The 2025 debut novel by Rachel Paris — See How They Fall — is a hit.
Personally, I’m not a fan of rich people behaving badly.
Some of the actions taken by characters are inexplicable.
When Skye married into the wealthy Turner family, she thought she was entering paradise. But now, several years later, she remains uneasy amid the opulence of her husband’s world, struggling with her own secrets and working to maintain a normal life for their young daughter, Tilly.
Skye’s delicate balance is undone when the family patriarch, Sir Campbell Turner, dies suddenly and an illegitimate heir comes forward to stake his claim in the luxury goods empire the old man leaves behind.
Everyone loves this quirky little town about 2 hours by bus from Triana. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In fact, Albania is a tourism hotspot in 2026. Berat had 50,000 tourists a year a decade ago. Today it’s 1 million.
BUT I recall when Albania was off limits to tourists. During the repressive communist regime of Enver Hoxha (1944–1985), Albania became one of the most isolated “hermit states” in the world.
Enver Hoxha was a totalitarian dictator who ruled Albania with extreme repression, paranoia, and isolationism from 1944 until 1985. He closed all churches & mosques, for example.
Like Trump, he wanted his name everywhere — including on this mountain seem from Berat. BUT in 2012 the first two letters were swapped to spell NEVER as part of an art project by filmmaker Armando Lulaj.
Brilliant.
Berat is much more than just “the city of a thousand windows“. There are NOT a thousand windows. That’s a marketing tag line that started as a language misinterpretation — but stuck. 😀
Detail of the beautiful houses of the illuminated historical city of Berat in Albania
There’s a great hostel. I paid 12 Euro / night ($14) including breakfast. Sweet.
Berat was +45C recently, the highest temperature ever recorded.
SO I decided to climb up to Berat Castle in the cooler evening. It’s open 24 hours / day as families still live there.
Interior of the bridge of the illuminated historic city of Berat in Albania, UNESCO, the city of a thousand windows
Next day I climbed the slope opposite Berat Castle, Gorica Hill.
This is St. Clementof Ohrid, celebrated here for creating Cyrillic scripts — the alphabet confusing me so severely while traveling in the West Baltics. 😀
At night, everyone walks the lake front. ESPECIALLY when it was 35C+ during the afternoon.
I stayed at an entertaining hostel here. Mama and a litter of brand new kittens.
I signed up for a half day tour which would get me up to the giant crucifix. Sadly, the cable car has been out for months. BUT it did get me to a great day hike in nearby Matka Canyon.
Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, is widely known as the “City of Statues” for hundreds of monumental sculptures.
In order to attract tourists to this little known city, in 2014 the city spent a LOT of money they didn’t have to revamp the city centre building historically inaccurate neoclassical buildings and monuments.
Locals argued that money should have gone to schools, hospitals, or infrastructure. And trash removal !
Many contracts were awarded without public tenders or open competition, leading to widespread accusations of corruption and money laundering.
In any case, all these huge statues are weird and wonderful for the tourist.
In 1963, an earthquake destroyed roughly 80% of the city. Spearheaded by a United Nations-backed master plan from Japanese architect Kenzō Tange, the city was rebuilt using raw concrete (béton brut). Designed to withstand the next earthquake — and reflect the (boring) socialist aesthetic.
“Newborn” was chosen as a single English word for the power to describe the birth of a new country, its positive connotations, ease of understanding by non-native English-speakers, and potential to present Kosovo as a new, contemporary, trendy country.
The most interesting tourist attraction for me was the National Library of Kosovo. Though some call it “the ugliest building in the World”, I like anything different. Opened 1982.
Sadly, the exterior is already turning to rubble.
The impressive Cathedral of St. Mother Teresa (opened 2007) is still under construction. One surrounding superb park is already finished, but there’s still much more to do with the surroundings.
Another statue nearby celebrates the life of Albanian hero Skanderbeg.
There are a number of large mosques, the most celebrated being Imperial Mosque. Built in 1461.
They love Bill Clinton here. He was key to the liberation, leading the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that stopped Serbian forces and ended the Kosovo War.
The future looks to be brighter for Kosovo.
Yet here in the capital city, there’s still a lot of trash. Abandoned vehicles and buildings.
I saw very few western tourists.
Those who do get to Pistrina will be pleasantly surprised.
Akimbo and the Elephants (1990) is the first installment in the beloved Akimbo series, which follows a brave ten-year-old boy living on a large wildlife game reserve in Africa.
Plot Overview
The Setting: Akimbo lives on the edge of a vast African game preserve where his father works as the head ranger to protect wild animals.
The Conflict: Illegal ivory poachers are killing the grown elephants for their valuable tusks, leaving the helpless young calves behind to perish.
The Turning Point: After coming across the devastating sight of a mother elephant killed by poachers, Akimbo becomes determined to stop them.
The Plan: Realizing the reserve is too massive for the rangers to police effectively, Akimbo hatches a dangerous plan to go undercover, posing as an elephant hunter to infiltrate the poachers’ network.
Smart dialogue. Interesting characters. And humour.
In Legal Tender, maverick civil rights lawyer Benedetta “Bennie” Rosato is wrongly accused of murder – and goes on the run to prove her innocence and find the real killer.
Publishers Weekly awarded it a “star” and raved that “Scottoline’s rambunctious legal thriller may change the way readers think about lawyers. Bennie, a delightful heroine, deserves an encore; and, again, Scottoline merits a big round of applause.”
The ending is super entertaining — and as highly improbable as any legal thriller you’ve ever read. 😀
Dubrovnik, Croatia, is now one of the most overtouristed cities in Europe, with visitors outnumbering permanent residents by a staggering ratio of up to 36 to 1.
Still … it’s fantastic.
I crossed the border to nearby Kotor, Montenegro, hoping it would be Dubrovnik light.
I found Kotor just as majestic. BETTER for hiking:
Rick McCharles 