Here are 100 books that Austen at Sea fans have personally recommended if you like
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Jane Austen now dominates my teaching and research. This was not always so. I was trained in the writers that came before Austen and was happily teaching classes on them when someone at my university asked me to teach a class on Jane Austen. At first, I refused to switch. I countered, “She does not need yet another class.” But I agreed, and soon, I was hooked on her humor and her deft responses to those earlier writers. While the new graphic novel is my third book about Jane, I have not exhausted the things to research! The more I know, the more I admire her writings and her life.
I love this biography for its quirky materialist approach. Each chapter zooms in upon an object that survives from Austen’s lifetime (a shawl, a watercolor, an item of jewelry, a piece of furniture) and conjures an incident in Austen’s life from the details of that object.
In the end, I learned as much about the famous writer as from a traditional chronology, but the manner of getter there was more like an animated museum exhibition than a cradle-to-grave narrative.
Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional and genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne's landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books.
In this new biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne (author of Perdita, Mad World) explores the forces that shaped the interior life of Britain's most beloved novelist: her father's religious faith, her mother's aristocratic pedigree, her eldest brother's adoption, her other brothers' naval and military experiences, her relatives in the East and West Indies, her cousin who lived through the trauma of the French Revolution, the family's amateur theatricals, the female novelists…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Jane Austen now dominates my teaching and research. This was not always so. I was trained in the writers that came before Austen and was happily teaching classes on them when someone at my university asked me to teach a class on Jane Austen. At first, I refused to switch. I countered, “She does not need yet another class.” But I agreed, and soon, I was hooked on her humor and her deft responses to those earlier writers. While the new graphic novel is my third book about Jane, I have not exhausted the things to research! The more I know, the more I admire her writings and her life.
The greatest romance in Jane Austen’s life was surely the mutual love and support shared with her sister, Cassandra. I read this book in almost one sitting during a bout of COVID-19.
While I cannot attest to the book's official medicinal properties, it made me feel tons better and was surely a great way to spend my time in isolation. I was both transported and moved by this fictional what-if-biography of Cassandra.
The Sunday Times bestselling novel, set to be a major TV drama ________________________ 'You can't help feeling that Jane would have approved.' OBSERVER
'So good, so intelligent, so clever, so entertaining - I adored it.' CLAIRE TOMALIN ________________________ Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all?
1840: twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family's friends, the Fowles.
She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache…
Jane Austen now dominates my teaching and research. This was not always so. I was trained in the writers that came before Austen and was happily teaching classes on them when someone at my university asked me to teach a class on Jane Austen. At first, I refused to switch. I countered, “She does not need yet another class.” But I agreed, and soon, I was hooked on her humor and her deft responses to those earlier writers. While the new graphic novel is my third book about Jane, I have not exhausted the things to research! The more I know, the more I admire her writings and her life.
I relish the intimacy of reading Austen’s private letters, and this is the best and most complete edition. Although her sister Cassandra notoriously burned many of her letters, the 160-or-so that survive offer plenty of unguarded moments to satisfy curiosity about her daily life.
In fact, I think Austen’s best lines are not from her novels but from her letters to Cassandra. For example, on the fashion for decorating bonnets, she quips “I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.” And in a note about their garden: “I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.”
Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist: intimate and gossipy, observant and informative, they bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in biography. Above all we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of Pride and Prejudice, witty and amusing as she describes the social life of town and country, thoughtful and constructive when writing about the business of literary composition.
R. W. Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the collected Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. A third edition,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Jane Austen now dominates my teaching and research. This was not always so. I was trained in the writers that came before Austen and was happily teaching classes on them when someone at my university asked me to teach a class on Jane Austen. At first, I refused to switch. I countered, “She does not need yet another class.” But I agreed, and soon, I was hooked on her humor and her deft responses to those earlier writers. While the new graphic novel is my third book about Jane, I have not exhausted the things to research! The more I know, the more I admire her writings and her life.
Effectively, this is a meticulous stalker’s record of Jane Austen’s family, listing what everyone was doing (and where) for every single day of her life.
I know of nothing quite like this biographical resource (for any writer). Admittedly, the book is more like an Excel spreadsheet than a narrative—and something I’ve only gratefully consulted rather than read straight through from end to end. But for hardcore Janeites, this day-by-day listing of events in her life is indispensable.
For more than thirty years Deirdre Le Faye, one of the world's leading authorities on Jane Austen, has been gathering and organising every single piece of information available about the Austen family before, during and after Jane's lifetime. Her unique chronology, containing some ten thousand entries, is now available in paperback. For the first time, those interested in Jane Austen can discover where she was and what she was doing at many precise moments of her life. The entries, many taken from hitherto unexplored and unpublished documents, are presented in a clear and readable form and each item of information…
I’ve always been fascinated by the influence technology and science on culture and our lives, especially women’s lives. The history of women’s rights, in many ways, is a story of science and technology’s influence on women’s evolution towards having more freedom (and now less) to control our bodies. As a science writer, these themes influence many of the stories that I choose to read and tell, including both my books, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood and Reconceptions: Modern Relationships, Reproductive Science and the Unfolding Future of Family. I also love to read both fictional and non-fiction stories about the nuances of personal identity.
This novel tells the story of Maise, a devoted wife and mother of four children.
