Two new arrivals, the second of which I picked up in Palm Springs when I had it delivered to a friend who lives there and saved a lot on postage.
Gatecrashing Paradise: Misadventures in the Real Maldives by Tom Chesshyre is the author’s account of visiting the islands in the Maldives that were not developed as tourist destinations. Instead of the resorts often seen in travel magazines, Chesshyre explored the unknown Maldives via cargo ship and ferry.
The Arch of Kerguelen: Voyage to the Islands of Desolation by Jean-Paul Kauffmann (translated by Patricia Clancy) tells the story of the author’s visit to this remote archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean in the early nineties. The book was immaculately packaged with its dust jacket wrapped in Mylar. I bought it second-hand yet the vendor underrepresented how new this book actually was.