First, I'm a woman and I'm inspired by women from the past who overcame the rules of the day in which they lived. It doesn’t matter where they lived, or what they tried to overcome, but to have bucked the patriarchal system and achieved some measure of success, is phenomenal. Second, I became inspired by silent film star Marion Davies, and I wrote a book about it. I never intended to write historical fiction. My first book was a memoir about sailing to Tahiti at fourteen with my father and two sisters. But life has a funny way of directing us where we need to go. Here I am: inspired by women from the past!
The true-life story of Marion Davies’ thirty-four-year relationship with William Randolph Hearst including a whirlwind courtship, a movie career spanning…
Women lived sheltered and protected lives in the early 1900s, and without much power, there wasn’t much they could do to break free of societal norms. But freedom comes at a price.
Meet Mary Pickford and Frances Marion, best friends in an era that denied women power. Mary Pickford was perhaps the most popular film star and powerful woman in the 1910s, and her screenwriter, Frances Marion, the first woman to ever win an Oscar in screenwriting.
Follow their true life story through the ups and downs of successes and failures as they try to find love, happiness, and some semblance of autonomy.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife, a “rich exploration of two Hollywood friends who shaped the movies” (USA Today)—screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford
“Full of Old Hollywood glamour and true details about the pair’s historic careers . . . a captivating ode to a legendary bond.”—Real Simple
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE
It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to…
How would you feel to inherit your family business (the Post cereal company) but not be able to run it? I’d be infuriated.
Here is the story of one of the richest women in the country who needed to marry so her husband could have a seat on the board. But men in the early 1900s did not abide women on the Board of Directors of any corporation.
Learn how Marjorie Post navigates the world trying to find love and be true to her father’s dream.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Marvelous . . . I just had to be there with the Post cereal heiress through every twist and turn.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
“New-money heiress Marjorie Post isn’t content to remain a society bride as she remakes herself into a savvy entrepreneur, a visionary philanthropist, a presidential hostess, and much more.”—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone,…
Germany 1938. Herman watches in horror as his cousin is arrested. As a Jew, he realizes he must flee Germany, a decision that catapults him into a life changed forever by the gathering storm of world events.
Part coming-of-age fiction, part immigrant tale, part military adventure, Immigrant Soldier follows Herman’s…
I grew up reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and found this book about the woman who changed his life riveting.
I also loved it because Stevenson sails to French Polynesia and I have sailed to French Polynesia and written a book about it. So there are many connections for me. Plus, it’s about the real life of scorned woman, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne who flees San Francisco and her philandering husband and eventually falls in love with Stevenson.
At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent, and opinionated belle Americaine.
I love to read about artists in Paris in the 1930s. And this book is about a woman who tries to leave the world of modeling to become a photographer, and then she morphs again into one of the only WW2 journalists.
Lee Miller was a real person and she fell in love with Surrealist Man Ray in Paris.
'Scharer captures the thrill of artistic creation and the swirling hedonism of Paris's beautiful people.' The Times
Model. Muse. Lover. Artist.
'I'd rather take a picture than be one,' Lee Miller declares, as she arrives in Paris one cool day in 1929. Lee has left behind her life in New York and a successful modelling career at Vogue to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. She soon catches the eye of renowned Surrealist artist Man Ray and convinces him to hire her as his assistant. Man is an egotistical, charismatic force, and as Lee becomes both his muse and…
Historical fiction inspired by the story of groundbreaking paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, Follow Me to Africa is a sweeping, dual-timeline story of intergenerational friendship, a meditation on the beauty of the natural world, and a celebration of the women who pave the way for those to come.
Wild Africa is romantic and daring and I loved the danger and inspiration of 1920s Africa, when British born real life woman Beryl Markham becomes one of the first female pilots. It’s a bit of Out of Africa and riveting.
Markham encounters many obstacles and has several disastrous relationships but eventually she overcomes and succeeds. She becomes the first person (not woman) to fly solo from Britain to North America.
As a young girl, Beryl Markham was brought to Kenya from Britain by parents dreaming of a new life. For her mother, the dream quickly turned sour, and she returned home; Beryl was brought up by her father, who switched between indulgence and heavy-handed authority, allowing her first to run wild on their farm, then incarcerating her in the classroom. The scourge of governesses and serial absconder from boarding school, by the age of sixteen Beryl had been catapulted into a disastrous marriage - but it was in facing up to this reality that she…
The true-life story of Marion Davies’ thirty-four-year relationship with William Randolph Hearst including a whirlwind courtship, a movie career spanning two decades and forty-four films, a secret child, and harrowing family excesses, not to mention a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. The Blue Butterfly is a behind-the-scenes look into the opulent private life of Marion Davies and how the movie Citizen Kane stole her legacy and turned everyone against her.
Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Bessie reimagines the early life of Bess Myerson, a Jewish woman and piano prodigy, who, in 1945 at age twenty-one, remarkably rises to become one of the most famous women in America.
This intimate fictional portrait reveals the transformation of the nearly six-foot-tall, self-deprecating…
In May 1941, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, hums with talk of spring flowers, fishing derbies, and the growing war in Europe. And for the residents of a quiet neighborhood boarding house, the winds of change are blowing.
Self-proclaimed spinster, Bessie Blackwell, is the reluctant owner of a new pair of glasses. The…
