Search execution chambers by torchlight, ride vertigo-inducing trails side-saddle and share the day-to-day adventures of your guide, a British housewife in India with 54 servants and no children.

It’s the 1820s, the Ganges is haunted by crocodiles and Kali-worshipping thugs. This is Fanny Parks’ sensational, but sprawling 1,000 page journal edited down to a novel-length entertainment. Parks wrote like a feminist, but was the wife of an administrator for the multinational corporation that ruled India for 100 years—the East India Company.

Her writing effortlessly convinces us of its blockbuster premise—an insatiable corporation encountered an ancient civilization and while they were squeezing them for everything they had, a few of their employees fell in love with the world they were exploiting. That love doesn’t justify rapacious capitalism, but it does make things interesting.

These journals need a remake more than most Hollywood films!

Discover…

• How Parks transformed herself from a proper housewife into a leading authority on Indian art.
• Solo female travel 200 years before EAT PRAY LOVE. 
• How to Escape Your Husband’s Funeral Pyre