"There have been many women who have followed the beckoning Eastern star" says Lesley Blanch. She writes about four such women in this inspired classic, originally published in 1954: Isabel Burton (who married the Arabist and explorer Richard), Jane Digby el-Mezrab (Lady Ellenborough, the society beauty who ended up living in the Syrian desert with a Bedouin chieftain), Aimee Dubucq de Rivery (a French convent girl captured by pirates and sent to the Sultan's harem in Istanbul), and Isabelle Eberhardt (a Swiss linguist who felt most comfortable in boy's clothes and lived among the Bedouin in the Sahara).  (EXP28, $15.00)