Visiting author houses and museums has always been a favored pastime of mine and was the inspiration to write the travel guide Novel Destinations. Complementary to writing nonfiction about classic writers, I love reading novels featuring them as characters. Fiction authors adhere to biographical details as well, but they have a freer hand with the narrative to color outside the lines and to color in details and explore feelings and motivations. Through their narratives they turn these literary figures into flesh-and-blood characters and allow the reader to step into their storied lives.
I wrote
Novel Destinations: A Travel Guide to Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West
Daphnehas numerous elements that I particularly adore in a story: a classic writer as a character, an English manor house setting, and a mystery. Layer in a Brontë connection, and it’s a perfectly pleasing literary page-turner. In 1957, Daphne du Maurier is at her remote, seaside mansion in Cornwall, distracting herself from personal woes by researching a biography about Branwell Brontë, reprobate and possibly misunderstood brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Intertwined is a second storyline set in present-day London, as a lonely young woman, newly married to a mysterious older man seemingly still in thrall to his first wife, becomes caught up in a fifty-year-old mystery involving du Maurier and the Brontës.
It is 1957. The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the heroine of her most famous novel, written twenty years earlier. Resolving to write herself out of her misery, Daphne becomes passionately interested in Branwell, the reprobate brother of the Bronte sisters, and begins a correspondence with the enigmatic bibliophile Alex Symington as she researches a biography. But behind Symington's respectable scholarly surface is a slippery character with much to hide, and soon truth and fiction have become indistinguishable.In present-day London, a lonely young woman, newly married after a…
Elizabeth Berg wanted to read a novel about George Sand but couldn’t find one…and so she wrote it herself. In The Dream Lover, Berg unfolds the story of Aurore Dupin, who boldly left a loveless aristocratic marriage to make her own way in 19th-century Paris. She adopts the pen name George Sand and becomes France’s bestselling female novelist, living a bohemian lifestyle and scandalizing society by having high-profile love affairs and, even more outrageously, by dressing in men’s clothing. I love stories about trailblazing women, and Berg compellingly conveys how risky and courageous Sand’s actions were at a time when women had few rights.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY USA TODAY • Elizabeth Berg has written a lush historical novel based on the sensuous Parisian life of the nineteenth-century writer George Sand—which is perfect for readers of Nancy Horan and Elizabeth Gilbert.
At the beginning of this powerful novel, we meet Aurore Dupin as she is leaving her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside to start a new life in Paris. There, she gives herself a new name—George Sand—and pursues her dream of becoming a writer,…
I deliberately readThe Mystery of Mrs. Christieslowly so that I could savor the story longer. The novel alternates chapters between present-day 1926, after famous novelist Agatha Christie has disappeared and sparked a headline-making manhunt in England, and the decade or so leading up to it. The story of her disappearance and the possible reasons behind it is intriguing, but I especially enjoyed the chapters set in the past and getting to know Agatha as a young woman and an aspiring writer.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2021!
"A stunning story... The ending is ingenious, and it's possible that Benedict has brought to life the most plausible explanation for why Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926."―The Washington Post
The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room returns with a thrilling reconstruction of one of the most notorious events in literary history: Agatha Christie's mysterious 11-day disappearance in 1926.
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of…
Adventure and romance abound inUnder the Wide and Starry Sky. The novel features Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, sharp-shooting frontier woman Fanny Osbourne, and follows their remarkable, globetrotting life together. After meeting at an art colony in France, they spent nearly two decades together in a relationship filled with passion, drama, and heartache that played out across such varied landscapes as the coast of England, an abandoned mining camp in California, New York State’s Adirondack Mountains, and the South Seas, where they spent their last days together. The story made me cry at the end, which I always consider the sign of a good book.
At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent, and opinionated belle Americaine.
“Long ago Virginia decreed, in the way that Virginia decrees, that I was the painter and she the writer.” Vanessa and Her Sisteris a portrait of two extraordinary and unconventional women, Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. The story is told in the form of a diary kept by Vanessa, beginning at the turn of the 20th century with the formation of the Bloomsbury Group in London. Priya Parmar has created a sympathetic yet honest portrayal of Virginia Woolf, her genius and her often precarious mental state, and the impact it had on her family—in particular Vanessa, who was an important and steadying influence for her sister and a talented artist in her own right.
A New York Times Notable Book • An Entertainment Weekly “Must List” Pick • “Prepare to be dazzled.”—Paula McLain • “Quite simply astonishing.”—Sarah Blake
What if Virginia Woolf’s sister had kept a diary? For fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank comes a spellbinding new story of the inseparable bond between Virginia and her sister, the gifted painter Vanessa Bell, and the real-life betrayal that threatened to destroy their family. Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “an uncanny success” and based on meticulous research, this stunning novel illuminates a little-known episode in the celebrated sisters’ glittering…
Check into Hemingway’s favorite Sun Valley hotel. Stroll along the moody, windswept moors that inspired the Brontë sisters. Have a pint at the New York City tavern where O. Henry penned “The Gift of the Magi.”
Featuring more than 500 literary sites in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, Novel Destinationsinvites readers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved scribes. The book begins with thematic chapters covering author houses and museums, places to drink and dine, festivals, and walking tours. Also included are 11 in-depth “Journeys between the Pages” that roam through Franz Kafka’s Prague, James Joyce’s Dublin, Louisa May Alcott’s New England, and other locales. Filled with anecdotes and behind-the-scenes stories,Novel Destinations is an entertaining, informative guide for wandering bibliophiles and armchair adventurers alike.
Kelly Simmons has been published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, and her widely praised novels are frequently compared to Big Little Lies.
Her new book, The Off Season, is set on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where headstrong thirteen-year-old Savannah bursts into the local police department, insisting her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid Bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death but a decades-old cold case.
For fans of Lisa Jewell and Liane Moriarty. Published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, Kelly's widely praised novels are frequently compared to BIG LITTLE LIES.
THE OFF SEASON explodes on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay. A headstrong thirteen-year-old girl insists her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death, but a decades-old cold case. With echoes of GONE GIRL and STAND BY ME, it’s part crime, part…
