What the locals tell their friends
You have already booked the house. These are the guides for what happens next: where to actually eat, which producers take visitors, what breaks, and what to skip. Written for people who have rented at this level before and do not need the word "hidden gem" explained to them.
The promise
Every recommendation carries a dated source
A travel guide with an invented restaurant is worse than useless, because a reader flies somewhere on it. Every named venue in these books is verified against its own website, with the date it was checked. Anything that could not be verified was cut rather than phrased vaguely.
Nine parts, every book
The same skeleton each time, so the second book reads as fast as the first.
Comparative by default
Nothing discussed in isolation. Every destination is argued against the alternative you are really considering.
A sources appendix
Every recommendation with a dated URL. Dull to write, and the reason you can trust the rest.
0 of these books are free right now
They are finished and they are not on sale anywhere yet. Not a sample chapter: the whole book, as it will be published, in exchange for an honest review when it is out.
Each week one more title goes into Kindle Unlimited and comes off the list. If a book you want is still there, this is the window.
Choose your booksThe series
Twelve destinations
Ordered by production sequence. Tuscany is the pilot.
Tuscany
Tuscany holds up for a long stay with a mixed group in a way most regions do not. This is the argument for it, the case for Chianti over Val d'Orcia, and the three situations where it is the wrong call.
From £5.99
Amalfi Coast
Vertical, hard to move around, and worth it if you plan for that rather than against it. Where to base yourself so the coast road does not eat the week, and why the ferry beats the car.
From £5.99
Marrakech & the Atlas
The riad faces inward by design, which is the architecture rather than a quirk. How to use the medina on foot, and why day-tripping the High Atlas wastes the best part of the trip.
From £5.99
Sri Lanka
The hill country you came to see was created by a fungus: coffee leaf rust arrived in 1869 and took the island's economy down within 20 years. Ten nights, two bases, and the train between them.
From £5.99
Mani and the Peloponnese
The Mani has 206 mapped places to eat and 17 websites between them. Not 8 per cent dead, which is what this series usually measures, but 8 per cent existing. A guide built for a peninsula that is almost entirely offline, and an argument about why the towers were never built against the Turks.
From £5.99
Bali
The temples are the irrigation system, and we know because in 1971 the government overrode them and the rice failed. Also: 952 venue websites checked and 41 per cent of them dead, the worst rate in the series and from the most developed place in it.
From £5.99
Algarve & Comporta
Two Portugals sold as one. They are 250km apart, they have almost nothing in common, and combining them casually turns into a drive that neither place repays.
From £5.99
Mallorca
An island with an unusually high rate of repeat visitors, which means the good addresses circulate by word of mouth and very little is arranged for a first-time visitor. How to get at them.
From £5.99
Greek Cyclades
Everyone writes about Santorini and Mykonos. Naxos, Sifnos and Milos are where people who know the Cyclades actually go, and the ferry timetable shapes the whole trip.
From £5.99
Ibiza
The island has two entirely separate reputations and most guides only cover one. The north, the interior, and the case for when the loud end is genuinely the right answer.
From £5.99
Dalmatian Coast
The islands reward a boat and punish a car, which reverses how most people plan it. Vis was closed to outsiders until 1989 and still feels apart.
From £5.99
Sardinia
The Costa Smeralda is about 30km of one coast, not the island. Where to go for the same water without the postcode, and the nuraghi, which exist nowhere else on earth.
From £5.99
Côte d'Azur
The Riviera has had 150 years to arrange itself around visitors, which is its strength and its problem. What the density buys you, and where to go inland when it stops being worth it.
From £5.99
Cyprus
Troodos, the Akamas and the eastern villages, written for someone who wants the island the diaspora goes back to rather than the one the package holidays sell.
From £5.99