It takes place over the course of a single day in October that begins with Maise nursing her infant and leads to a family outing to an orchard the following afternoon. It beautifully captures the daily emotions that a mother feels, ranging from anxiety to grief to deep love, and explores the feelings around the unpaid labor of motherhood and the financial anxiety that being a parent brings to us all.
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day.
At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four children, including newborn Esme, on an undulating current of maternal bliss, by turns oceanic and overwhelming, but awash in awe and wonder. Then she jolts awake and, after checking that her husband and baby are asleep beside her, remembers the real-world money problems to be resolved…
As a writer who can never seem to tell a simple chronological, beginning/middle/end story in the books I write, I want to make a case for fictional works that fall somewhere between novels and traditional short story collections: shape-shifting novels. A shape-shifting novel allows for an expansiveness of time—for exploring the lives of generations within a single family, or occupying a single place, without having to account for every person, every moment, every year. Big, long Victorian novels, remember, were typically serialized and so written, and read, in smaller installments. The shape-shifting novel allows for that range between the covers of a single, and often shorter, book.
I knew little about North Woods when I started reading it, except that it chronicled the lives of different inhabitants of a farmhouse in western New England—a region I love—and featured an intriguing image of what I assumed was a bobcat on the cover.
North Woods brings its setting vividly to life; while there are fascinating characters—including a colonial-era English soldier who abandons the war to cultivate an apple orchard on the farmhouse property—the flora and fauna of the farm and its surrounding woodlands play equally important roles.
I’m grateful to my daughter, the same sensitive reader who cried when she finished Homegoing, for posting a photo of her copy of North Woods along with her lunch one day and piquing my curiosity.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I have read thrillers for as long as I can remember reading adult novels. I can chart my life of reading from Robert Parker to David Baldacci to Jeffery Deaver and today’s luminaries such as Sarah Pekkanen, Mary Kubica, and all the authors listed below. While I love a good beach or airport read, the novels that stick with you—that make you want to clear your schedule because you need to sit and think about what you’ve just read—are my favorites.
As a twin myself, I’m a sucker for a thriller with a creepy and unreliable twin relationship. The setting in a secluded forest added an intensity to every scene as the two sisters, one an agoraphobe being dutifully cared for by the other, have their quiet escape rocked by the disappearance of a young girl in a nearby cabin.
You spend the entire book trying to figure out which twin might be the unreliable narrator, only to slam headfirst into incredible twists and an ending that deftly incorporates the singular importance of the forest in which they live.
"A nail-biting story of sisterhood, suspicion, and suspense. When She Was Me weaves together past and present seamlessly to create a twist you won't see coming." - Tracy Sierra, author of Nightwatching
There's only one way out of these woods...
Ever since that night, twin sisters Cassie and Lenora have been inseparable. As the sole permanent residents of Cabin Two, their refuge on an isolated Tennessee campground, they manage to stay away from prying eyes, probing questions, and true crime junkies. Just the two of them, Cassie and Lenora against the world. The peace…
My passion for this topic of women overcoming the odds stems from having worked with powerful, resilient women as a life coach and therapist for the past 15 years. I witness and continue to be inspired by women who surpass what they or those around them believe is possible internally and externally. Women are powerful in unimaginable ways, and I love to read a great story that depicts this truth.
I fall in love with any book that can bring details of the setting and time frame to life in my mind. This one was a movie in my imagination of Lucrezia de’ Medici’s world in the 16th century, what we now call Italy, from beginning to end.
The mystery of the story was mesmerizing. It was one of those novels that gives you a glimpse of the ending at the opening and keeps you guessing and rooting for the female protagonist. Once again, Lucrezia was the tenacious young woman everyone overlooked and underestimated, and the reader could not help but fall in love with her.
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
"O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you…
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
Absolution is about the wives of American men with non-combat roles in the U.S. government in Vietnam. The men have brought their families to Saigon. Tricia is a new arrival, and Charlene lures her into the insular world of the American wives. I’ve always been interested in the politics of the late 1960s in the U.S., so I found this book fascinating because it takes place in 1963, before the Kennedy assassination.
I was captivated by Tricia and Charlene’s friendship because it is complicated and intense. I loved how Tricia is intrigued by Charlene but also intimidated by her and aware that they’d never be friends if they’d met under different circumstances. McDermott skillfully portrays the ambiguity inherent in many friendships, and I appreciated her exploration of this dynamic.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.
American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My daughter and I have a love affair with travel. It's not just visiting places as tourists but as travelers, aiming to understand the lives and cultures of different people. We have learned that not everyone approaches travel like we do, and we strive to grasp this. Our adventures have taken us to 88 countries, 50 states, and seven continents. Now, at 90, I’ve visited 88 countries, and my goal is to reach 100 before I turn 100. That’s a passion of mine. The five books I’ve included help us understand our inner drive to travel, enhancing our overall love for it and providing an exhilarating experience.
Before traveling to Vietnam, I read this historical novel that profoundly shaped my experience. Trekking through jungle paths, I felt the emotional horror the author described. I empathized with her isolation upon returning home, rejected as a pariah.
Today’s Vietnam is vastly different, leaving me with complex emotions—understanding both the veterans who served there and the resilient people I met. The book deepened my appreciation for Vietnam’s modern philosophy: always looking forward, never backward- a good philosophy for everyone.
From master storyteller Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, comes the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s. The Women is that rarest of novels—at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these unexpected…
