99 Books Like Marvelous

Mihoko and Anne first met at the University of Miami, where Mihoko was a specialist in early modern England and Anne, in early modern Spain. Sharing their interests in gender studies, literature, and history, and combining their expertise, they team-taught a popular course on early modern women writers. Anne’s publications range from studies of women in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, female rogues, and religious women to early modern Habsburg queens. Mihoko has published on the figure of Helen of Troy in classical and Renaissance epic; and women and politics in early modern Europe, especially in the context of the many civil wars that upended the political and social order of the period.

When I lived in France as a youngster, museum portraits became friends. I could hear courtiers scheming in Versailles and gladiators clashing in coliseums. Naturally, decades later, when I learned Napoleon Bonaparte tried to write a novel of love and betrayal, I vowed to finish it for him. But to ghostwrite for Napoleon, I had to know him as personally as his great love Josephine did. I dove into research, translated his writing to capture his cadence, and became secretary of the Napoleonic Historical Society. Finally, on remote St. Helena Island in the ramshackle rooms where Napoleon died in exile, I found the intimate connection I demand from historical fiction.

Tracy Borman is a historian and novelist specialising in the Tudor period and has written a number of best-selling books, including The Private Lives of the Tudors, Thomas Cromwell, and Elizabeth’s Women. She is also a popular broadcaster and has presented numerous history documentaries, including Channel 5’s The Fall of Anne Boleyn and Inside the Tower of London. Alongside this, she is the joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust.

I stumbled across Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when I was twelve years old and fell in love with her humorous, witty writing and quirky characters. I saved my allowance and bought an omnibus of her complete works, but it wasn’t enough: I was hooked and wanted to read more books like hers. A decade later, I started to write books like hers, and my first Regency-set romantic comedy was published in 2001. The movie Mr. Malcolm’s List, based on my novel, was released in theaters in 2022, and I had the pleasure of hearing people laughing as they watched it, as I had so often laughed while reading Austen’s work.

I stumbled across Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when I was twelve years old and fell in love with her humorous, witty writing and quirky characters. I saved my allowance and bought an omnibus of her complete works, but it wasn’t enough: I was hooked and wanted to read more books like hers. A decade later, I started to write books like hers, and my first Regency-set romantic comedy was published in 2001. The movie Mr. Malcolm’s List, based on my novel, was released in theaters in 2022, and I had the pleasure of hearing people laughing as they watched it, as I had so often laughed while reading Austen’s work.

I’m an historian who writes novels, and an avid reader of historical murder mysteries—especially ones whose characters are affected by social, religious, and political change. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the breakup of rural British estates between 1880 and 1925, when, in a single generation, the amount of British land owned by the aristocracy fell from 66% to perhaps 15%. I thought it might be interesting to set a “country house” mystery on one of the failing estates, with a narrator influenced by the other great change of the period: from horses to automobiles. “Interesting” was an understatement; writing it was eye-opening.  

I stumbled across Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when I was twelve years old and fell in love with her humorous, witty writing and quirky characters. I saved my allowance and bought an omnibus of her complete works, but it wasn’t enough: I was hooked and wanted to read more books like hers. A decade later, I started to write books like hers, and my first Regency-set romantic comedy was published in 2001. The movie Mr. Malcolm’s List, based on my novel, was released in theaters in 2022, and I had the pleasure of hearing people laughing as they watched it, as I had so often laughed while reading Austen’s work.

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 was brought up in Maidenhead in Berkshire, a town on the River Thames to the west of London. After studying archaeology at University College, Cardiff, I worked for many years as a field archaeologist. I met my wife, Lesley, on an excavation at Milton Keynes, and we have worked together ever since, both in archaeology and as authors of archaeology and history books. It was only after studying the Napoleonic period, which was when Jane Austen lived and wrote, that I understood the context of her novels and came to a much deeper appreciation of them.

I was brought up in Maidenhead in Berkshire, a town on the River Thames to the west of London. After studying archaeology at University College, Cardiff, I worked for many years as a field archaeologist. I met my wife, Lesley, on an excavation at Milton Keynes, and we have worked together ever since, both in archaeology and as authors of archaeology and history books. It was only after studying the Napoleonic period, which was when Jane Austen lived and wrote, that I understood the context of her novels and came to a much deeper appreciation of them.