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To celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday in the United States – and commemorate Canada’s recent celebration (on October 8) – I would like to share with you some great reads set in these two incredible countries.

Take a break from the holiday stress and sail the world while surfing and smuggling drugs to Hawaii, solve a mystery in a Canadian funeral home, or find out how a quiche recipe sets off a baking rivalry in a Rhode Island mill town. Discover hidden secrets in the Northern Cascades, travel along with an audacious American polar explorer, or help protect an art professor from a murderer.

Featured in this post are novels by Melissa Burovac, Lucia N. Davis, Joanna Kafarowski, Eva Pasco, Janice J. Richardson and Tempeste Blake.

Travel By Book is a growing group of authors and readers who enjoy being transported to other destinations via fiction and non-fiction. If you enjoy reading books that take you places, join us over on Facebook.

Surfer, Sailor, Smuggler by Melissa Burovac

Two boys growing up together in a small California town are the best of friends. One conforms to his parents’ wishes and follows a preset path to a career; the other creates his own path, sailing the world, surfing and smuggling drugs to Hawaii. Watch their lives diverge and reconnect through the years with tales of action and adventure, brushes with the law, Mexican cartels, and lost families and friends. Do they regret their lifestyles and the consequences of their choices as they approach old age?
Based on the true stories of surfers, sailors and pirates on Kauai.

Lucia Davis The Charm of Lost Chances

In Dunnhill, a quiet mountain village in the Northern Cascades, unresolved secrets from the past have a way of making themselves heard. In this sequel to The Baby on the Back Porch, Sara Eriksson returns to Dunnhill hoping for a second chance—not only at a scenic getaway, but with David, the landlord of the cabin, whom Sara had only just started getting to know.

Sara’s cabin in the woods is just as beautiful as she left it—but so is David’s new client, Taylor. Just as Sara is starting to come to terms with the fact that David may not share her feelings, her dreams return, setting a series of events into motion and leading Sara down a winding path to a new mystery that only she can unravel.

As Sara struggles to keep her wits—and her sanity—about her, she must decide which chances she’ll take, and which she’ll allow to be lost to time.

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame: A Life of Louise Arner Boyd by Joanna Kafarowski

The first comprehensive biography of Louise Arner Boyd ― the intrepid American socialite who reinvented herself as the leading female polar explorer of the twentieth century.

Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era.

After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her flamboyant lifestyle as a leading society woman. Yet despite organizing, financing, and directing seven daring Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she is virtually unknown today.

An Enlightening Quiche by Eva Pasco

An heirloom quiche recipe and baking rivalry turn up the heat in a Rhode Island mill town rife with secrets and scandals!

Misconceptions, misdeeds, and maliciousness wreak havoc on those caught in the crossfire of a tragedy.

Casket Cache by Janice J. Richardson

Funeral homes are supposed to be quiet …

Jennifer Spencer inherits her uncle’s funeral home. Her move to the Niagara Region into the apartment above the Home went well, but in the first week alone, someone breaks into the funeral home. Then, Jennifer finds cash in a casket, a lot of cash. Certain it has something to do with the break-in, she’s unable to convince the police and winds up on their list of suspects. But Jennifer has families to serve and funerals to arrange; that is her number-one priority. Someone sinister and dangerous wants the cash back; that’s their number-one priority and Jennifer Spencer, funeral director, is in the way.

A cozy mystery with heart, compassion, and humour.

Chasing Symmetry by Tempeste Blake

Someone had been trying for the perfect shade of red . . .

When art professor Bianca James tries to save a dying woman, the grudge-holding chief of police is all too quick to catapult her to the top of the suspect list. As if that isn’t enough, her ex-boyfriend’s younger brother, Finn Tierny, is assigned to the case, and she’s faced with a trilogy of dilemmas: go head to head with the chief, stop a cold-blooded killer on her own, or trust another Tierny.

Finn’s return to Riley’s Peak is bittersweet. He’s flooded with memories, both good and bad, as he battles doubts about being a cop, a cantankerous father, a jealous brother, and a drug dealer with a rap-sheet longer than the list of addicts he’s been supplying.

Threats escalate, the suspect list grows, and it becomes clear—the murderer’s resolve to kill Bianca is almost as strong as Finn’s desire to keep her alive.

Almost.