Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books About/Set In Places on My Bucket List Â
I’m in so much trouble! My plan for this week’s list was to list a few books for places on my bucket list, as per instructions, and I had a few different places in mind like, I wanted to visit the Colosseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China, Niagara Falls, and so on… Well, I started with Rome and did my search for books featuring Rome, and ended up with SO MANY NEW BOOKS ON MY TBR!
What’s worse, some of them are series! What’s even worse, some of them are LONG RUNNING SERIES with seven or more books!
So obviously I stopped searching for any other books featuring my other bucket list places because I cannot afford this! You’ll have to make do with just books about Rome!
Top Ten Books Set in Rome
- From the Ashes by Melissa Addey – The author has written another series, The Forbidden City, set in China that I’m also interested in and have on my TBR. There are four books in this series.
- SPQR by Mary Beard – This is nonfiction and seems to be very highly recommended. I’ve already put in a request for it from my library.
- Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr – This is a memoir that I’m interested in because I have another book by the author on my TBR as well, All The Light We Cannot See.
- The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough – The author of The Thorn Birds, with such high ratings for these books on Goodreads, and seven books in the series!
- Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow – 25 freaking books in the series! To be fair, I already had this book on my TBR for a while, but I’d forgotten about it and I didn’t know there were 25 books in the series!
- Pompeii by Robert Harris – Thank the gods this is a standalone! It might be the only standalone on this list, other than the nonfics!
- The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis – 13 books in this series. Not as bad as 25 but still painful on my purse!
- Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn – It’s Kate Quinn and I’d been wanting to read more of her books. I didn’t know she wrote historical fiction about Rome, but I am so here for it! Four books in this series.
- The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff – This is the first of eight books in a series. They were apparently not written as a series but they are categorized as one, so we’ll see.
- The Light Bearer by Donna Gillespie – So this is the only book on the list I’ve read and loved. It’s one of my all-time favorite books and I reread it all the time and recommend it to everyone I can because it’s criminally underrated. It’s also a duology but I haven’t read the second book. If you’re a fan of historical fiction set in Rome and haven’t read any of these books, I highly recommend you read this one!
Have you read any of these authors? What did you think of them? Would you read any of their books?
I haven’t heard of any of these, but I hope you enjoy them all! It’s fun to try and find some books set in our bucket list locales. 🙂
True! I love stories about Ancient Rome in particular, but I know modern Rome is going to look very different, of course!
Rome hasn’t really been on my. wish list to visit but I can know that it would be interesting. You certainly found plenty of interesting books.
They look great, but I hope one day I can visit the real place!
It looks like you found some great books that let you travel to Rome from the comfort of home.
Here’s my TTT for the week: https://readbakecreate.com/books-set-in-iceland-books-set-in-bucket-list-locations/
Yes, I’m very excited about these books! But I hope I get to visit for real one day.
I would like to visit Rome too. These look good. Enjoy them when you get to them.
Have a great week!
Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
My post:
https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2026/04/07/top-ten-tuesday-books-about-set-in-places-on-my-bucket-list/
Thank you! Rome isn’t actually first on my bucket list, just the first setting I searched for, but I would definitely love to visit one day.
Rome is one of my favorite settings!
Mine too!
Rome is a good pick. So much history there.
It really does have such a rich history!
I ended up adding a whole lot more books to my TBR too.
Thanks for sharing your #TTT
I have to exercise a stronger willpower!
Lol!!! When research gets the better of us…. I totally get it. And Rome would be amazing!
I have so many other places I would love to visit and read about too, but I’m afraid of researching anymore right now!
I’ve liked other books by Sutcliffe so I might have to try that one too.
Sutcliff’s a new author to me so it’s good to hear you’ve liked other books by her!
Ooh, I had no idea Kate Quinn wrote a historical roman story! I still haven’t read anything by her aside from a novella (which I loved) and I don’t know why I keep putting it off when I know I’ll probs love her stories. Pompeii looks interesting too! My parents took us kids to Rome when we were kids but sadly too young to remember. I’d defo love to go back one day!
So jealous you’ve been to Rome even though you were too young to remember! I hope one day we’ll both get to go and both have memorable visits!
Rome would be such an amazing place to visit! It’s definitely on my list too. But I totally understand adding more books to the TBR because I had to stop myself from doing that. I haven’t read any of these (or heard of most of them) except SPQR, which I know is one of the definitive historians.
I hadn’t heard of SPQR until now. I love historical fiction about Rome but haven’t read very many, I’m very excited about all of the ones on this list!
Rome is a great pick, and the Colosseum has some fascinating history behind it! I haven’t read any of these books, but I hope you enjoy whichever ones you pick up!
Thank you! I love stories about Ancient Rome and I’m very curious about the actual history, I’m really excited about these books!
I haven’t read any of these books, but the first one coming to mind is When In Rome by Sarah Adams, which I haven’t read either. But I’ve seen it around heaps.
My TTT: https://laurieisreading.com/2026/04/07/top-ten-tuesday-the-four-winds/
Oh no, what have you done?! I’m adding When In Rome to my TBR too!
The Eagle of the Ninth is a very loose series — not the same characters between each book, and the links are quite tenuous (you realise that someone is a descendent of someone from an earlier book and similar). It can definitely be read as a standalone, as can most of the others (though one or two might have closer links to each other). It’s almost all set in Roman and Post-Roman Britain, though!
Good to know! I do tend to lose interest in a series if it doesn’t follow the same characters, but in some cases, it works. Like with Becky Chamber’s The Wayfarer series. I love all the books and meeting the different characters, but I still miss the ones we’ve met before though.
I think I read (or at the very least) owned The Eagle of the Ninth as a child but I have no recollection whatsoever!