THE LAST GRAND TOUR
“A captivating exploration of the promise and burden of passionate love.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In January 2025, Korza Books published my first novel, The Last Grand Tour.
Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review and put it on its list of the 100 “Best Indie Books of the Year” and “Best Indie Literary Fiction of 2025.” The Kirkus reviewer called it “An entertaining, deeply felt story of giddy hopes straining against harsh realities.”
Willamette Week named it one of four “Standout New Books by Pacific Northwest Writers” and several outstanding authors have praised it.
Chelsea Bieker, bestselling author of Madwoman, says it’s “a gripping, entertaining, and ultimately transporting novel that feels at once personal and universal.”
And Mitchell S. Jackson, the Pultizer Prize-winning author of Survival Math and The Residue Years writes:
“The Last Grand Tour is an elegant and evocative novel about lives at crossroads. The indelible pair at the heart of this complicated and tender love story are surrounded by characters I will carry with me the rest of my reading life. Not to mention, the novel is a flat-out enlightenment on European culture. Michael N. McGregor is a writer at the height of his powers: creative and intellectual.“
To order The Last Grand Tour, just click on the cover or title above or the names below of independent bookstores that have hosted me for book-related events:
Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
Edmonds Bookshop, Edmonds, WA
Village Books, Bellingham, WA
Third Place Books Ravenna, Seattle, WA
Eagle Harbor Book Company, Bainbridge Island, WA
Inklings Bookshop, Yakima, WA
Auntie’s Bookstore, Spokane, WA
Pacific Mist Books, Sequim, WA
Cloud & Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita, OR
Content Bookstore, Northfield, MN
The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, MA
Here’s the publisher‘s description:
The Last Grand Tour
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’s watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn’t want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe’s Romantic past, he grows increasingly disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn’t arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour-and his life-into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe-as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era-The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler’s Berchtesgaden, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
$20
Also available on Amazon.
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