Here are 100 books that Letter from a Rake fans have personally recommended if you like
Letter from a Rake.
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I’ve been falling in love with love since before I can remember, and it’s been a wild adventure that’s taken me across thousands of miles, one rather splendid husband, and over forty books published. After hitting the USA Today Bestsellers list, I’ve become a full time author and spend at least 12 hours a day falling in love as a job. Each time I read a book, I discover a new way to fall in love—and I adore being able to recommend my favourite authors to new readers, so that they can discover them with me.
Love is love, so I always adore recommending historical romances that are queer positive. This series by Merry Farmer of four books (to date) are set in 1920s New York and have the most glorious M/M romances that you have ever read. If you’ve never read a gay romance before, trust me: you’re going to fall in love.
Journalist Marcus Albright did not run away from his London home when he accepted an assignment in New York City. His interest in writing a series of articles about the popular club scene of The Bowery has nothing to do with the disastrous end of a long-term relationship, or his desire to stay as far away from love and commitment that he possibly can. His only concern is enjoying the vibrancy and color that The Slippery Slope is famous for.
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…
I’ve been falling in love with love since before I can remember, and it’s been a wild adventure that’s taken me across thousands of miles, one rather splendid husband, and over forty books published. After hitting the USA Today Bestsellers list, I’ve become a full time author and spend at least 12 hours a day falling in love as a job. Each time I read a book, I discover a new way to fall in love—and I adore being able to recommend my favourite authors to new readers, so that they can discover them with me.
If you want a little mystery, intrigue, and adventure sprinkled into your historical romance, I don’t think you can find anyone better than Emmanuelle de Maupassant. Her Lady’s Guide series is perfect for you if you want to be rescued by a hero or glorify in a powerful heroine. It’s packed full of mysterious gentlemen, mistaken identity, adventure, travelling across Europe and of course, steamy delightful encounters…
Madly in love, or just pretending? Celebrated adventurer Ethan Burnell is keen to return to the jungles of Mexico. Settling down isn't part of his plan. But his sister has other ideas, throwing a Christmas houseparty filled with eager debutantes. The answer? A fake engagement for the duration of the festivities!
With her name mired in scandal, Cornelia Mortmain's marriage prospects are nil. Burnell is exactly the sort of 'dangerous man' she's sworn off, and posing as his fiancée can only spell trouble. Or, make her so notorious she'll become irresistible.
Can they convince everyone they're madly in love? The…
I’ve written almost one hundred historical romances, so when it comes to making a marriage in a book swoonworthy, I know the hard work that an author has to put in. Whether it’s enemies to lovers, instalove, grumpy/sunshine, whatever it is: I have a huge amount of respect for authors who spend the time crafting a love story that makes me absolutely desperate for the wedding.
"I can think of the perfect way to keep you occupied and your mind diverted," she murmured. "Come to my room. If you're not too tired..."
Lust flashed in his gaze and then he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. "For you, my beautiful Artemis, I'd stay up all night."
Artemis Jones-"respectable" finishing-school teacher by day and Gothic romance writer by night-has never lost sight of her real dream: to open her own academic ladies' college. When Artemis is unexpectedly called upon by a dear friend, a fellow Byronic Book Club member, to navigate her first London…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
I’ve been falling in love with love since before I can remember, and it’s been a wild adventure that’s taken me across thousands of miles, one rather splendid husband, and over forty books published. After hitting the USA Today Bestsellers list, I’ve become a full time author and spend at least 12 hours a day falling in love as a job. Each time I read a book, I discover a new way to fall in love—and I adore being able to recommend my favourite authors to new readers, so that they can discover them with me.
With almost 3000 positive reviews on Amazon alone, it’s not hard to see that Mariah Stone’s first in series, Highlander’s Captive, is a good book. But why do I love it? Because this medieval highlander romance doesn’t just make me swoon, but it tugs at my heartstrings. There’s such a depth of emotion here that it’s hard to put down, and even when you’re finished, you’re going to want to come back again and again.
Breathtaking, passionate, romantic -- for all fans of Outlander!She must return to her time. He keeps her heart captive.
