Here are 7 books that Song of the Wooden Sparrow fans have personally recommended if you like Song of the Wooden Sparrow. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The House in the Cerulean Sea

Isabel Tutaine Author Of When Mist and Brine Touch

From Isabel's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Isabel's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

This is just a fun book with an under lying moral tale that doesn't;t feel didactical. Very nice summer read.

By TJ Klune ,

Why should I read it?

29 authors picked The House in the Cerulean Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

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…

Book cover of The Waste Land

Isabel Tutaine Author Of When Mist and Brine Touch

From Isabel's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Isabel's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

I first read this book i n college, but every year I revisit it and find new layers in it. Love TS Elliot.

By T.S. Eliot ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Waste Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Waste Land is arguably the most important poem of the twentieth century. First published in the United States by Boni & Liveright in 1922, this landmark reissue of the first edition, now back with its original publisher, includes a new introduction by Paul Muldoon, showcasing the poem's searing power and strange, jarring beauty. With a modernist design that matches the original, this edition allows contemporary readers to experience the poem the way readers would have seen it for the first time.

As Muldoon writes, "It's almost impossible to think of a world in which The Waste Land did not…


Book cover of The Girl in His Shadow

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

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!

By Audrey Blake ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Girl in His Shadow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


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Book cover of Trusting Her Duke

Trusting Her Duke by Arietta Richmond,

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…

Book cover of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

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.

By Olivia Campbell ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Women in White Coats as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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 received in…


Book cover of The Medicine Woman of Galveston

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

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.

By Amanda Skenandore ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Medicine Woman of Galveston as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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

Once a trailblazer in…


Book cover of Domina

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

This book by Barbara Wood is an oldie but goodie. I was reading it in Spanish, but it was originally written in English. I especially enjoyed the research that went into the wild hospital descriptions during the 1800s and the main character’s struggle to succeed as a doctor when society thinks she should be at home being pious.

The supporting characters range from believably obnoxious to downright endearing. More, please.

By Barbara Wood ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Domina as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

Set in London, New York, and San Francisco from the late nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth, Domina is the inspiring saga of one woman's personal and professional triumph against the prejudices of her time.

Beautiful and courageous, Samantha Hargrave dares to dream that she will become one of the first female doctors — and surgeons — in America. Born in the slums of London and possessing a special gift for healing, Samantha struggles to enter the all-male medical profession. When her ambition encounters hostile rejection in England, she sails to America, where she meets an eccentric…


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Book cover of The Duke's Christmas Redemption

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…

Book cover of Out of Patients

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why Isabel loves this book

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. 

By Sandra Cavallo Miller ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Out of Patients as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of The House in the Cerulean Sea
Book cover of The Waste Land
Book cover of The Girl in His Shadow

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