In my mind, one of the best things about reading is the way books can take you around the world. As a little girl growing up in South Bend, Indiana—not the most exciting place on earth—I relied on this method to feel like I had experienced far more travel than I was likely to for a very long time if I had to rely on airplanes or even cars. It started with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books. How I loved them! I could picture the Wisconsin woods, wide prairies, Plum Creek gurgling in front of the dugout, and the deep snow of harsh Dakota winters. From there, I went south, as Margaret Mitchell tempted me to follow Scarlett through GONE WITH THE WIND and the red earth of Georgia. After that came England, first through Jane Austen and then Charles Dickens. As an adult, I started to travel more in “real” life, but I still haven’t seen Elizabeth Peter’s Egypt or Kafka’s Prague. I did, however, make a conscious decision to try to bring my readers the world the way so many authors have done so for me (although I would never, ever claim to have…