Here are 100 books that Domina fans have personally recommended if you like
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My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
This book is so full of tension and grit that I found it hard to stop reading. One of the things this book does so well is plop me right in the middle of a plague. The darkness persists as the main character (Nora, an orphan idiosyncratically trained in medical skills like surgery and caring for patients) pokes her way through the medical field, seldom receiving credit for her abilities and skills because she’s not supposed to practice medicine. No woman is in the 1840s.
The book points inward toward Nora’s travels through unfairness where she does the work and someone else always takes the credit. Only when she faces the worth that she’s created in herself does everything around her begin to shift dangerously. This book certainly kept my attention!
THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "An exquisitely detailed journey through the harrowing field of medicine in mid-19th century London."-Tracey Enerson Wood, USA Today bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife and The War Nurse An unforgettable historical fiction novel about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her. London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
OK, OK, this book is not a novel, although it’s as easy to read as a novel with all its tension. It covers, among others, the lives of Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake, and other female doctors from the 1800s.
The deeply researched book is biographical, but its strength is in the examination of how women doctors were thought of throughout the ages and the difference they’ve made. The book explores the ancestors of modern doctors (mid wives, ancient Greeks female doctors, etc.).
I found the writing accessible and vivid with a real elbows-on-the-table and sleeves-rolled-up approach.
Meet the pioneering women who changed the medical landscape for us all
For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionising the way women receive health care.
In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be…
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
I really enjoyed this book because it plopped me right into the early 1900s when women began wandering into traditionally men’s fields like medicine. I like the delicate folding of the main character’s personal life with her Down Syndrome child and her struggles in her professional life because, face it, work is not everything in life.
This book captures the compromises a single mother has to make and compounds them by adding characters who refuse to believe she’s competent in medicine.
In a uniquely vivid story of women in medicine, found family, and conquering fear for readers of Kristin Hannah, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and Audrey Blake, an impoverished former doctor and her disabled son join a traveling medicine show and its family of strangers on a collision course with the deadliest natural disaster in American history – the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. From the acclaimed author of The Nurse's Secret and The Second Life of Mirielle West.
"Perfect on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin." —Addison Armstrong, Author of The War Librarian
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
I like that this book is in first person because, at times, it feels as if you are in a conversation with the main character.
The book opens with a super-strong voice and is contemporary rather than historical. After I did all the research for historical novels having to do with female doctors, I felt the need to move forward in novels to see if anything had changed as far as attitudes toward women doctors were concerned.
And indeed, yes, things are better in this book, but tension and problems still require grappling.
After practicing medicine for over thirty years, Norah Waters MD is weighing her options, and early retirement looks better and better. At age fifty-eight, who needs midnight calls, cranky patients, and business headaches? Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one last year to find her way back to enjoying her once-cherished career. In her final effort to make a meaningful difference, Norah takes on two medical students who both make and break her resolve to persist. One seems a hopeless introvert, the other a toxic egotist; supervising them makes her downright dizzy as she labels them the "yin…
Years ago, I wrote mystery novels featuring women investigators when that was new in the genre. Now, I discover stories of real-life women whose lives have a natural story arc that can engage the reader from start to finish. Like gambling and prostitution, abortion, when it was illegal in the US, as it is now again in many places, was simultaneously in your face and undercover. It was also largely practiced by women, which is why I’m fascinated by books about it.
I thought I had nothing left to learn about Madame Restell, the unapologetic 19th-century abortion provider until I saw how this book was organized. While keeping the narrative flowing, Syrett helpfully organizes Restell’s career into phases defined by changes in the law, her trials, and the emergence of one male adversary after another.
I loved learning that, even after Restell met her Waterloo, her loving grandchildren profited from her legacy. As told by Syrett, a gender-norm-defying woman who was literally hounded to death somehow managed to have the last laugh.
