I’ve loved fairytales, myths, and history since childhood. After graduating with honors in Russian and Chinese history, I’ve been researching and writing for decades. My work ranges from educational materials to award-winning nonfiction books for children on the theme of heroism. I’ve traveled the world, partly for research, but mostly out of a passion for discovery. My last nonfiction work was a book about women writers. I also penned a historical trilogy that started out as one book, plotted out when I was eighteen. It grew. And, returning full circle to my first loves, my most recent book for children is a traditional Buddhist tale from ancient India.
I wrote
The Grip of God: Book One of The Tiger And The Dove
One of my favorite annual reads, this novel achieves so much at once: with wit and insight, it takes me into the limited world of English country life, exposing gender, economic, social, and marital politics while it breaks my heart and makes me laugh. What a sly woman Austen was: the first, quiet, feminist! Each time I read it, find something new to admire. As near as I can tell, this book also defined what went into every romance written since, from the mutual dislike to the shocking secret to the grand finale when dislike has turned into love—especially when a nice manor house is thrown in for good measure.
Jane Austen's best-loved novel is an unforgettable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, the power of reason, and above all the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Hugh Thomson and features an afterword by author and critic, Henry Hitchings.
A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and…
I have loved and reread this award-winning book for decades. And it’s only one of many I love by Le Guin. I appreciate its combination of futuristic fantasy and social relevance, written colorfully and sympathetically. This one feels especially topical to me because nowadays most of our Earth’s wealth has been siphoned into the hands of the super-wealthy. Not only wealthy but self-absorbed, just like the characters in this novel. Everyone else is dispossessed. So, what’s an entire little marginalized planet to do? She has some interesting ideas, which I loved for their daring and originality.
I also treasure the fact that I interviewed her for one of my nonfiction books about women writers and that she invited me to call her Ursula!
One of the very best must-read novels of all time - with a new introduction by Roddy Doyle
'A well told tale signifying a good deal; one to be read again and again' THE TIMES
'The book I wish I had written ... It's so far away from my own imagination, I'd love to sit at my desk one day and discover that I could think and write like Ursula Le Guin' Roddy Doyle
'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER
The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous…
The Oracle of Spring Garden Road explores the life and singular worldview of “Crazy Eddie,” a brilliant, highly-educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town.
Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a…
Pith helmets off to this enchanting mystery-adventure-socially satirical series! This book is the first of a long-running family story that I never tire of rereading. Through character Amelia Peabody’s sometimes outrageously funny ‘memoirs,’ I learned more about Egyptology, archeology, and British social structure than I ever learned in university. And I still laugh as sapphirine eyes flash, buttons pop off, and the very independent late nineteenth-century heroine finds herself in all sorts of pickles that lead inexorably to pyramids, bats, and love. I find her and her family irresistible and, in the long run, a touching testimony to what matters to me in life.
Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' most brilliant and best-loved creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude!
In this first adventure, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travels, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, an outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries -- at least that's what he…
I first read this novel when I was twelve. It probably went right over my head, but it captured everything I loved about Greek myths while humanizing the hero, Theseus. I might have gotten a bit of a sex education, too, but I was too naïve to notice. I also like the fact that a woman could write a story from a man’s point of view and that she could make him believable and even tragic. This book was a great homage to ancient Greece in all its flamboyance and skullduggery.
Theseus is the grandson of the King of Troizen, but his paternity is shrouded in mystery - can he really be the son of the god Poseidon? When he discovers his father's sword beneath a rock, his mother must reveal his true identity: Theseus is the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and is his only heir. So begins Theseus's perilous journey to his father's palace to claim his birth right, escaping bandits and ritual king sacrifice in Eleusis, to slaying the Minotaur in Crete. Renault reimagines the Theseus myth, creating an original, exciting story.
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…
This book was my introduction to Australian literature. I loved its eloquent evocation of a world totally new and mysterious to its characters. Although I was vaguely familiar with Australia’s penal colony past and with the destruction wrought on Aboriginal lives and culture, this book brought it home. I deeply appreciated the way it took me into the minds of men and women, most of them well-meaning but ignorant, and showed me how they missed the point of where they were and how to thrive there. The tragedy of that ignorance resonates with me, since I see it all around the world.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2006 COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE
London, 1806. William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly.
His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Soon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.
The Grip of God is the first in an epic historical trilogy set in the thirteenth century. Princess Sofia of Kievan Rus is captured by a young captain in the invading Mongol armies. Her life is shattered and put at the mercy of a mysterious prophecy; pursued by her master’s bitter rival, his half-brother; and haunted by the attentions of Mongol prince Batu Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson.
How will Sofia survive in a world of total war, much less rediscover the love she once took for granted? Always longing to escape and stalked by outer enemies and inner turmoil, where can she find a haven even if she can break free? Clear-eyed, kind, and courageous, she will find her own way.
Miranda falls in love with her dream house but soon discovers it's an affair with complications. A lot of them. Rosewood is a centuries old, tumble-down, gambrel roofed charmer located in an isolated, coastal corner of Virginia referred to as "strange". Known for long-standing and antiquated customs, an almost indecipherable…
Curiosity is certain she saw fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little does she know . . . they saw her first.
Emotionally abandoned by her mother and infatuated by a figurine of a fairy ballerina she discovers in an old toy shop, eight-year-old Curiosity Portland steals the figurine,…
