Book Reviews

Like most writers, I’m also a reader.

For those books—fiction and non-fiction—that grab me, I’ll write a review on my blog and talk it up at readers’ groups. Below are quick links to reviews of books I’d recommend (alpha by title within a category: Historical fiction/fiction; History/Biography/Memoir; Science/Miscellaneous Non-fiction; and Folk/Faerie Tales). For those who need a little more info before diving into a review, I’ve provided the cover image and blurb with a link to the review below.

Historical / Fiction

Title: Alexandria: A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery
Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2009
Formats: Paperback (349 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: In first century A.D. Rome, during the reign of Vespasian, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private “informer,” often for the emperor, ferreting out hidden truths and bringing villains to ground. But even informers take vacations with their wives, so in A.D. 77, Falco and his wife, Helena Justina, with others in tow, travel to Alexandria, Egypt. But they aren’t there long before Falco quickly finds himself on the trail of dodgy doings, malfeasance, deadly professional rivalry, dead bodies and the lowest of the low—book thieves! (Read review.)

Title: Antony and Cleopatra
Author: Colleen McCullough
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2007)
Formats: Paperback (576 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Caesar is dead, and Rome is, again, divided. Lepidus has retreated to Africa, while Antony rules the opulent East, and Octavian claims the West, the heart of Rome, as his domain. Though this tense truce holds civil war at bay, Rome seems ripe for an emperor—a true Julian heir to lay claim to Caesar’s legacy. Antony seems poised to take the prize. Like a true warrior-king, he is a seasoned general whose lust for power burns alongside a passion for women, feasts, and Chian wine. His rival Octavian, seems a less convincing candidate. (Read review.)

Title: Burr
Author: Gore Vidal
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (February 15, 2000)
Formats: Paperback (448 pages), eBook
Blurb: Burr is a portrait of perhaps the most complex and misunderstood of the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. Burr retains much of his political influence if not the respect of all. And he is determined to tell his own story. (Read review)

Title: The Confessions of Young Nero
Author: Margaret George
Publisher: Berkley; First Edition edition (March 7, 2017)
Formats: Hardcover (514 pages), Paperback, eBook, Audio book
Blurb: While Nero idealizes the artistic and athletic principles of Greece, his very survival rests on his ability to navigate the sea of vipers that is Rome. The most lethal of all is his own mother, a cold-blooded woman whose singular goal is to control the empire…Nero’s determination to escape her thrall will shape him into the man he was fated to become—an Emperor who became legendary. With impeccable research and captivating prose, The Confessions of Young Nero is the story of a boy’s ruthless ascension to the throne. (Read review)

Title: Empire
Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (2010)
Formats: Paperback (608 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Continuing the saga begun in his New York Times bestselling novel Roma, Steven Saylor charts the destinies of the aristocratic Pinarius family, from the reign of Augustus to height of Rome’s empire. The Pinarii, generation after generation, are witness to greatest empire in the ancient world and of the emperors that ruled it—from the machinations of Tiberius and the madness of Caligula, to the decadence of Nero and the golden age of Trajan and Hadrian and more. (Read review.)

Title: Hag-Seed
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Hogarth (October 2016)
Formats: Hardcover/PB, (320 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.  After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It’s magic! (Read review.)

Title: Hand of Fire
Author: Judith Starkston
Publisher: Fireship Press (September 2014)
Formats: Paperback (336 pages), eBook
Blurb: The Trojan War threatens Troy’s allies and the Greek supply raids spread. A young healing priestess, designated as future queen, must defend her city against both divine anger and invading Greeks. She finds strength in visions of a handsome warrior god; will that be enough when the half-immortal Achilles attacks? Hand of Fire, a tale of resilience and hope, blends history and legend in the untold story of Achilles’s famous captive, Briseis.(Read review.)

Title: Imperium
Author: Robert Harris
Publisher: Gallery Books (2007)
Formats: Paperback (305 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: On a cold November morning, Tiro opens the door to find a terrified, bedraggled stranger begging for help. Once a Sicilian aristocrat, the man was robbed by the corrupt Roman governor, Verres, who is now trying to convict him under false pretenses and sentence him to a violent death. The man claims that only the great senator Marcus Cicero, one of Rome’s most ambitious lawyers and spellbinding orators, can bring him justice in a crooked society manipulated by the villainous governor.  What follows is one of the most gripping courtroom dramas in history. (Read review.)

