Presents an account of the author's time travelling alone and living among the Shia and Ismaili Muslims in the Northern Areas - the mountainous regions wedged between Afghanistan, India and China and one of the most volatile borderlands in the world.
An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market.
Bored of the 'mango smoothie' trail and keen to spice up their Facebook albums, and perhaps also their sex lives, Jake and Will take a tour into China's jungle borderland with Burma. Their guide, however, has his own agenda and gradually the two gap-year students slip into a nightmarish spiral of murder and moral decay.
A little girl is transported with the help of magic glasses from the tedium of a summer afternoon into an exciting world of mangrove swamps, spluttering volcanoes and sea where birds fly upside down and wild things threaten to pounce. But she is not alone.
Chris, eternal optimist and itinerant sheep shearer, moves with his wife Ana to a mountain farm in Las Alpujarras, an oddball region in south of Spain. Misadventures gleefully unfold as Chris discovers that the owner has no intention of leaving and meets their neighbours, an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, travellers and ex-pats.