Books Set in Western Europe

Book Summary

In the tiny community of Beartown, life revolves around hockey. It provides entertainment and hope for a better future. It’s a story about hockey, small-town life, and much more. When a shocking event occurs, the town quickly takes sides. Who will stand up for the truth and put hockey above humanity? The themes are definitely relevant to the decade.

If you’ve already read Beartown and the sequel Us Against You, this is a great excuse to pick up the final book in the Trilogy, The Winners, which was published in September 2022. It’s set two years after Beartown, so it still sneaks into the 2010s.

Book Summary

Pepper lives in a small coastal UK town, but imagines a very different life for herself. So she jumps at the chance to tour more of Europe with her elderly friend, Josephine. While in Lisbon, Portugal, Pepper bumps into a handsome man named Finn. Is he exactly what she has been looking for?

However, are things really as they seem? While she worries Finn might have a secret, Pepper has a secret of her own.

Book Summary

In 2001, Caroline Grant was in the midst of her marriage falling apart when her beloved great-aunt Lettie passed away, leaving Caroline a sketchbook, three keys, and the request that her ashes be spread in Venice. Key by key, Caroline will learn the secrets that Lettie kept for more than 60 years – secrets of impossible love, loss, and courage.

In her younger years, Lettie traveled to Venice numerous times as an art teacher, providing a wealth of art history to her students and allowing her to visit the man she loves even though his future cannot include her.

As the story unfolds, this novel is filled with beautiful descriptions of Venice’s narrow footpaths, canals, architecture, and food, both in the 1928-1944 timeline, as well as during the 21st century. Art plays an important role throughout this novel.

Book Summary

Alice’s grandmother, Adalyn, just passed away, and she left the sixteen-year-old an apartment in Paris – one that’s been locked up for more than seventy years and that no one in the family knew existed.

Now Alice is spending the summer in Paris, and with the help of Paul – a Parisian student – she’s determined to find out why her grandma never mentioned the family that she left behind when she left France during WWII. The more she learns about the past, the more she realizes that her family is also hiding secrets in the present.

This dual-timeline YA novel also transports us back to Paris in the 1940s. It’s a city that sixteen-year-old Adalyn hardly recognizes as the Occupation brings new terrors daily. When she meets a young leader of a resistance group, she sees an opportunity to fight back, but she soon finds herself having to make more and more compromises.

Book Summary

Each week, Conor O’Shea leads American tourists on a high-end tour of “The Real Ireland.” He’s a seasoned guide, but his most recent tour group is filled with a colorful cast of unintentionally hilarious characters that manage to leave him speechless for the first time in his life. As the tour continues, you won’t be able to help but fall in love with these tourists, as well as the locals they meet along the way.

This is the perfect book for armchair travelers!

Book Summary

Do you dream of seeing the Venetian canals, the Amalfi Coast, or wandering through gorgeous Tuscan villages? This novel will transport you to all three dramatically different scenic Italian locations in vivid detail.

Two hundred years ago, Filomena Fontana cursed her sister. Ever since then, every 2nd born sister in the Fontana family has been unable to find love.

Some of the women believe in the curse, and others are skeptical, but when elderly Aunt Poppy invites two of the young second-born sisters to return to Italy with her, promising to have a plan to break the curse, they can’t pass up the chance. The trio of women travel throughout Italy, learning about their family history and uncovering secrets.

Book Summary

This non-fiction option chronicles the author’s first year living in Denmark. She shares her experiences while exploring what makes Denmark consistently rated as the happiest place on earth. Despite long and cold winter nights, the people of Denmark rate their happiness higher than those from beautiful islands. Will she feel the same way by the end of her first year?

The Kindle edition has a new chapter from the author updating her thoughts in 2020, six years after the original publication.

Book Summary

Lucy is suffering from a broken heart and a crashed career, so she jumps at the opportunity to move from the UK to Iceland to manage the Northern Lights Lodge. Despite romance being the last thing she wants for herself, she’s determined to make the hotel a top romantic destination in Iceland.

Her new life is full of quirky characters who become her new family away from home. Dreamy Scottish barman, Alex, makes her question whether it’s time to reopen her heart to love. But will his secret impact their future?

Book Summary

When the teenager from one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappears in 1966, her uncle is determined to find out what happened to her. For forty years, he wondered what really happened. Nearing the end of his life, he hires a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist and his angry and tattooed punk hacker prodigy to help him uncover the truth. The chilly Swedish backdrop sets the scene for this Nordic Noir novel that combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

WARNING: This novel includes some very graphic scenes, including sexual assault.

Book Summary

University student Rachel works at a bookstore, where she meets James, who quickly becomes her new BFF and roommate. The duo runs the streets of Cork, striving for a Bohemian lifestyle but also sharply aware of a looming financial collapse.

When Rachel falls for her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, she plots to seduce him after a reading at her bookstore. However, Fred has other desires that launch a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected wife.

