In On the Shadow Tracks (Allen Lane, £25), Clare Hammond, a British investigative journalist, follows a network of railways that was not shown on publicly available maps in Myanmar. The resulting book, her publisher says, is “simultaneously a lush and evocative travelogue, an unsparing account of Myanmar’s recent history, and an astonishing, conversation-shifting engagement with Britain’s colonial legacy”. Based in London, Hammond works for the non-profit organisation Global Witness, investigating issues relating to natural resources, conflict and corruption. In Yangon, where she lived for six years, she oversaw daily news coveraa a new anthology of writing about nature and place taken from Little Toller’s acclaimed online journal, The Clearing.

Going to Ground: An anthology of nature and place edited by Jon Woolcott (Little Toller, £16) will be launched on June 21 with an event at the Grosvenor Arms in Shaftesbury, Dorset, organised by the local FOLDE bookshop. Pieces are drawn from “The Clearing”, the online journal for new writing the publisher set up in 2013. Some contributors will be reading from their essays and poetry and discussing their work in a session chaired by Woolcott.

Glowing Still: A Woman’s Life on the Road by Sara Wheeler is now out in paperback (Abacus, £12.99); highly recommended.

Nathan Thrall‘s timely account of the daily round in the West Bank, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, which recently won him a Pulitzer Prize, has been short-listed for the political writing book prize in the Orwell Prizes; the winner will be announced on June 27.

Javier Zamora’s Solito is the choice of the month for California Book Club, part of Alta Journal, a magazine covering the western US. The author will be discussing his work with the CBC host John Freeman and his special guest, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds, on June 20.

In The Portable Paradise (Notting Hill Editions, £14.99), the journalist and author Jonathan Keates offers “a fascinating history of the Victorian and Edwardian guidebook… taking us on a a poignant, enlightening, and at times hilarious tour of that mysterious country: the past”. For details, and an extract, see the publisher’s website.