Title: Khan: Empire of Silver
Author: Conn Iggulden
Publisher: Delacorte Press (December 28, 2010)
Formats: Paperback (416 pages),  eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Genghis Khan is dead, but his legend and his legacy live on. His son Ogedai has built a white city on a great plain and made a capital for the new nation. Now the armies have gathered to see which of Genghis’ sons has the strength to be khan. The Mongol empire has been at peace for two years, but whoever survives will face the formidable might of their great enemy, China’s Song dynasty. (Read review.)

Title: Latro in the Mist (omnibus)
Author: Gene Wolfe
Publisher: Orb Books (2003)
Format: Paperback (640 pages)
Blurb: This omnibus of two acclaimed novels is the story of Latro, a Roman mercenary who while fighting in Greece received a head injury that deprived him of his short-term memory but gave him in return the ability to see and converse with the supernatural creatures and the gods and goddesses, who invisibly inhabit the ancient landscape. Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story’s hold on readers is powerful indeed, and many consider these Wolfe’s best books. (Read review.)

Title: Little Dorrit
Author: Charles Dickens
Availability:  Borrow it from the library, download it free (it’s in the public domain), or pick up a cheap paperback. You can find this classic book in any format and every price range.
Blurb: When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity. (Read review.)

Title: Noah’s Wife
Author:  T. K. Thorne
Publisher: Chalet Publishers, LLC (2009)
Format: Paperback (354 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Noah’s wife is Na’amah, a beautiful, brilliant girl with a form of autism (now) known as Asperger’s. She wishes only to be a shepherdess on her beloved hills in ancient Turkey—a desire shattered by her powerful brother’s hatred, the love of two men, and a looming disaster only she knows is coming. (Read review.)

Title: Outlaw
Author: Angus Donald
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin, New York (March 2011)
Formats: Paperback (352 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: In the tradition of Bernard Cornwell and Ben Kane, Outlaw is a rousing historical novel that mixes legend with fact to bring to life the time, the lives and the struggles of late 12th century England.  As the Henry II struggles with his rebelious children and the conflict between the Saxon nobility and the Norman conquerors continues on as bloody as ever, there is a figure that has remained firmly fixed in the imagation of generations – Robin Hood, an outlaw and a renegade nobility determined to bring down the men who took his land, his family, and his position. (Read review.)

Title: Priestess of Ishana
Author: Judith Starkston
Publisher: Bronze Age Books
Formats: Paperback (464 pages), eBook
Blurb:  A malignant curse from the Underworld threatens Tesha’s city with fiery devastation. The young priestess of Ishana, goddess of love and war, must overcome this demonic darkness. Into this crisis, King Hattu, the younger brother of the Great King, arrives to make offerings to the goddess Ishana, but he conceals his true mission in the city. As a connection sparks between King Hattu and Tesha, the Grand Votary accuses Hattu of murderous sorcery and jails him under penalty of death. Isolated in prison, Hattu’s only hope lies in Tesha to uncover the conspiracy against him. (Read review.)

Title: Roma
Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (2009)
Formats: Paperback (592 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Spanning a thousand years, and following the shifting fortunes of two families though the ages, this is the epic saga of Rome, the city and its people.
Weaving history, legend, and new archaeological discoveries into a spellbinding narrative, critically acclaimed novelist Steven Saylor gives new life to the drama of the city’s first thousand years — from the founding of the city by the ill-fated twins Romulus and Remus, through Rome’s astonishing ascent to become the capitol of the most powerful empire in history. (Read review.)

