‘Australia’: The Next Big Travel Movie?

National Geographic’s ‘Herod’s Lost Tomb,’ FTW

Additional Measures Taken to Ease Holiday Travel Woes

‘Frozen Skyline’: Architecture and the Recession

How Can I Save on Transportation During a Round-the-World Trip?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

13 Great Travel Horror Movies

The Hollywood horror archives are filled with tales of bad trips. To celebrate Halloween, Eva Holland and Eli Ellison sift through the carnage to pick their favorites—and lose a little sleep doing so.

Matt Weiland: Through 50 States With 50 Writers

The coeditor of “State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America” talks to Frank Bures about the book, the WPA and how the United States hasn’t been “bulldozed for speed”

Love Herring in Sweden

From artery-clogging casseroles to a fermented concoction that smells alarmingly like vinegary flatulence, Lola Akinmade digs in to a smörgåsbord of herring and explains how to best appreciate Scandinavia’s favorite fish. 

The Water Is Wide

Bronwen Dickey considers Tim Butcher’s “Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart,” which takes readers deep into the Congo

Vagrant Ruminations of a Compulsive Traveler

Where does the urge to hunt for that “fleeting fix of elsewhere” come from? Peter Wortsman recalls a life of travel inspiration. 

Notes From an Unofficial Tourist Greeter

Summer is over, and so is Julia Ross‘ season as an ambassador to travelers in Washington, D.C.’s Woodley Park neighborhood. She’s happy to be off duty.

Crime Fiction Where You Least Expect It

At a risk of inviting somewhat circular log-ick into Julia Ross’ argument, no less a prose authority than Clive James has already deconstructed the ["international/ foreign"] crime novel(s) as essentially travel guides. “Ideally, an author should turn out a sequence of detective novels that will generate a bus tour in the city where they are set.” Next argument, please, Julia.

Ian

http://www.clivejames.com/crime-fiction

“[...] finally there is nothing left of the books in the memory except the place they are set in.

Essentially they are guide books. Thats why a maverick detective from Edinburgh outranks a maverick detective from Glasgow, and why we cant get enough of the detective from Venice, and why even Elmore Leonard, who can get so much out of a small American city whose main drag consists almost entirely of franchises some of which, admittedly, come equipped with a dead body in the dumper out in back still gravitates towards Los Angeles as the natural stamping ground of Chili Palmer, who neatly reverses the cliché of the cop with criminal tendencies. [...]”

It’s not all crime fiction, but National Geographic Traveler does have a whole library of travel novels o help get you inspired.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/travellibrary/library.html

More from Nat Geo Traveler:  Don George is now writing an online monthly book review for us, and he recently picked Dead Man in Paradise by J. B. MacKinnon. which he called “part detective story, part memoir, and part travelogue,” about a real-life murder of the author’s uncle in the Dominican Republic.  He also picks Sylvia Sellers-Garcia’s debut novel, When the Ground Turns in its Sleep, about a mystery set in a Guatemalan village:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/travellibrary/george0712.html