Here are 100 books that The Rebellion Engines fans have personally recommended if you like
The Rebellion Engines.
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It is a truth almost universally accepted that historically women had no way to support themselves except marriage…but it’s not true! I’m all-in on Happily-Ever-After, of course, but I absolutely love it when a heroine is smart, sensible, and able to support herself on her own. When she falls for someone, it’s got to be for real because she’s not afraid to take charge of her own life and make her own way, despite whatever obstacles are thrown at her.
Maya Rodale always writes strong, clever heroines, and this book features one of her very best. Beatrice Goodwin has been tossed around by life, but she’s come home to her first love: Goodwin’s, her family’s once-fashionable department store in Gilded Age New York City. The one person standing in the way of her plans to make it the finest store in New York… her other first love, Wes Dalton, whose heart she broke years ago. He wants revenge. She wants her store. They’re both smart, funny, and oh so good at their shared profession, you know they’ll be unstoppable together.
Beatrice Goodwin left Manhattan a duchess and has returned a divorcee, ready to seize control of her fate and the family business. Goodwin's Department Store, once the pinnacle of fashion, has fallen from favor thanks to Dalton's, its glamorous competitor across the street. But this rivalry has a distinctly personal edge...
And a self-made tycoon...
For Wes Dalton, Beatrice has always been the one-the one who broke his young heart by marrying a duke, and now, the one whose cherished store he plans to buy, just so he can destroy it. It's the perfect revenge against…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
It is a truth almost universally accepted that historically women had no way to support themselves except marriage…but it’s not true! I’m all-in on Happily-Ever-After, of course, but I absolutely love it when a heroine is smart, sensible, and able to support herself on her own. When she falls for someone, it’s got to be for real because she’s not afraid to take charge of her own life and make her own way, despite whatever obstacles are thrown at her.
Nobody tops Loretta Chase when it comes to writing a woman on a mission. Leonie Noirot comes from a long line of swindlers and con artists, but her business sense at fashion is no fake. When she runs up against a man who thinks he can both outsmart her and humble her, just because he’s a wealthy marquess, well… he’s in for a revelation. Leonie’s determined to win their bet and make her own fortune, and then fall in love. Simply marvelous.
A dangerous wager... A seductive nobleman... When Leonie Noirot first meets devastatingly handsome Simon Blair, the fourth Marquess of Lisburne, she literally falls into his strong arms!
However, Leonie simply has no time for his wickedly charming lordship. The pretty redhead is obsessed with her business - turning the ladies of society into beautifully dressed swans. Until the bet...
Logical Leonie has to agree; if Lisburne's cousin, Lady Gladys, is not transformed, Leonie must spend two weeks at Lisburne's pleasure...
It is a truth almost universally accepted that historically women had no way to support themselves except marriage…but it’s not true! I’m all-in on Happily-Ever-After, of course, but I absolutely love it when a heroine is smart, sensible, and able to support herself on her own. When she falls for someone, it’s got to be for real because she’s not afraid to take charge of her own life and make her own way, despite whatever obstacles are thrown at her.
This is a real battle of wills, between Dr. Viveca Lancaster, newly licensed physician, and Nate Grayson, manager of a newly-founded Michigan town in desperate need of a doctor. He hires her, sight unseen, and when she shows up, he tries to fire her, because he doesn’t want a female doctor, but Viveca is not having that. She’s going to prove herself, as one of the first Black women doctors in 1870s America, and Nate falls for her as a brilliant doctor as much as he does for her as a woman. It’s impossible to go wrong with a Beverly Jenkins book, but this one is extra delicious.
It's 1876 and Dr. Viveca Lancaster is frustrated by the limits placed upon female physicians of color. When she is offered the chance to set up a practice in the small all Black community of Grayson Grove, Michigan she leaves her California home and heads east. The very determined Viveca is one of the few nineteenth century Black women to graduate from the prestigious Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, so she knows all about fighting for her rights. But she may need more than determination to face down the distractingly handsome Nate Grayson, the Grove's bull-headed mayor.
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
When I talk with many non-romance readers, they’re often surprised to hear that a feminist reads and writes romance. It’s frustrating that so many people still buy into the conventional wisdom that all romance books are inherently anti-feminist, filled with alpha-hole heroes and wilting flower heroines. I challenged that conventional wisdom on my Romance Novels for Feminists review blog and continue to do so now that I’ve turned to writing romance. I’m so passionate about telling everyone I know about romances that feature clear feminist themes. If you share the conventional wisdom about romance, I hope you’ll give one of the books below a try. They’re not your grandmother’s bodice rippers anymore…
Sapphic historical romances are few and far between, especially ones as intelligently written and historically grounded as Olivia Waite’s. My favorite moves beyond the typical Regency ballroom setting with its slow-burn romance between two 40-something women. Penelope’s a rural beekeeper, and Agatha a London printer, one whose worrisomely politically radical son might be putting her business in danger.