Title: Romanov Empress: A Novel of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna
Author: C. W. Gortner
Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 10, 2018))
Formats: Hardcover (448 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Narrated by the mother of Russia’s last Tsar, this vivid, historically authentic novel brings to life the courageous story of Maria Feodorovna, one of Imperial Russia’s most compelling women, who witnessed the splendor and tragic downfall of the Romanovs as she fought to save her dynasty in its final years…From the opulent palaces of St. Petersburg to the World War I battlefields and the bloodied countryside occupied by the Bolsheviks, C. W. Gortner sweeps us into the anarchic fall of an empire and the complex, bold heart of the woman who tried to save it.(Read review.)

Title: The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World
Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2012
Format: Paperback (336 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Gordianus the Finder is back in this prequel to Steven Saylor’s popular series of mysteries set in the Roman Republic of Cicero and Caesar. Gordianus is eighteen and embarks on the First Century BCE equivalent of a “Grand Tour” with his old tutor and famous poet Antipater of Sidon. As the Italian peninsula simmers with rebellion, the pair head east to visit the Seven Wonders of the World encountering murder, mysteries and political intrigues. Over the course of their year+ journey, Gordianus evolves into “the Finder” series readers have come to know and love. (Read review.)

History/Biography/Memoir

Title: Bad Princess: True Tales from Behind the Tiara
Author: Kris Waldherr
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction (January 30, 2018)
Format: Hardcover (128 pages), eBook
Blurb: Welcome to Bad Princess, where you’ll discover what really happens after “Happily Ever After.” From the war-torn Dark Ages of Medieval Europe to America’s Gilded Age, and all the way up to Kate Middleton, Bad Princess explores more than 30 true princess stories, going beyond the glitz and glamour to find out what life was really like for young royals throughout history. A mix of royal biography, pop culture, art, style, and pure fun, Bad Princess is a whip-smart, tongue-in-cheek spin on the traditional princess narrative, proving that it takes more than a pretty crown to be a great leader.(Read review)

Title: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Author: Tom Reiss
Publisher: Crown/Archetype (September 18, 2012)
Formats: Hardback (432 pages), paperback, eBook, Audio Book
Blurb: The Black Count is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as  The Count of Monte Cristo  and  The Three Musketeers.  Hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave — who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.  The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son. (Read review)

Title: Boudica
Authors: Vanessa Collingridge
Format: Trade paperback, (402 pages), eBook
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (April 28, 2006)
Blurb: Boudica has been immortalised throughout history as the woman who dared take on the Romans – an act of vengeance on behalf of her daughters, tribe and enslaved country. Her known life is a rich tapestry of wife, widow, mother, queen and Celtic quasi-Goddess. But beneath this lies a history both dark and shocking, with fresh archaeological evidence adding new depth and terrifying detail to the worn-out myths. From the proud warrior tribes of her East Anglian childhood to the battlefields of her defeat, this is a vividly written and evocatively told story, bringing a wealth of new insight on one of the key figures in British history and mythology.(Read review.)

Title: Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen
Authors: Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic; (August 21, 2006)
Format: Trade paperback, 256 pages
Blurb: Boudica, queen of the Iceni, led a famous revolt against Roman rule in Britain in AD 60, sacking London, Colchester and St Albans and throwing the province into chaos. Although then defeated by the governor, Suetonius Paulinus, her rebellion sent a shock wave across the empire. Who was this woman who defied Rome? This is an account of what we know about the real woman, from classical literature, written for the readers in Rome, and from the archaeological evidence. It also traces her extraordinary posthumous career as the earliest famous woman in British history. She remains a tragic, yet inspirational, figure of unending interest. (Read review.)

Title: Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
Author:  Leonie Frieda
Publisher: Harper Perennial (2006)
Formats: Paperback (440 pages), Audio book
Blurb: Poisoner, despot, necromancer — the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds — from a troubled childhood in Florence to her marriage to Henry, son of King Francis I of France; from her transformation of French culture to her fight to protect her throne and her sons’ birthright. Based on thousands of private letters, it is a remarkable account of one of the most influential women ever to wear a crown. (Read review.)

Title: Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
Author: Robert K. Massie
Publisher: Random House, November 2011
Format: Hardcover (656 pages), Paperback (672 pages), eBook, Audio book
ISBN: 978-0-679-45672-8 (ARC)
Price: $35.00 (HB), $14.93 (PB), $9.99 (eB), $35.95 (AB)
Blurb: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. (Read review.)

