Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a medical family, my father and brother both surgeons and my mother a nurse. My parents met while serving in WW2 and that combination of compassion and horror in the field hospitals of Europe have stayed with me ever since. In fact, my first novel A Dangerous Act of Kindness, is set during WW2. I’m also a career hypochondriac. I avoid reading about illnesses or injuries I may suffer from myself, but I am fascinated by disease and pioneering surgery, thus The Summer Fields revolves around a disease that has now been eradicated (smallpox) and pre-anaesthetic surgery, something I hope I shall never have to face. 


I wrote

The Summer Fields

By L.P. Fergusson,

Book cover of The Summer Fields

What is my book about?

Elen Griffiths has an 18th-century superpower – she is immune to smallpox from her work with the dairy…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The English Patient

L.P. Fergusson Why did I love this book?

My mother was a nurse travelling with the Allies during the Liberation of Italy at exactly the time this story was set, so this book has a special place in my heart. Here the nurse is Hana, caring for a badly burned patient with no name in a crumbling Italian villa. As the patient recalls a passionate love affair from his past, Hana begins to fall for Kip, a Sikh sapper working on unexploded bombs left behind by the Germans. This is a beautiful and haunting story of the way that love can survive even the awful human suffering of war.

By Michael Ondaatje,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The English Patient as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hana, a Canadian nurse, exhausted by death, and grieving for her own dead father; the maimed thief-turned-Allied-agent, Caravaggio; Kip, the emotionally detached Indian sapper - each is haunted in different ways by the man they know only as the English patient, a nameless burn victim who lies in an upstairs room. His extraordinary knowledge and morphine-induced memories - of the North African desert, of explorers and tribes, of history and cartography; and also of forbidden love, suffering and betrayal - illuminate the story, and leave all the characters for ever changed.


Book cover of Love Is Blind

L.P. Fergusson Why did I love this book?

Growing up, my brother and I were a pigeon pair, almost like twins. He was a sensitive boy who wore glasses and played the piano beautifully. Boarding school thumped all that out of him and forced him along a different path. The central character of this novel echoed this dynamic, drawing Brodie Moncur, the Scottish piano tuner, straight to my heart. Despite Brodie’s recurring bouts of tuberculosis and the violence of his bullying family, he gently pursues Lika Blum, a beautiful Russian singer, across 19th-century Europe. The passion and revenge meted out on this gentle soul cannot deaden his rapture for Lika. He knows that he is a man with limited time on his hands who is “trapped in a maddening cycle of strange unhappiness.”

By William Boyd,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Love Is Blind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Boyd on form is the ultimate in immersive fiction, and Love is Blind is Boyd at the top of his game . . . magnificent' Sunday Times

'A finely judged performance: a deft and resonant alchemy of fact and fiction, of literary myth and imagination' Guardian Book of the Week

This is William Boyd's sweeping, heart-stopping new novel. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the fortunes of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish musician, about to embark on the story of his life.

When Brodie is offered a job in Paris, he seizes the chance to flee…


Ad

Book cover of God on a Budget: and other stories in dialogue

God on a Budget by J.M. Unrue,

Nine Stories Told Completely in Dialogue is a unique collection of narratives, each unfolding entirely through conversations between its characters. The book opens with "God on a Budget," a tale of a man's surreal nighttime visitation that offers a blend of the mundane and the mystical. In "Doctor in the…

Book cover of A Town Like Alice

L.P. Fergusson Why did I love this book?

Some odd 1950s social attitudes caught me by surprise when I re-read this much-loved book from my past (what are those bruises all about?). Don’t let this put you off this wonderful story of courage and hardship as Jean Paget, an ordinary woman is swept up in the Japanese invasion of Malaya, faces terrible hardships in her group of female prisoners. Starving and sick, they are helped by an Australian, Sgt Joe Harman, also a prisoner, but his kindness results in the most terrible retribution. To say more would ruin the shock of this fabulous story, but I guarantee that Joe Harman will have your heart by the end of the book.

By Nevil Shute,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked A Town Like Alice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Probably more people have shed tears over the last page of A Town Like Alice than about any other novel in the English language... remarkable' Guardian

Jean Paget is just twenty years old and working in Malaya when the Japanese invasion begins.

