any of us survive?”

Encounters with wildfire, hideous insects, psychotic house pets, bad weather, gravity, predators, bullies, and the most potent force of all—fear—unfold in remote landscapes of the American West; on neon-splashed Hollywood sidewalks; in a Catskills summer camp for actors; in the Boston apartment of a famous senator; on a cliff high above the Mediterranean; beneath the streets of Paris. Goodwin looks for and finds meaning, if not security, in a clear-eyed acknowledgment of the human condition—and in the saving grace of laughter.

The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12

As Andrew McCarthy wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “For more than 20 years, Travelers’ Tales has been publishing books that might best be described as the literary equivalent of a group of travelers sitting around a dim café, sipping pints or prosecco and trading their best stories.”

Now comes The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12: True Stories from Around the World—the latest collection in the best-selling, award-winning series that invites you to ride shotgun alongside intrepid female nomads as they wander the globe discovering new places, faces, and facets of themselves.

“In story after story,” McCarthy wrote about the previous volume of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, “the refreshing absence of bluster and bravado, coupled with the optimism necessary for bold travel, create a unifying narrative that testifies to the personal value and cultural import of leaving the perceived safety of home and setting out into the wider world.”

The essays in this volume are as diverse as the destinations, exploring themes of kindness, transformation, nature, friendship, family, strength, and resilience.

French Like Moi

“I laughed until my sides hurt at Carpenter’s lighthearted and self-deprecating take on living in l’Hexagone.” —Kimberley Lovato, author of Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves

When Scott Carpenter moves from Minnesota to Paris, little does he suspect the dramas that await: scheming neighbors, police denunciations, surly demonstrators, cooking disasters, medical mishaps—not to mention all those lectures about cheese! It turns out that nothing in the City of Light can be taken for granted, where even trips to the grocery store lead to adventure.

Everything is grist for Carpenter’s mill. In eighteen tales, he lifts the curtain on what passes for normal in Europe’s most glorious capital: neighbors who plot to murder one another, hiccups in transportation, bizarre store exchange policies, operatic dramas in the condo association, healthcare à la française, underground labyrinths, and even terrorism. In the company of a cast of recurring characters, he leads us through the merry labyrinth of the everyday, one hilarious faux pas after another. Through it all, Carpenter, winner of Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize for humor, keeps his eye on the central mystery of what makes the French French (and Midwesterners Midwestern).

One Hundred Years of Exile

“A gripping family account, historically rigorous and ultimately moving…that couples cinematic drama with both tragedy and triumph.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A vividly intense and personal saga…. It stirred such powerful emotions…” —Marina Romanov, grandniece of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia

One Hundred Years of Exile: A Romanov’s Search for Her Father’s Russia is the story of one woman’s journey through 100 years of history to find peace with her father. Tania Romanov Amochaev and her father were both exiled from their homelands as infants; both knew life in refugee camps. Their shared fate does not lead to mutual understanding.

The family’s immigration to San Francisco heralded a promising new future—but while Tania just wanted to be an American, her father could not trust that this was his final asylum. His fears and his resistance to assimilation leave Tania with deep resentment toward him and her Russian heritage. Decades later, his unexpected death exposes Tania’s open wounds and a host of unanswered questions about her father and his story.

A serendipitous meeting with a last surviving member of the Russian royal family, followed by a baffling error that miraculously connects her with unknown relatives, catapults Tania on a quest for answers in her father’s homeland.

100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go – 10th Anniversary

“Makes me want to pack my bag and follow Van Allen’s alluring suggestions…she reveals an intimacy with Italy and a honed sense of adventure. Andiamo!” —Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

This fully updated 10th Anniversary Edition of 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go is packed with new information. Susan Van Allen provides the best insider’s femme-friendly advice for sights, shopping, restaurants, and many new destinations and Golden Day itineraries to enhance your travel experiences in the Bel Paese.

Susan is your fun-loving, savvy-traveler girlfriend whispering in your ear, inspiring you to make your Italian dream vacation come true. Go along with her as she leads you up and down the boot to discover this extraordinary country where Venus (Vixen Goddess of Love and Beauty) and The Madonna (Nurturing Mother of Compassion) reign side-by-side. These pages, curated with passion, humor, and expert female tips, are guaranteed to lift you out of the flood of online information and make your travel planning easy and pleasurable.

How To Shit Around the World — 2nd Edition

“Straightforward advice…a great bathroom read.” —The Washington Post

“A cheery and common-sensical guide.” —The Independent

“Worth digesting.” —Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel

“Likely to remain the definitive guide.” —The Bookseller

With an Introduction by Kathleen Meyer, author of How To Shit in the Woods

International travel is rewarding and fun, but sometimes it exacts a price. Activities we take for granted—eating, bathing, and going to the toilet—can range from challenging to risky in unfamiliar territory. In this second edition of How to Shit Around the World, Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth takes a sympathetic and funny approach to the most basic human activity, interweaving hilarious anecdotes from fellow travelers with sensible tips and techniques. More than just a how-to, this book inspires the traveler to be adventurous in dealing with foreign toilets, and to heed the fascinating cultural lessons to be learned from the simple act of using the bathroom.

The Creative Spark

“Michael Shapiro’s finely tuned, informed and intimate interviews strike to the heart of the matter.” —Tim Cahill, author of Hold the Enlightenment

The Creative Spark is a collection of interviews with some of the most creative people of our time: musicians, writers, visual artists, explorers, and chefs. These makers speak about what drives them, what helps them to see the world in fresh ways, and what inspires them turn their visions into art. During the past decade, Michael Shapiro has interviewed some of our brightest creative luminaries. Among the authors are Amy Tan, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, Pico Iyer, and Frances Mayes. His work as a music journalist has led to interviews with legends including Smokey Robinson, Lucinda Williams, Graham Nash, Lyle Lovett, Melissa Etheridge, Merle Haggard, and Jethro Tull bandleader Ian Anderson. And he’s spoken with creative masters in other fields, such as director Francis Ford Coppola and comedian Joan Rivers.