While chaperoning a high school trip to the Scottish Highlands, Amy MacDougall descends into Inverlochy Castle dungeon. Deep in the crumbling ruins, she touches a magical rock and travels through time to 1307.
Infiltrating the castle, Highlander Craig Cambel imprisons Amy. A MacDougall, she’s his clan’s sworn enemy. But when he’s forced to marry the fierce beauty, he surrenders to desire. Amy needs to return to the twenty-first century, but her feelings for Craig are growing stronger every day. Will the…
I’m a scholar of ancient history who was a locomotive engineer, a subway motorman, and union shop steward in New York City. I tried to be a good union man. It was my Monday through Saturday religion. The New York railroads—passenger, freight, yard service, docks—are a big paramilitary enterprise, a subterranean empire where on-the-job deaths are routine. When I became a scholar, Alexander the Great proved to be an appealing subject since he was a killer who kept his own casualties low. Many of the men I worked with were Black and talked about slavery time, so the Civil War turned out to be another appealing subject.
The English General Fuller may be said to have taken Alexander’s program and imagined applying it to World War II. Had Hitler cooperated with Stalin’s unhappy subjects, he might have won the war in Russia. The same reasoning applied to Hitler’s opponent, England.
Had England given freedom to India before the war started, the Japanese would have found Asia far harder to conquer. Churchill and Chamberlain agreed that India must remain part of the Empire. Alexander knew better. He made the top Indian kings his allies, not his subjects.
In a brief and meteoric life (356-323 BC) the greatest of all conquerors redirected the course of world history. Alexander the Great accomplished this feat with a small army-no more than 40,000 men-and a constellation of bold, revolutionary ideas about the conduct of war and the nature of government. In a style both clear and witty, Fuller imparts the many sides to Alexander's genius and the full extent of his empire, stretching from India to Egypt.
Dr. Jeanne Reames is a professional historian, college professor, and specialist in ancient Macedonia and Alexander the Great. She also earned a degree in creative writing and has published fiction and poetry. She’s been collecting fiction about Alexander the Great for almost 35 years, and previously managed the website Beyond Renault: Alexander the Great in Fiction since WW I, until retiring it after over ten years. She has (almost) every professionally published English-language novel about Alexander, and has penned several articles on Alexander in fiction, including “Alexander the Great and Hephaistion in Fiction after Stonewall,” for The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Sexuality (forthcoming).
Melissa Scott has written the best “What would’ve happened if Alexander didn’t die?” alternate history. It’s a popular question among historians, but usually assumes he survived his final illness. Scott takes a different tack, choosing instead to diverge some years before his death. Here, he returns from Asia to put down a revolt in Greece. After that, he goes west, against first Rome, then Carthage. Although the characters aren’t as fleshed out as in some of her later military SF (this was an early work), her grasp of military maneuvers and politics, for which she would later earn attention, is on full display. It’s a viable tale of what might have happened, had Alexander decided to take on Rome, or Carthage, at that point in their histories.
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
Dr. Jeanne Reames is a professional historian, college professor, and specialist in ancient Macedonia and Alexander the Great. She also earned a degree in creative writing and has published fiction and poetry. She’s been collecting fiction about Alexander the Great for almost 35 years, and previously managed the website Beyond Renault: Alexander the Great in Fiction since WW I, until retiring it after over ten years. She has (almost) every professionally published English-language novel about Alexander, and has penned several articles on Alexander in fiction, including “Alexander the Great and Hephaistion in Fiction after Stonewall,” for The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Sexuality (forthcoming).
“And now for something completely different,” I offer some satiric whimsy from Indo-Irish author Aubry Menen. He belonged to Renault’s generation, not Tarr’s, Graham’s, or Scott’s. This novel, published in 1965, is historical allegory rather than historical fiction. Menen changes historical events in order to suit his plot and message, which is to poke fun at British presumption. The result is a delightfully wicked parallel between the arrogant and ethnocentric Macedonians and the nineteenth-century imperialistic Brits, set against a far older Indian culture. Yet Menen didn’t spare the self-righteousness of Indian brahmins and rajas, either. Menen spares no one. While usually accused of misogyny, the women here are screamingly funny in their (legitimate) bitchiness, but Hephaistion gets the best lines. This book deserves a wider readership.
