By Rosemary Mahoney
304 pages; Little, Brown

Rosemary Mahoney wasn't trying to make waves; she simply wanted to take a solo row in a country where women never, ever, do that sort of thing. Down the Nile (Little, Brown) is part travel memoir, part cross-cultural history, part adventure story ("I am not afraid to die," Mahoney writes. "I simply do not want to").

— Cathleen Medwick