Title: Cleopatra: A Life
Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (2010)
Formats: Hardback (369 pages), Paperback (432 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. (Read review.)

Title: Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World
Author: Matthew Goodman
Publisher: Ballantine Books (February 26, 2012)
Format: Hardcover (480 pages), Paperback (496 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: On November 14, 1898, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left new York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, this is history with the heart of a great adventure novel. (Read review.)

Title: Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science—and the World
Author: Rachel Swaby
Publisher: Broadway Books (April 7, 2015)
Format: Paperback (288 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: Who are the role models for today’s female scientists, and where can we find the stories that cast them in their true light? Headstrong delivers a powerful, global, and engaging answer. Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known. This fascinating tour reveals 52 women at their best—while encouraging and inspiring a new generation of girls to put on their lab coats. (Read review)

Title: Hidden Figures:The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Author: Margot Lee Shetterly
Publisher: William Morrow (September 6, 2016)
Format: Hardback (368 pages), paperback, eBook, audio book
Blurb: The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space-a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. (Read review.)

Title: Hypatia of Alexandria
Author: Maria Dzielska, (translated by F. Lyra)
Publisher: Harvard University Press (1995)
Format: Paperback (176 pages)
Blurb: Hypatia—brilliant mathematician, eloquent Neoplatonist, and a woman renowned for her beauty—was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415. She has been a legend ever since. In this engrossing book, Maria Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia’s life and death, and new insight into her colorful world. (Read review.)

Title: Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr
Author: Michael A. B. Deakin
Publisher: Prometheus Books (2007)
Formats: Hardback (231 pages), eBook
Blurb: This is the first biography of Hypatia to integrate all aspects of her life. Mathematician Michael Deakin emphasizes that, though she was a philosopher, she was first and foremost a mathematician and astronomer of great accomplishment. In a fascinating narrative that brings to life a richly diverse ancient society, he describes her work so that the mathematics, presented in straightforward terms, finds its true place in the context of her life. He also analyzes her life and thought, and finally gives an account of the events leading up to her lynch-mob execution. (Read review.)

Title: The Kings’ Mistresses: the Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin
Author: Elizabeth C. Goldsmith
Publisher: PublicAffairs (member of Perseus Book Group)
Formats: Hardcover (256 pages), eBook
Blurb: The Kings’ Mistresses is the true tale of two sisters: Marie Mancini and her younger sister Hortense, the nieces of one of the most powerful men in seventeenth century France, Cardinal Mazarin (a protégé of Richelieu.) Mazarin, rose from obscure roots in Rome to become Prime Minister to the Queen Regent of France, Anne of Austria and her son Louis XIV. He summoned his Italian nieces to the French court. It was the first of many journeys in their fascinating lives.(Read review.)

Title: Leadership in Turbulent Times
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 18, 2018)
Formats: hardback, paperback, eBook, audio book
Blurb: In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. (Read review)

Title: March: Book One
Authors: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions (2013)
Formats: hardback, paperback, eBook
Blurb: This groundbreaking graphic-novel memoir by a living legend of the civil rights movement, Congressman John Lewis is a #1 New York Times bestseller, a Coretta Scott King Honor book, a required text in classrooms across America, and the first graphic novel to win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Book One spans John Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.(Read review.)

Title: March: Book Two
Authors: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions (2015)
Formats: hardback, paperback, eBook
Blurb: After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence — but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy… and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (Read review.)

Title: March: Book Three
Authors: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions (2013)
Formats: hardback, paperback, eBook
Blurb: Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. By the fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action, SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice, but for every step forward, the danger grows more intense. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression: “One Man, One Vote.” But fractures within the movement are deepening … even as 25-year-old John Lewis prepares to risk everything in a historic showdown high above the Alabama river, in a town called Selma. (Read review.)

Title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave and Other Writings
Author: Frederick Douglass
Publisher: Fall River Press (2008), originally published in 1845
Formats: Hardcover (202 pages), paperback, eBook
Availability: All the original material is available in the public domain; borrow a copy from your local library or download a copy on line.
Blurb: This dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its young author had just achieved his freedom. Douglass’ eloquence gives a clear indication of the powerful principles that led him to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. (Read review.)