Book Summary

As London is emerging from WWII, Juliet Ashton, a writer, is looking for the subject of her next book. She begins exchanging letters with a man she’s never met – a native of the island of Guernsey. Through their letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of the man and his eccentric friends. Though they range from pig farmers to phrenologists, they are all literature lovers.

As Juliet learns about their tastes in books, she also comes to understand the impact that the German occupation has had on their lives.

Book Summary

It was love at first sight when Tembi and Saro met in Italy. He was a professional chef, and she was an actress from Houston. His Sicilian family did not approve of their relationship and specifically took issue with Saro marrying a Black American woman. Nonetheless, the two built a happy life together in Los Angeles and adopted a baby girl. Just when they were finally beginning to reconcile with Saro’s family back in Sicily, Saro receives a devastating cancer diagnosis.

This memoir chronicles three summers that Tembi and her young daughter spent in Sicily after the loss of her husband. Despite having once been estranged from her in-laws, she begins to discover the healing powers of food and family.

Book Summary

When Parisian bookseller Laurent comes across a handbag on the street, he feels compelled to track down the owner. Nothing in the bag indicates who it belongs to, but the red notebook inside is filled with her jottings, which makes him want to meet the owner even more.

With just the bag’s contents as clues, Laurent does everything he can to find one woman in a city of millions. 

Book Summary

Inspired by the true events of Operation Paperclip, this historical fiction novel tells the story of the US intelligence program that employed former Nazis in Huntsville, Alabama after WWII.

The story begins in Berlin in 1930. Changing political powers are sweeping through Germany. Sofie von Meyer Rhodes and her husband, Jürgen, are concerned with the social views taking hold in their country. But her academic husband’s work benefits from the ambitions of the newly elected chancellor. Soon, however, their morality is challenge and they realize that neutrality has a price.

At the same time, Lizzie Miller is living in the Texas panhandle during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The future looks bleak as their farm dries up. And that’s all before her brother, Henry, is called to Germany to fight in WWII.

Twenty years later in the 1950s, Jürgen is one of the many German scientists who is offered a pardon for their part in WWII in exchange for working on the fledgling space program in the US. Sofie welcomes the chance for a fresh start in a new country, but she soon finds that her Huntsville neighbors aren’t as welcoming or forgiving of her family’s past as she’d hoped.

Jürgen’s boss at the US space program is Calvin Miller, Lizzie’s husband. This is where the two women’s stories collide.

Book Summary

Katya was studying medicine abroad in Glasgow when she received devastating news from her parents. They were out of money, and she had to leave school to become a governess for twelve-year-old Gretchen in Vienna. It’s painful for Katya to see her employer’s riches when the lack of money for school has stolen her dreams.

When Hitler annexes Austria, Gretchen’s father is arrested. Because Gretchen is considered “imperfect,” she’s at risk of being sent to a Nazi research lab. Suddenly, Katya’s most important job is protecting Gretchen. And if they survive, will they be able to find her father?

Book Summary

The Spanish Promise weaves together the genres of mystery, romance, and history to tell the story of a present-day recipient of a substantial inheritance. The will includes a clause that requires an investigation into the family’s past.

Wealth advisor Charlotte is brought in from London to assist, and she expects an easy task that will get her back in time for her own wedding. During the research, it turns out that the past is more complicated than expected, with secrets and scandals spanning multiple generations. Charlotte’s own life becomes an interesting sub-plot as she uncovers information about a tragic segment of her past.

Book Summary

This YA novel is an excellent option if you’re looking for a coming-of-age story with mystery, adventure, and a sweet romance that will transport you to an Italy filled with – you guessed it – love and gelato. The descriptions of Italy in this book will have you immediately planning your next vacation, but this story also brings much more depth than you might expect at first glance.

Lina’s mother had one dying wish – that her daughter get to know the father she’d never met. Lina isn’t thrilled to be spending the summer in Tuscany with this man she just learned about, but when she is given the journal that her mom kept when she lived in Italy, everything begins to change. As she follows her mother’s footsteps she is able to process her grief while also discovering art, hidden bakeries, and even romance.

Book Summary

Antwerp, Belgium, is the diamond capital of the world, and in 2003 it became the site of the largest diamond heist in history. A group of thieves broke into an airtight vault in the diamond district, making off with $108 million worth of diamonds without tripping any alarms.

Even as police identified and closed in on the thieves, they couldn’t figure out how they had pulled off the heist.

Book Summary

Note: This book is also published under the title The Little Shop of Happy Ever After.

Nina loves her life as a librarian at a small neighborhood library. So when it’s downsized from the system, she’s devastated.

Should she give in and work for the large branch that is mainly a tech center helping people on computers versus being surrounded by books? Or is it time to stop playing things safe and follow her dreams of starting her own mobile bookshop to serve small towns?

