After exhaustive searches of trip advisor and downloaded tips from Fodor, Frommer, and Rick Steves, I needed a little fiction to sustain me on my trip.  Since Scotland is on my itinerary, Diane Gabaldon’s Outlander series and a friend’s suggestion – Mary Stewart’s The Stormy Petrel – will be good starts.  I may bring my trainers and mimic The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry across Hadrian’s Wall and through the Cotswolds, and the new Maggie Hope mystery will be a great companion in London.

I hope to find a Peter May mystery in a bookstore, and maybe Sophie Hannah’s new resurrection of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in The Monogram Murders, but I have an old Jane Gardam paperback with me just in case.

And, of course, I have all the back issues of New Yorkers to catch up on…