Title: Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Authors: Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik
Publisher: Dey Street Books (October 27, 2015)
Formats: Hardcover (240 pages), eBook, audio book
Blurb: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she was just trying to make the world a little better and a little freer. But along the way, the feminist pioneer’s searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, created by the young lawyer who began the Internet sensation and an award-winning journalist, takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice’s life and work. As America struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stays fierce. And if you don’t know, now you know. (Read review.)

Title: The Princess Diarist
Author: Carrie Fisher
Publisher: Blue Rider Press (November 2016)
Formats: Hardcover (272 pages), Paperback (272 pages), eBook, Audio
Blurb:  In 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford. With excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes.  Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience. (Read review)

Title: Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History—Without the Fairy-Tale Endings
Author: Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
Publisher: Quirk Books, (November 19, 2013)
Formats: Hardcover (288 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: You think you know her story. You’ve read the Brothers Grimm, you’ve watched the Disney cartoons, you cheered as these virtuous women lived happily ever after. But the lives of real princesses couldn’t be more different. Sure, many were graceful and benevolent leaders – but just as many were ruthless in their quest for power, and all of them had skeletons rattling in their royal closets.Princesses Behaving Badly is a fascinating read for history buffs, feminists, and anyone seeking a different kind of bedtime story.(Read review.)

Title: The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800
Author: William Monter
Publisher: Yale University Press (January 24, 2012)
Format: Hardcover (304 pages), eBook
Blurb:In this lively and pathbreaking book, William Monter sketches Europe’s increasing acceptance of autonomous female rulers between the late Middle Ages and the French Revolution. Monter surveys the governmental records of Europe’s thirty women monarchs—the famous (Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great) as well as the obscure (Charlotte of Cyprus, Isabel Clara Eugenia of the Netherlands)—describing how each of them achieved sovereign authority, wielded it, and (more often than men) abandoned it. Monter argues that Europe’s female kings, who ruled by divine right, experienced no significant political opposition despite their gender.(Read review)

Title: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women
Author: Elizabeth Kerri Mahon
Publisher: TarcherPerigee (March 1, 2011)
Format: Paperback (320 pages), eBook
Blurb: Throughout history women have caused wars, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees. The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcees, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves. “Scandalous Women” tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events.(Read review)

Title: She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea
Author: Joan Druett
Publisher: Simon & Schuster  (May 29, 2001)
Format: Hardcover (304 pages), eBook
Blurb: If a “hen frigate” was any ship carrying a captain’s wife, then a “she captain” is a bold woman distinguished for courageous enterprise in the history of the sea. “She captains,” who infamously possessed the “bodies of women and the souls of men,” thrilled and terrorized their shipmates, doing “deeds beyond the valor of women.” Some were “bold and crafty pirates with broadsword in hand.” Like their male counterparts, these astonishing women were drawn to the ocean’s beauty — and its danger.  (Read review)

Title: Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music
Author: Anna Beer
Publisher: Oneworld Publications (May 10, 2016)
Format: Hardcover (304 pages), Paperback (348 pages), eBook
Blurb: Sounds and Sweet Airs reveals the hidden stories of eight remarkable composers, taking the reader on a journey from seventeenth-century Medici Florence to London in the Blitz. Exploring not just the lives and works of eight exceptional artists, historian Anna Beer also asks tough questions about the silencing of their legacy, which continues to this day. Why do we still not hear masterpieces such as Hensel’s piano work “The Year,” Caccini’s arias and Boulanger’s setting of Psalm 130? A long-overdue celebration of neglected virtuosos, Sounds and Sweet Airs presents a complex and inspirational picture of artistic endeavour and achievement that deserves to be part of our cultural heritage. (Read review)

