A Good Read - your top ten Crete related books

Thank you for the great response to my request for your favorite books set on, or about Crete. I received more than 60 suggestions. There was a runaway winner however, and many surprises.
Here are your top ten, simply chosen by the number of you who sent the same titles in. I will write a separate article for all the others! There were several I haven't read - so that will be a pleasant task for the summer.

So "Pop pickers" here are your top ten Cretan reads in reverse order!
With précis from Amazon.com and links to the books for author and publisher details. Just click on the title.

10.
Tails Are Wagging on Crete.

Many of us know the follow up story to this and perhaps she will write it one day!


"When author Freida Olivia Richards follows her desire to move to the historic island of Crete, she never imagines the obstacles ahead of her. With her husband and a plethora of animals, Richards is on her way. The hardships they face when arriving in Crete may seem insurmountable to most, but this retired nurse and social worker hammers through all of them. The Richards family soon realizes their journey has just begun when these animal lovers discover the plight of the many abandoned and abused dogs on the island. Knowing this can not be ignored, they start an animal sanctuary through which hundreds of dogs are re-homed, with the help of three German organizations. Tails Are Wagging on Crete not only chronicles the troubles of the many animals that have been rescued, it also provides the history of Crete and the Cretan people. This unique combination of history and animal plight awareness is a pure informative treat. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Animal Welfare on Crete in Greece. Author Bio: Freida Olivia Richards lives in an isolated area near the small town of Kalives with her husband and animals."

9.
House of Dust and Dreams

A young British diplomat and his wife have been posted to Athens. Hugh loves the life there but his spirited and unconventional wife, Evadne, finds it hard to fit in with the whirl of endless parties and socialising.

When Hugh is sent to Crete to sort out a problem, they stay in a rundown house owned by his family. His wife falls in love with the place and the people, and stays on when Hugh returns to his duties. As she tries to rebuild the ramshackle home, Evadne - known as Heavenly by the locals - makes firm friends with Anthi, a young woman from the village and Christo, the handsome and charismatic young builder.

But the dark clouds of war are gathering and the island will become a crucible of violence and bloodshed in the days to come. For Heavenly, her friends and family, it will be the greatest test they have ever known.

8.

Ill Met By Moonlight

Ill Met By Moonlight is the gripping account of the audacious World War II abduction of a German general from the island of Crete. British special forces officers W. Stanley Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor, together with a small band of Cretan partisans, kidnapped the general, then evaded numerous German checkpoints and patrols for nearly three weeks as they maneuvered across the mountainous island to a rendezvous with the boat that finally whisked them away to Allied headquarters in Cairo.

"It was a mad adventure, and it came off. Moss recorded the whole escapade in a diary, which survives as a thrilling account of one of the most reckless and dramatic actions of the war."—Patrick Leigh Fermor

7

Who pays the Ferryman?

Based on Michael J Bird's BBC TV serial. It was 35 years since Alan Haldane had been in Crete, fighting with the partisans, lauded as a hero. Thirty-five years since he'd seen Melina or had word of her. Now he was going back, trying to rediscover in Crete what he had lacked in England: a sense of place, of peace. He couldn't find Melina, and he couldn't forget her, but he discovered that she had borne him a daughter, who was as blind to his existence as he had been to hers. He could not acknowledge her, could not let the past disrupt the present. Yet when he met Annika, and knew he could love her, he could not dispel the shadow cast between them by the ghosts of the war years. He was caught between fear and longing, in a trap that he had laid years before. He was not the only one who remembered. His presence on the island slowly rekindled a vendetta, a blood feud that could end his agony of indecision so simply -- by death.

6.

The Island

The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka. Just off the coast is the tiny island of Spinalonga, where the nation's leper colony once was located—a place that has haunted four generations of Petrakis women. There's Eleni, ripped from her husband and two young daughters and sent to Spinalonga in 1939, and her daughters Maria, finding joy in the everyday as she dutifully cares for her father, and Anna, a wild child hungry for passion and a life anywhere but Plaka. And finally there's Alexis, Eleni's great-granddaughter, visiting modern-day Greece to unlock her family's past.