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel is set in Barcelona in 1964 and 1936. In the Sixties story, Isabel Perez was exiled from Cuba after the revolution. When her sister, Beatriz, goes missing in Barcelona, Isabel travels to Spain to search for her and is thrust into the dangerous world of espionage. She also unearths a piece of family history that changes everything.

In 1936, after a difficult voyage from Cuba, Alicia Perez arrived in Barcelona with her young daughter, Isabel. Spain is on the brink of civil war and when violence breaks out, Alicia finds herself reunited with someone from her past.

Book Summary

Ally and her five sisters were all adopted as babies by their beloved father. Upon his death, all the sisters gather together at their childhood home – a secluded castle on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Each woman is handed a letter with a clue about her true heritage, and Ally’s clue takes her to icy Norway.

As Ally begins to unravel the mystery of her roots, she finds that her story is connected to that of a young, unknown singer named Anna, who lived there over 100 years ago. The story is told in a dual timeline between Ally’s present day and Anna’s life in the late 1800s. The more Ally learns about the past, the more she questions who her father really was, and why the seventh sister is missing.

Book Summary

In August of 1961, barbed wire was placed across Berlin in the middle of the night. Families were torn apart against their wishes by the new 30-mile wall. This historical fiction imagines the lives of twin sisters separated on that fateful night.

Karin is in East Berlin when the wall goes up, separating her from her twin, Jutta. They live parallel lives for years, with Karin surviving the brutal East German regime only with Otto’s help. One day, Jutta finds a hidden way to reach Karin, but the Stasi are watching. Should Jutta flee back home with her sister or follow her heart?

Book Summary

When Londoner Leena Cotton is forced to take a two-month sabbatical from work after a disastrous presentation, she escapes to her grandmother’s house in a small village in Yorkshire, England. Her grandmother, Eileen, is about to turn 80 and hopes her next decade might include a second chance at love. Convinced that her grandmother will have better luck in the romance department if she heads to the big city, Leena convinces Eileen to swap her places and move into Leena’s London apartment.

This warm and charming novel is filled with vibrant descriptions of London and English village life as the grandmother and granddaughter duo aim to reset their lives after a difficult loss. Although Eileen’s search for love plays a role in this story, we wouldn’t describe this book as a romance. Instead, it’s a character-driven story about a wide variety of relationships.

We recommend the audio version for the full experience with accents!

Book Summary

Mitza Maric was the only female studying physics at a prestigious university in Zurich, Switzerland when she met her classmate and future husband – Albert Einstein.

The Other Einstein is a fictionalized story of their tumultuous relationship and places Mitza as the originator of some works credited to him. While not a biography, the book still highlights accurate depictions of life in Western Europe at the time, including rampant classism and sexism.

Book Summary

Widowed math professor Josef is devastated by the occupation of his beloved Amsterdam by German forces. His former student, Michael, is Jewish and at risk of being whisked away to a concentration camp as Jewish raids began across the city.  At great personal risk, Josef offers Michael a place to stay in his attic.

Michael can’t stop talking about his beloved, but forbidden Dutch girlfriend, Elke. She is equally in love with him and not sure what happened when he’s suddenly gone. Josef has memories of his own lost love and wants to help them have a chance at a life together, despite the unlikely odds. 

Book Summary

A mother’s worst nightmare happens to Jenna Gray when she briefly lets go of her child’s hand on a busy street. Desperate to escape the tragedy, she moves to a small Welsh village on the coast. Her grief, fears, and memories of that day follow her as she tries to make a new life in the picturesque town. This thriller continues to twist and leave you in page-turning suspense.

Book Summary

The Camino pilgrimage takes walkers on a 500-mile trek on the centuries-old journey from France to Spain. In this contemporary romance, you’ll make the trip from your armchair alongside Zoe and Martin.

Zoe is from California and trying to recover from her husband’s sudden death. Martin is from England and recovering from a messy divorce. He’s an engineer on the pilgrimage to road test a new cart he designed. As they travel, Zoe and Martin must overcome both physical and emotional challenges, while learning to trust again.

Book Summary

Imagine the picture-perfect wedding on a remote Irish island between a rising TV star and an intelligent magazine publisher. Despite the rough waves and spotty cell service, the wedding is sure to be idyllic, with every detail and moment planned in advance.

However, you can’t plan for old traditions and ongoing jealousy. The groomsmen are soon playing drinking games, someone may regret missing out on romance with the bride, and a bridesmaid ruins her dress – on purpose. So, when someone dies, who’s to blame?

Book Summary

If you’re looking for a light, sweet, romantic read – look no further!

Publicist Kate Sinclair had the perfect, glamorous life in London until her once charming boyfriend went behind her back to steal the promotion she’d been working for. Needing to escape, she trades in the office for a break in beautiful Copenhagen. As she discovers how to slow down and live life “the Danish way,” the city offers her a new perspective… one that might involve a tall, gorgeous Viking.