Greek Island Book
 

Can someone recommend a good book to read on the Greek Islands? We are arriving in June.
Thanks!

"The King Must Die" by Mary Renault (fiction) and "The Cretan Runner" by George Psychoundakis. The latter is a non-fiction account of the German occupation of Crete during WWII. Excellent.

"Captain Corelli's Mandolin" ( the novel, which was much better than the movie) by De Bernieres

Dinner with Persephone...Patricia Storace.
Zorba the Greek of course.


Or did you mean guidebooks? LP have a specific Greek Islands guide. There's also Greek Island Hopping by the unlikely-named Frewin Poffley (published by Thomas Cook) My fave is Rough Guide.

The Magus, by John Fowles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magus_(novel)

Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek

Eleni, by Nicholas Gage

Mythology, by Edith Hamilton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Hamilton

For romantic thrillers, Mary Stewart set The Moonspinners on Crete, This Rough Magic on Corfu, and My Brother Michael on the Greek mainland. Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (Corfu) and Erica James set one of her romances on Corfu too but I found it somewhat lightweight and I didn't finish it!

Otherwise Captain Corelli's Mandolin comes to mind, and Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea (Crete).

But there are many, many thousands of good books you could read ON your holiday staying ON the Greek Islands - do you particularly want it to BE about the Greek Islands? Your post is a touch ambiguous!

Have a great trip!

The Odyssey.

The Gates of The Wind' by Michael Carroll.
About the Sporades, circa 1960's... lovely book. Hard to find, but I found copies on Amazon UK - the first copies I found were in a pile, in a dark, dusty corner of a Greek shop in the backstreets of Skiathos. It's a gem.

I'm happy to recommend both of these books by John Ebdon:-

Ebdon's Odyssey and Ebdon's Iliad

They centre around his visits to Mykonos, Andros, Kos, Rhodes and Karpathos. Joyfully written and a pleasure to read.

In addition to those mentioned above:-
The Olive Grove by Katherine Kizilos and A House in Corfu by Emma Tennant.

An Affair of the Heart by Dilys Powell is pretty good too.