12 Books with Destinations in the Title

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature/meme now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The meme was originally the brainchild of The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is Destination Titles.

12 Books with Destinations in the Title

I did not limit my list to real-world destinations, so you’ll find several fantasy and SF destinations on my list. Given that, I was surprised not to have more titles, but I did limit the list to my 5-star reads. I also stuck with fiction (with one major exception), and with books I first read as an adult. There are so many children’s and YA books that I saved most of those for another post.

Titles are listed alphabetically, except when I listed more than one book from the same series, in which case they are in series order. Title links (if any) go to my reviews.

84, Charing Cross Road (Helene Hanff) I absolutely love this epistolary memoir, the correspondence between the author and a London bookseller. It’s warm and witty and full of books. (And the audiobook is stellar.) The title refers to the address of the London bookshop from whom Miss Hanff, a New Yorker, ordered many of her books.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales (Dylan Thomas). Thomas’s prose poem draws on his own childhood Christmases as a boy in Edwardian Wales. The language is strong, the imagery vivid, and the story charming. I read this almost every Christmas season, as well as watch the terrific television adaptation starring Denholm Elliott. I have been to Wales several times, but never in the winter.

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Heather Fawcett) is the second in Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series, but the only one to have a destination in the title. And “the Otherlands” is such a perfect name for Fawcett’s Fae lands, which have all the magic, wildness, danger, and unpredictability you would expect of Fairyland. But what really makes the series shine is the protagonist, Prof. Emily Wilde, a grumpy, introverted, brilliant, but socially-awkward academic (likely on the autism spectrum), and her charming, suave, relentlessly cheerful colleague Wendell Bambleby. (There’s a lot more to Wendell than is visible on the surface, but you’ll have to read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries to find out what; I don’t want to spoil it for you!)

Gentian Hill and Pilgrim’s Inn (Elizabeth Goudge). These two unrelated books are among my very favorites of Goudge’s novels. Gentian Hill is also about healing and love, as so many of Goudge’s books are, but it is one of her historical novels, taking place during the Napoleonic Wars. The main characters are a young midshipman who has deserted, a farmer’s adopted child, a wise old doctor, and a French émigré priest tortured by memories. The setting, including the titular hill (probably a fictional name) is near Torquay, in Devon, and the landscape, lore, and local traditions of Devon play a role in the book, as does the explosion of the HMS Amphion in nearby Plymouth. Pilgrim’s Inn is centered around an old maison dieu or pilgrim’s inn, the Herb of Grace (incidentally, its British title), as the various residents find spiritual and emotional healing, joy, and love (mostly not of the romantic sort.) While I’m not sure the Herb of Grace is a real building, it’s set in a very place: the area near Buckler’s Hard, in the New Forest near the southern coast of England.

The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) Technically the Night Circus isn’t a destination in that it doesn’t have a fixed address… but it’s very much a desired and eagerly-sought-after destination for the people who follow it or wait for its arrival, so I think it counts. If you haven’t read this gorgeous, atmospheric fantasy, you’re missing a wonderful experience.

O Jerusalem and Justice Hall (Laurie R. King) These are two of my (many) favorite books in King’s historical mystery series featuring Sherlock Holmes and his partner (in every sense of the word) Mary Russell. The fifth book in the series, O Jerusalem, takes place in Palestine between the two world wars; it is a novel-length flashback to a period mentioned but not elaborated on in the first book (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice), as Mary matured from being Holmes’s apprentice to his investigative partner. Justice Hall picks up after the end of the fourth book (The Moor, which only missed this list by about half a star), and features two important characters from O Jerusalem. The title refers to the ducal seat, one of the (fictional) great estates of Britain. Both books brilliantly evoke their settings, making you feel as though you are really there.

The Siren of Sussex (Mimi Matthews) and the other three books in the Belles of London series. I love the way Matthews weaves believable diversity and awareness of class and colonialism into this historical romance series. And I’m honestly taken aback that I have never reviewed them, because they are all wonderful. While the destination mentioned in the first title is Sussex, most of the book takes place in London. The other three locations are all in London: Belgrave Square, Ludgate Hill, and Maiden Lane. Of these, Ludgate Hill and Maiden Lane play the biggest roles in their respective books.

Station Eternity (Mur Lafferty) brilliantly combines science fiction and twisty mystery whilst pointing out (and to some extent, deconstructing) the tropes of cozy mystery, all set within the confines of Station Eternity, a diplomatic space station. The plot, with its flashbacks and frequent POV changes, is expertly crafted, and Lafferty’s worldbuilding is fantastic—particularly the various alien races who are the main residents of the station.

Summers at Castle Auburn (Sharon Shinn) is a luminous coming-of-age fantasy; the young protagonist spends her summers with her half-sister at Castle Auburn, and develops a crush on the castle’s handsome prince. Eventually the maturing Coriel begins to see past her romantic daydreams and through the glamour to the darker realities of both prince and castle life.

The Two Towers (J. R. R. Tolkien). It’s probably cheating to single this book out, when the entire trilogy is essentially one book, but it was the only way to get The Lord of the Rings into the list. Although to be honest, I wouldn’t want to visit either of the titular towers (Orthanc and Minas Morgul, according to JRRT’s own illustration.)

Honorary mention: Mysteries with destinations in the title (mostly 4 and 4.5 stars)

• Death in Kew Gardens, Murder in the East End, Death at the Crystal Palace, The Secret of Bow Lane (Jennifer Ashley)
• The Leper of St. Giles and several other titles in the Brother Cadfael series (Ellis Peters)
• Murder on Black Swan Lane (Andrea Penrose) and the entire Wrexford & Sloane series
• Night at the Vulcan (Ngaio Marsh)
• At Bertram’s Hotel, A Caribbean Mystery, Death on the Nile, Destination Unknown(!), Murder in Mesopotamia, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret of Chimneys, The Seven Dials Mystery, They Came to Baghdad, (Agatha Christie)

Honorary mention: Series with destinations in the series name

• The Dragonriders of Pern series (Anne McCaffrey)
• The Fionavar Tapestry (Guy Gavriel Kay)
• the Valdemar books (collectively; there are a number of trilogies and duologies that fall within this greater series) (Mercedes Lackey

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