Love to travel? Love to eat? Have we got a book for you.

The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth, by Roy Andries de Groot, was first published in 1973 and has remained a cult favorite ever since. It tells the true story of the author's chance stay at an inn in the Chartreuse Mountains north of Grenoble, France.

Every detail, every sprig of thyme, is carefully, lovingly overseen by the two women who run the place. Meals are not gourmet extravaganzas so much as a celebration of honest country cooking (refined, to be sure) and the inestimable pleasures of good food, good wine, and good friends.

Madame Vivette and Madame Ray may no longer be around (nor indeed is the inn), but the spirit of the place has inspired countless chefs cooking today (Alice Waters first and foremost). You can still get a taste of the place since well over half the book contains the recipes that were served at this Alpine Shangri-La.