A richly enchanting novel of lives and loves unfolding against the backdrop of the Mediterranean during World War II, The Island is an enthralling story of dreams and desires, of secrets desperately hidden, and of leprosy's touch on an unforgettable family.

5.
The Golden Step

For Somerville this was a kind of pilgrimage, a journey unlike any he had undertaken in 20 years of travel-writing. It was an expedition where he traded the usual comforts and certainties for a real physical and mental challenge, with no mobile phone or other technological aids. The only plan for his journey was to begin in the East at Easter and finish at Whitsun in the extreme West, at the Monastery of the Golden Step, whose gold step, legend says, can only be seen by those who have purged themselves into purity. During his 300-mile walk, he tackled four mountain ranges, high slopes and the numerous gorges of the West. Speaking only basic Greek and trying to follow a poorly way-marked path, he had to rely on his own instincts when climbing mountain passes and crossing high plateaux, farming and shepherding country, where villages are scarce and each night's accommodation was uncertain. He saw a Crete few ever encounter.

4.

The Winds of Crete

The story of a couple who moved to Georgioupolis in the '60s and then moved to Plaka. -

3.
Letters From Crete

"HARRIET BRISKROTAYIOS STEPHANOS - CRETE TO: SIR ARTHUR MARTINET-COLDSHOWERTHE FORTRESSUPPER LIPSTIFF.YORKS. ENGLAND.

Dear uncle Arthur, it is now three months since I retired as headmistress of St Agatha's and came to take up residence here in Crete, and now I am getting settled it is high time to write to tell you my news. 

This little house which Daddy left me in his will is really delightful. A typical stone built Cretan house, it has a large veranda with wonderful views across a most beautiful valley. Such a surprise in so many ways. Of course Daddy was always dashing about the world  but we had no idea that he owned such a delightful hideaway. Sadly, there are very few moments of dear Daddy here, some clothes and a box of his favourite cigars, that's all. There are a few items that show that a lady has been here, and of course they are not dear Mummy's because, as I say, we had no idea about this house in Crete. The other slightly strange thing is that people keep telling me that I don't look much like my mother - as if they had seen Mummy - which of course they couldn't possibly have done…... 

2.

The Cretan Runner

George Psychoundakis was a young shepherd boy who knew the island of Crete intimately when the Nazis invaded by air in 1941. He immediately joined the resistance and took on the crucial job of war-time runner. It was not only the toughest but the most dangerous job of all. It involved immense journeys carrying vital messages, smuggling arms and explosives and guiding Allied soldiers, agents and commandos through heavily garrisoned territory. And George did not escape capture and torture on his many forays. This brilliant account of George's activities across mountainous terrain, come blazing summer or freezing winter, is a gripping story of bravery against impossible odds.

…And now for the runaway winner of your top ten Cretan reads:

1.

The Girl under the Olive Tree

May1941 and the island of Crete is invaded by paratroopers from the air. After a lengthy fight, thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers are forced to take to the hills or become escaping PoWs, sheltered by the Cretan villagers. 

Sixty years later, Lois West and her young son, Alex, invite feisty Great Aunt Pen to a special eighty-fifth birthday celebration on Crete, knowing she has not been back there since the war. 

Penelope George - formerly Giorgidiou - is reluctant to go but is persuaded by the fact it is the 60th anniversary of the Battle. It is time for her to return and make the journey she never thought she'd dare to. On the outward voyage from Athens, she relives her experiences in the city from her early years as a trainee nurse to those last dark days stranded on the island, the last female foreigner. 

When word spreads of her visit, and old Cretan friends and family come to greet her, Lois and Alex are caught up in her epic pilgrimage and the journey which leads her to a reunion with the friend she thought she had lost forever - and the truth behind a secret buried deep in the past...