Books like Three Little Words — picked by fans

I read my first romance novel at fourteen. I know, I know, too young to probably read any of these novels. As I grew older, my library expanded beyond Regency Romance and I entered the Contemporary genre. I found my happy place among the modern world. I related more. Who wouldn’t? And yet, my personal life was nothing like the romance novels I read. It was a tragedy. A complete train wreck. Being the single friend among the group was awkward and sometimes lonely. Between my fanciful love of romance novels and the dreaded dating era I experienced, I came up with the concept of The Martini Girl Bar and wrote my first novel. 

I read my first romance novel at fourteen. I know, I know, too young to probably read any of these novels. As I grew older, my library expanded beyond Regency Romance and I entered the Contemporary genre. I found my happy place among the modern world. I related more. Who wouldn’t? And yet, my personal life was nothing like the romance novels I read. It was a tragedy. A complete train wreck. Being the single friend among the group was awkward and sometimes lonely. Between my fanciful love of romance novels and the dreaded dating era I experienced, I came up with the concept of The Martini Girl Bar and wrote my first novel. 

I read my first romance novel at fourteen. I know, I know, too young to probably read any of these novels. As I grew older, my library expanded beyond Regency Romance and I entered the Contemporary genre. I found my happy place among the modern world. I related more. Who wouldn’t? And yet, my personal life was nothing like the romance novels I read. It was a tragedy. A complete train wreck. Being the single friend among the group was awkward and sometimes lonely. Between my fanciful love of romance novels and the dreaded dating era I experienced, I came up with the concept of The Martini Girl Bar and wrote my first novel. 

I read my first romance novel at fourteen. I know, I know, too young to probably read any of these novels. As I grew older, my library expanded beyond Regency Romance and I entered the Contemporary genre. I found my happy place among the modern world. I related more. Who wouldn’t? And yet, my personal life was nothing like the romance novels I read. It was a tragedy. A complete train wreck. Being the single friend among the group was awkward and sometimes lonely. Between my fanciful love of romance novels and the dreaded dating era I experienced, I came up with the concept of The Martini Girl Bar and wrote my first novel. 

By the late nineties, I had lost faith in the industry where I had made a living for twenty years. Deregulation on Wall St and in the City had left investment banking with a business model riddled with conflict of interest. The rewards spiralled out of control and the businesses became too complicated for the regulators to supervise. I have a doctorate in history and had been a top-ranked investment analyst in several sectors. I took an idea to Penguin and my first book, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, was published in 2001. I've since written six more, and contributed regularly to the Financial Times and BBC.      

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved history, devoured mystery fiction, and scribbled my own stories. Today I combine all those passions by writing books in classic mystery-suspense style, but set in the place and the period of history that fascinates me the most: the American West. I firmly believe that the Old West should be treated not merely as a myth or a set of tropes, but a historical period in its own right, and so I love to use it as the setting for character-driven stories drawing on my favorite elements of the mystery genre.

I’ve always been interested in stories about becoming. Whether it’s a coming-of-age story, a story about overcoming adversity, or a story about discovery or recovery, I find that the best books about becoming also tend to be books about resilience. For me, the lure of a book is often more about its themes and perspective than it is about where it’s categorized and shelved. Having written a memoir in verse for an upper young adult reading group, this is especially true of my experience as an author. Each of the books on this list has something profound and singular to offer young adult readers and adult readers alike.

I fell in love with understanding cities toward the end of my college studies. It was the late 1960s and urban issues were foremost in the nation’s consciousness. The times were difficult for cities and many of the problems, seemingly intractable. That drew me to graduate work in urban studies and afterward, teaching about real estate development and finance. My work on public/private partnerships and the political economy of city building has drawn a wide audience. In explaining how cities are built and redeveloped, my goal has been to de-mystify the politics and planning process surrounding large-scale development projects and how they impact the physical fabric of cities.

When writing about women's lives, it's important to me to get below the surface and question the things that really have an impact on how we live and breathe, how we relate to others as friends or lovers, how we feel guilt, pain, joy, and ecstasy, how we relish triumph and mitigate disaster, how we grow old and hope and think and make our way from start to finish in a turbulent world. I try to tell the truth as a writer and make new discoveries along the way. I’ve published two novels and two collections of short stories, and I’m a reviewer and writer on literature, a teacher too.  

About thirty years ago I learned that my great-grandaunt Annie was, arguably, the first woman to circle the world by bicycle (1894-1895) and I spent years rescuing her story from the trash bin of history, for she was virtually forgotten for more than a century. An avid cyclist myself, Annie became both my muse and my inspiration. She was an outlandish character who stepped far outside the bounds of what was expected for women of her time; among other things, she was the married mother of three young children when she took off from Boston for fifteen months on the road, and she pioneered sports-related marketing for women, securing corporate sponsors and adorning her body and her bicycle with advertisements wherever she traveled.