I admire both the lovely writing and the intelligently grounded historical setting (the story takes place against the backdrop of the Queen Caroline affair and the post-Napoleonic repression of the English press). Above all, I appreciate Waite’s deftly crafted and utterly appealing characters, two unconventional business owners who both enjoy their work almost as much as they do one another.
When Agatha Griffin finds a colony of bees in her warehouse, it's the not-so-perfect ending to a not-so-perfect week. Busy trying to keep her printing business afloat amidst rising taxes and the suppression of radical printers like her son, the last thing the widow wants is to be the victim of a thousand bees. But when a beautiful beekeeper arrives to take care of the pests, Agatha may be in danger of being stung by something far more dangerous...
Penelope Flood exists between two worlds in her small seaside town, the society of rich landowners and the tradesfolk. Soon, tensions…
A Seattle-based author, I have written eight books, including When the Red Gates Opened: A Memoir of China’s Reawakening, about the eight years I spent as Business Week’s reporter covering China, 1982-1990. In it, I give readers an inside look at China’s transformation from Maoism to modernity. A fluent speaker of Mandarin, I have traveled widely in China for over forty years and befriended Chinese people at many levels of society, leading me to a strong belief in the importance of direct cross-cultural communication and deepened mutual understanding.
Also formerly a public radio reporter based in Shanghai, Scott Tong takes us inside his own extended family, scattered across China. Personal stories of the relatives he found reveal not just their troubled histories but also the unvarnished stories of their varying ability to adapt to the opportunities of a modernizing China.
When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for "Marketplace," the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the United States. But for Tong the move became much more--it offered the opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who had remained in China after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. By uncovering the stories of his family's history, Tong discovered a new way to understand the defining moments of modern China and its long, interrupted quest to go global.
Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for what would become a two-year backpacking sojourn across all 33 Chinese provinces, the first foreigner on record to do so. Since then, I have published three books about China; my anthology Unsavory Elements was intended as a well-meaning tribute to the expatriate experience, however my own essay – a bawdy account of a visit to a rural brothel – was understandably demonized. The following five books expand on that illicit theme.
Starting out as a serial in an 1890s Shanghainese magazine, yet remaining unpublished until 2005 following the discovery of its English translation among the belongings of the late Eileen Chang, The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai is an unparalleled historical classic set in the pleasure quarters of the Qing Dynasty. Unlike the hyper-erotic writings of Li Yu and Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng, the author, Bangqing Han, opted for a tempered realism unique for its period. Clocking in at 600 pages, and densely layered with multiple character arcs that are a bit difficult to keep track of, Sing-Song Girls may require more than one reading.
Desire, virtue, courtesans (also known as sing-song girls), and the denizens of Shanghai's pleasure quarters are just some of the elements that constitute Han Bangqing's extraordinary novel of late imperial China. Han's richly textured, panoramic view of late-nineteenth-century Shanghai follows a range of characters from beautiful sing-song girls to lower-class prostitutes and from men in positions of social authority to criminals and ambitious young men recently arrived from the country. Considered one of the greatest works of Chinese fiction, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is now available for the first time in English. Neither sentimental nor sensationalistic in its portrayal…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I love fantasies that dream up totally new worlds! Some people condemn the fantasy genre as formulaic, and sometimes they’re right—but it shouldn’t be so! Fantasies can explore worlds as wide and wild and wonderful as the human imagination itself! Anything’s possible! But I also love a fantasy world that’s as real, coherent, and consistent as our own real world. I think that’s the ultimate challenge for any author: to create it all from the grassroots up. And for any reader, the trip of a lifetime! My personal preference is for worlds a bit on the dark side—just so long as they blow my mind!
It was a toss-up here between this book and The Scar, set in a different part of the same world. One of Miéville’s acknowledged influences is the wonderful Mervyn Peake, and like Peake, he’s never in a hurry to get a story underway.
I’d have probably tossed Perdido Street Station aside after 100-200 pages except for a friend’s fervent recommendation—and I’d have missed out big time if I had! Because the story as it develops is truly grand, truly epic. Like Peake, Miéville has a gift for raising action to a mythical status. I love, love, love a novel that builds up to a long, rolling, thunderous climax!