The biography of one of the most famous abortionists of the nineteenth century-and a story that has unmistakable parallels to the current war on reproductive rights
For forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, "Madame Restell," the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control medication, attended women during their pregnancies, delivered their children, and performed abortions in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. It was the abortions that made her famous. "Restellism" became the term her detractors used to indict her.
I bought a bookstore when I was twenty-five, knowing nothing about business but knowing I loved books. It was the happiest I’ve ever been, professionally, and also the most broke. At some point, I came to my senses, sold my store, and got a job working in a library. I’m a library director now, and I don’t get to recommend books as much as I used to when I didn’t have to do things like think about the budget and remove dead mice from the cellar. Still, I get to work around books, and I overhear and occasionally insert myself into a fair number of book-related conversations.
Weike Wang is kind of a master at dry, unadorned, razor-sharp writing. This book made me both cry and laugh. Joan is doing perfectly fine—great, even—if anyone asks her. Her life is efficient and successful and—empty.
When her father dies, her mother returns from China, and their subsequent interactions force Joan to stop just going through the motions and actually take a look at her life. This book is sweet but not saccharine, and its humor comes from Joan’s quirky observations which felt very relatable to me.
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A witty, moving, piercingly insightful new novel about a marvelously complicated woman who can’t be anyone but herself, from the award-winning author of Chemistry
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “A deeply felt portrait . . . With gimlet-eyed observation laced with darkly biting wit, Weike Wang masterfully probes the existential uncertainty of being other in America.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post
This is the Inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengele’s hell. This is an incisive, harrowing, and touching memoir of Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam, who are sent to Auschwitz only to be torn from their parents and given to Josef Mengele, "The Angel of…
I’ve been a journalist since high school and I spent 33 years as a reporter for The Washington Post, mostly as a foreign correspondent based in Asia, Africa, and Paris. My book Out Of America chronicled my three years as a correspondent in Africa during some of its most tumultuous events, the Somalia intervention, and the Rwanda genocide. I’ve always thought a well-crafted novel often captures a place or a time better than nonfiction — books like The Quiet American about the Vietnam War, and The Year of Living Dangerously about Indonesia. I now teach a university course on The Role of the Journalist in Popular Fiction, Film and Comics.
Okay, this fine novel is only partially set in Africa, in Uganda, where intrepid fictional journalist Daniel McFarland treks into the jungles to find and interview the leader of a rebel group based on the Lords Resistance Army. Told from the vantage point of world-weary photographer Nicky Bettencourt, the action later shift to East Timor during the fight for independence against Indonesia. This novel comes as close as any to describe the real lives of foreign correspondents — the unnecessary risks, the loneliness of life lived constantly on the road. It’s beautifully written, a good read, and reeks of authenticity.
Photojournalist Nicky Bettencourt thinks he's seen everything until he teams up with the legendary war correspondent Daniel McFarland. To Daniel, the story is everything; people come later. But after a plane crash nearly takes his life, Daniel begins to see the world in a different way. He falls in love with Julia Cadell, an idealistic British doctor, and together they find refuge at an old canal house in the center of London. Soon after, Nicky, Daniel, and Julia are called to East Timor, where the government has fled and the entire country is a war zone, and Daniel must decide…
I’m a Minnesotan, so I thought I was a cold-weather badass, but it wasn’t until my younger sister winter-overed at South Pole Station in the early 2000s that I realized that Minnesota is a balmy paradise compared with the ice chip at the bottom of the earth. Her adventures at 90 South inspired my interest in Antarctica, the history of how humans interact with extreme and dangerous natural environments, and the social dynamics of a community trying to survive in the most remote location on the planet. That interest grew so intense that I ended up spending four years researching and then writing a novel set on the seventh continent—South Pole Station.