A Conspiracy Of Women is a mocking and sophisticated interpretation of history and the satire look at the human race including the military mind, philosophers. the intolerance of religions, and the absurdities of the female sex
From my earliest memories I’ve always been interested in military history, and as a young man I served in the U.S. Navy on a nuclear submarine. As an ardent bibliophile, my home and office overflows with books. As a professor, for the past 25 years I’ve been fortunate enough to teach a broad survey on western military history, which gives me the opportunity to experiment with many books for my own and the students’ enjoyment. The books on this list are perennial favorites of the traditional-age undergraduates (18-22) I teach, but will appeal to any reader interested in premodern military history.
There’s an old saying that states, “Amateurs discuss battles; Professionals discuss logistics.”
Engel’s book proves the point, arguing that the Macedonian king’s real genius was not tricky moves on the battlefield, but by making sure his men had enough food and water to sustain themselves for twelve years. One of the great things about this book is that Engels covers things that work for any premodern era: how much a human or animal can carry; how much food and water they consume on a daily basis, and what it requires to keep tens of thousands of humans on the march adequately supplied.
You’ll never think the same way about premodern warfare again after reading it.
'The most important work on Alexander the Great to appear in a long time. Neither scholarship nor semi-fictional biography will ever be the same again...Engels at last uses all the archaeological work done in Asia in the past generation and makes it accessible...Careful analyses of terrain, climate, and supply requirements are throughout combined in a masterly fashion to help account for Alexander's strategic decision in the light of the options open to him...The chief merit of this splendid book is perhaps the way in which it brings an ancient army to life, as it really was and moved: the hours…
It was while on the job as an investment banker that I first heard about this new thing called Bitcoin, before the word "web3" entered the vernacular. Initially I was skeptical but curious. But I became convinced the underlying technology of blockchains was ushering in nothing short of a new internet. My father Don Tapscott and I agreed to collaborate on a major research initiative that became the international best-seller, Blockchain Revolution. Since then, I have traveled to 40 countries and seen first-hand how blockchain and now Web3 is changing the world, setting the stage for a new digital age. My new book charts a course for this coming transformation.
Papyrus is half history of the written word, half personal memoir. But it shines in its description of the early days of books, libraries, and organized information.
Vallejo talks about how Alexandria was a hotbed of innovation as the Ptolemy Greek rulers sought to burnish their image as Macedonian brutes by building the world’s greatest temple of knowledge- The Alexandria Library. Vallejo says that libraries are meant to “bridge the gaps in the archipelago of knowledge.”
Her description of Alexandria as a frontier town reminds me of the current crop of characters pioneering Web3.
The bestselling phenomenon - an enthralling 6,000-year journey through the history of books and reading
A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Outstanding, universal and unique' NEW YORK TIMES 'A literary phenomenon.' TLS 'Masterly.' ECONOMIST 'Mindboggling' TELEGRAPH
Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of the earth to bring them back.
In Papyrus, celebrated classicist Irene Vallejo traces the dramatic history of the book and…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I am an award-winning author and illustrator who works in a variety of genres, including Historical Fiction. When historical fiction is well done it conveys times and events as they were lived and breathed by real people. Historical fiction by diverse women tells the stories of those consistently left out of the “historical record.” Human life is rich and diverse, and the stories belong to all of us, not just those who have historically had the power to control the cultural narratives. As a writer and student of history, it has been my pleasure to explore characters that are not often represented, characters that are ordinary for their times, and extraordinary as well.
Each of the five books in my list either stars or co-stars a young woman, and The Complete Claudine, as the title would suggest, is not an exception. Colette’s Claudine is a mesmerizing character—sensual, passionate, fierce, and tender by turns. The ordinary twists and turns of Claudine’s turn-of-the-century life in the French countryside and Paris are made extraordinary by her uncommon self-possession and power of observance. Claudine fairly blisters off the page.
The stories that inspired the film Colette, directed by Wash Westmoreland and starring Keira Knightley.
Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force.
Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literary…