Winner of the August Derleth award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Perdido Street Station is an imaginative urban fantasy thriller, and the first of China Mieville's novels set in the world of Bas-Lag.
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians,…
Life is pretty dull without passion. Since early childhood I was attracted to Chinese philosophy, then to all the cultural aspects that reflect it. At the same time, I felt the blood in my veins drawing me to ancestral roots. Learning about other cultures helps us learn about our own. I’ve been driven by sympathy for the immigrant experience, the suffering, and sacrifices made for a better, peaceful life. What prepared me to write Wuxia America includes my academic studies, living and working in Asia, and involvement in martial arts. My inspiration for writing stems from a wish to encourage ways to improve human relations.
I loved Elegant’s book because he included a highly detailed account of the period, an account only possible by a top China scholar.
Manchu is a fictional work set within a vivid history of 17th-century China when the Manchus from northeast Asia battled native Han Chinese causing the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). The great conflict is brought to life in a personal way, including the interactions of heroic characters, Eastern and Western. The result highlights varied perceptions of politics, warfare, and social relations.
I appreciate Elegant’s blend of academic precision and detail with creative storytelling to make history so interesting. He encases facts in an emotional plot. Elegant is a master wordsmith who stimulates thought, valuable for understanding the Manchu period as well as individual introspection.
A young, exiled British mercenary plays out his fortunes against a rich, exotic tapestry of love and warfare as China's last glorious Ming dynasty falls to the northern Manchu hordes
Growing up during the Cold War, I wondered how the United States and the Soviet Union became locked into an existential struggle that threatened to vaporize the planet. So, I studied Russian, Chinese, and Japanese (along with French, Spanish, and German) to learn more. At issue was the global order and the outcome of this struggle depended on the balance of power—not only military power that consumed Soviet attention but also economic power and standards of living that Western voters emphasized. Yet it was Japan that had the workable development model as proven by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) during the 1960s to 1990s.
The Qing dynasty is covered in both volumes 10 and 11 of this wonderful series. Volume 10 contains essays that earlier in my career I would always go back to—not for the riveting prose but for the solid information. John K. Fairbank (1907-1991), the father of U.S. Sinology and longtime professor at Harvard University, invited the finest Sinologists to contribute to these volumes. Pick and choose from among the excellent chapters including: Joseph Fletcher (Inner Asia and Sino-Russian relations), John K. Fairbank (the treaty port system), Philip A. Kuhn (the Taiping Rebellion) in volume 10; and Immanuel C. Y. Hsu (foreign relations), Marius Jansen (Japan and the 1911 Revolution) in volume 11. Beware that the two volumes are very much scholarly works—in both the positive and negative meanings of the word, scholarly.
This is the first of two volumes in this major Cambridge history dealing with the decline of the Ch'ing empire. It opens with a survey of the Ch'ing empire in China and Inner Asia at its height, in about 1800. Contributors study the complex interplay of foreign invasion, domestic rebellion and Ch'ing decline and restoration. Special reference is made to the Peking administration, the Canton trade and the early treaty system, the Taiping, Nien and other rebellions, and the dynasty's survival in uneasy cooperation with the British, Russian, French, American and other invaders. Each chapter is written by a specialist…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
My interest in Chinese military history stems from an early interest in books on strategy like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and in East Asian martial arts. I have pursued both since high school, translating Sun Tzu as a senior thesis in college (and now returning to it professionally), and practicing a number of martial arts over the last forty years (and writing a book on the history of Chinese martial arts). Although there are plentiful historical records for all aspects of Chinese military history, the field remains relatively neglected, leaving it wide open for new studies. I continue to pursue my teenage interests, writing the books I wanted to read in high school.
This is a series of six essays that present a “new Qing history” approach to 17th and 18th century Chinese military history, specifically the culture involved in the military campaigns from 1636 to 1799. Waley-Cohen not only presents a more positive view of the Qing’s Manchu rulers, but also the centrality of military activities and culture to Chinese culture. The Qing government enthusiastically promoted its martial accomplishments, and martial culture was in turn reflected in visual culture, religion, and popular culture.
Was the primary focus of the Qing dynasty really civil rather than military matters? In this ground-breaking book, Joanna Waley-Cohen overturns conventional wisdom to put warfare at the heart of seventeenth and eighteenth century China. She argues that the civil and the military were understood as mutually complementary forces. Emperors underpinned military expansion with a wide-ranging cultural campaign intended to bring military success, and the martial values associated with it, into the mainstream of cultural life. The Culture of War in China is a striking revisionist history that brings new insight into the roots of Chinese nationalism and the modern…