Icebound is not a literary masterpiece nor is it a tale of exploration. It is, however, an essential Antarctic text, not just for the personal account found in its pages, but also because of the controversy still raging among Antarctic veterans regarding the decision to extract the author from Antarctica during the polar winter. Dr. Jeri Nielsen was the doctor at South Pole Station during the 1998 season. Her account of the challenges of polar medicine (Superglue is an essential medical supply at 90 South) and the stories of warm relationships with support staff at the station are fascinating. But the real story here is the diagnosis she made of her own breast cancer, which became a global news story when she was evacuated from the base during a dangerous winter flight.
Typically, there are no flights to South Pole Station during the polar winter due to exceptionally dangerous conditions…
Jerri Nielsen was a forty-six-year-old doctor working in Ohio when she made the decision to take a year's sabbatical at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Antarctica, the most remote and perilous place on Earth. The "Polies," as they are known, live in almost total darkness for six months of the year, in winter temperatures as low as 100 degrees below zero--with no way in or out before the spring.
During the long winter of 1999, Dr. Nielsen, solely responsible for the mental and physical fitness of a team of researchers, construction workers, and support staff, discovered a lump in her…
I love the combination of action and romance and suspense. It’s a real juggle as an author to balance the two main elements (suspense and romance mostly), give each depth and page time, and make us care about the people both in love and in peril. I’ve always been drawn to suspense, even as a kid. But I gotta have the relationships, too. I used to direct plays with my childhood friends, and there were always bad guys and the romance—and this was long before I was thinking of having a real romance!
Suzanne was one of the early military romance superstars, at least for me. Her books aren’t always just a simple chronological storyline. Here we meet a few couples or couples-to-be, plus there’s a flashback story as well. This is the first of the Troubleshooters series, and it was great to see how it started with a SEAL hero whose sighting of a terrorist in his hometown wasn’t believed because he’d had a head injury in combat. Tracking him down, while finding himself around a lost love, makes for a satisfying read.
The new Suzanne Brockmann novel from Headline and the first book in the Troubleshooters series. Troubleshooters: Danger can be addictive. After a near-fatal head injury, US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Tom Paoletti is forced to take a leave of absence from his Seal team, the Troubleshooters. Being out of the action is so far out of character that he thinks a visit home to New England may be the answer. So much the better if that means he can see Dr Kelly Ashton again. Then the unthinkable happens as Tom catches a terrifying glimpse of an international terrorist in his hometown.…
Kindle Book Award Finalist. Readers' Favorite Book Award Finalist. Gotham Writers' YA Novel Discovery Contest Finalist. B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
Brigit Quinn has always felt like an outsider. Growing up in a small town where her mom’s pagan practices are the stuff of local gossip, she’s spent her whole life trying…
I have enjoyed personal experiences that are probably unlike those of most women my age and background. I thought it would be a unique example to write about myself, growing up as a local child in British Colonial Singapore, at a time when most other local children who grew up in Singapore during the early 50s and 60s had lives fraught with hardships, poverty, and distress. The common theme is extensive in all the book references I have made, as every story is about someone’s growing-up years in an Oriental or Eastern environment, and their relationships or lack thereof, with their respective parent(s).
It helped me identify my childhood trauma of having a histrionic mother and being cast aside in favor of an older sibling.
This is very simply written in plain English and is fraught with the sadness and misery of a young girl who was ostracised by her family and siblings for a very old-fashioned traditional reason. I was taken in by the way the author captures her sorrow and disappointment, yet elucidates her resilience and strengths in overcoming the obstacles she faced throughout her growing-up years.
I found her narratives are compelling, and as a reader, I wanted to know “what happens next…” or “how does she get out of that one?”
Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this 25th anniversary edition of Chinese Cinderella, complete with a special introduction by Julia Eccleshare.
Born into the world with her story already written and woven with bad luck, Adeline turns her attention to school, where she discovers that she is a talented writer, much to Father's disapproval.
'Writer! You are going to starve!'
But with a pen in her hand, she can't help but wonder what it would be like to be a writer - no, an author! It won't be easy,…