Title: Vikings and Goths: A History of Ancient and Medieval Sweden
Author: Gary Dean Peterson
Publisher: McFarland (2016)
Formats: Trade Paperback (324 pages), eBook
Blurb: This book details the development of Scandinavia–Sweden in particular–from the end of the Ice Age, through a series of prehistoric cultures, the Bronze and Iron ages, to the Viking period and late Middle Ages. Recent research suggests a Swedish origin of the Goths, who helped dismember the Roman Empire, and evidence of Swedish participation in the western Viking expeditions. Special attention is given to Eastern Europe, where Sweden dominated commerce through the conquest of trade towns and the river systems of Russia. (Read review)

Title: Women Warriors: An Unexpected History
Author: Pamela D. Toler
Publisher: Beacon Press (February 26, 2019)
Formats: Hardcover (240 pages), eBook, Audiobook
Blurb: Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor. The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating and lively world history, Pamela Toler not only introduces us to women who took up arms, she also shows why they did it and what happened when they stepped out of their traditional female roles to take on other identities. (Read review.)

Science/Misc. Non-fiction

Title: Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Haymarket Books; Second edition (March 15, 2016)
Formats: Paperback (184 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide knowledge of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Originally published in 2004, now with a new foreword and afterword, Solnit’s influential book shines a light into the darkness of our time in an unforgettable new edition.  (Read review)

Title: Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story
Author: Angela Saini
Publisher: Beacon Press; Reprint edition (March 6, 2018)
Formats: Paperback (224 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: From intelligence to emotion, for centuries science has told us that men and women are fundamentally different. But this is not the whole story. Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered. She explores what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, revealing an alternative view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded. (Read review.)

Title: Men Explain Things to Me
Author:  Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Haymarket Books; Updated edition (September 1, 2015)
Formats:  Hardback, Paperback (176 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf ’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. (Read review)

Folk/Faerie Tales

Title: Daughters of Copper Woman
Author: Anne Cameron
Publisher: Harbor Publishing, updated edition 2002 (original edition 1981)
Format: Paperback, 200 pages
Blurb: And then the Creator, who is neither male nor female, man nor woman, but both, and something more than either…took the shells of the sea and the minerals of the rocks and fashioned a skeleton…took the salt water of the ocean and made from it blood…took handfuls of dirt and on the skeleton fashioned a body, which was then encased in skin, made from the skin of the Creator and the same color as copper…she became First Woman, she became Copper Woman. (Read review.)

Guest Author Posts

Title: The Raven’s Seal
Author: Andrei Baltrakmens
Publisher: Top Five Books (November 2012)
Formats: Paperback (416 pages), eBook
Blurb: In the fictional 18th-century English city of Airenchester, the body of Thaddeus Grainger’s rival turns up stabbed to death in an alley just hours after their inconclusive duel. Only one suspect comes to mind. Charged with murder, Grainger’s fate is sealed before his trial even begins. A young gentleman of means but of meaningless pursuits, Grainger is cast into the notorious Bellstrom Gaol, where he must quickly learn to survive in the filthy, ramshackle prison. Set against the urban backdrop of late 18th-century England, The Raven’s Seal unravels a tale of corruption, betrayal, murder, and–ultimately–redemption and love. (Read post.)

Title: The Twelve Rooms of the Nile
Author: Enid Shomer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster (August 2012)
Formats: Paperback, (480 pages), eBook
Blurb: Before she became the nineteenth century’s greatest heroine, before he had written a word of Madame Bovary, Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert traveled down the Nile at the same time in 1850. But where history would have these two figures float right by each other, the award-winning writer Enid Shomer brings them together to ignite a passionate friendship that alters both their destinies. (Read post.)

Title: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret
Author: Glynis Ridley
Publisher: Broadway Books (2011)
Format: Paperback (291 pages), eBook, Audio book
Blurb: The year was 1765. Eminent botanist Philibert Commerson had just been appointed to a grand new expedition: the first French circumnavigation of the world. As the ships’ official naturalist, Commerson would seek out resources—medicines, spices, timber, food—that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s young mistress and collaborator, was desperate not to be left behind. She disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. The journey made the twenty-six-year-old, known to her shipmates as “Jean” rather than “Jeanne,” the first woman to ever sail around the globe. Yet so little is known about this extraordinary woman, whose accomplishments were considered to be subversive, even impossible for someone of her sex and class. (Read post.)