When she is captured she joins a group of other European women and children whom the Japanese force to march for miles through the jungle - an experience that leads to the deaths of many.

Due to her courageous spirit and ability to speak Malay, Jean takes on the role of leader of the sorry gaggle of prisoners…


Book cover of The Beguiled

L.P. Fergusson Why did I love this book?

You may know this strange story as a film, but the different narrators in this gothic tale of John McBurney, a wounded Union soldier being washed and nursed by a group of young girls in Martha Farnworth’s remote school is full of the same sexual tension I hoped to conjure up in my book. What could be more beguiling than the juxtaposition of sheltered women carrying out intimate tasks on a man weakened by injury?

By Thomas Cullinan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The basis for the major motion picture directed by Sofia Coppola-named best director at the Cannes Film Festival for The Beguiled-and starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning

"[A] mad gothic tale . . . The reader is mesmerized with horror by what goes on in that forgotten school for young ladies." -Stephen King, in Danse Macabre

Wounded and near death, a young Union Army corporal is found in the woods of Virginia during the height of the Civil War and brought to the nearby Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Almost immediately he sets about…


Ad

Book cover of Ballad for Jasmine Town

Ballad for Jasmine Town by Molly Ringle,

A human child raised by the fae is an uncommon thing. But Rafi was such a child.

Now grown, half-fae but mortal, he lingers on the edge of human society in Miryoku, a nearby town sharing a border with fae territory. He doesn’t want to join the human world properly;…

Book cover of The Moon-Spinners

L.P. Fergusson Why did I love this book?

I read this during my steamy adolescence. Written in the sixties, there are no love scenes, but when the plot forces heroine Nicola Ferris to curl up next to injured and extremely attractive Mark, pent-up eroticism bursts from the pages. The romance is magnified by the setting in the mountains of Crete, imbued with “the smell of the lemon-flowers, the clicking of the mill-sails and the sound of spilling water; the sunlight dappling through the leaves on the white anemones…all this seemed to rush together into a point of powerful magic, happiness striking like an arrow, with one of those sudden shocks of joy that are so physical, so precisely marked, that one knows the exact moment at which the world changed."

By Mary Stewart,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Moon-Spinners as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Impetuous and attractive, Nicola Ferris has just arrived in Crete for a holiday when she sees an egret fly out of a lemon grove. On impulse, she follows the bird’s path into the White Mountains. There she discovers a young Englishman who, hiding out in the hills and less than pleased to have been discovered, sends Nicola packing with the order to keep out of his affairs. This, of course, Nicola is unable to do, and before long events lead to a stunning climax among the fishing boats of Agios Georgios Bay.

            In this bestselling novel, first published in 1963…


Explore my book 😀

The Summer Fields

By L.P. Fergusson,

Book cover of The Summer Fields

What is my book about?

Elen Griffiths has an 18th-century superpower – she is immune to smallpox from her work with the dairy herd, but when Viscount Mordiford, heir to Duntisbourne, is struck down by the ‘red plague’, she is forced to leave her farm and nurse him. Shut away in Duntisbourne Hall she is appalled by the disease but pities Mordiford and learns to treat him. However, a far worse evil lurks in the icy corridors of the Hall, forcing Elen to flee England and join the Duke of Marlborough’s campaign against the French. Reunited with the man she loves on the morning of the Battle of Blenheim, she discovers that the pain of love is nothing compared to the pain of loss.

Book cover of The English Patient
Book cover of Love Is Blind
Book cover of A Town Like Alice

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

2,008

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 You might also like…

Book cover of Death on a Shetland Longship: The Shetland Sailing Mysteries

Death on a Shetland Longship by Marsali Taylor,

Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…

Book cover of Pride's Children: Purgatory

Pride's Children by Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt,

Pride’s Children is a captivating, contemporary story about love, regret, ambition, and obsession - with a glitzy backdrop. Closer examination reveals a textured and soul-searching novel that serves as a poignant reminder that we are defined by our choices - and their consequences. The treatment of an enigmatic and life-altering…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in romantic love, prisoner of war, and presidential biography?

Romantic Love 957 books
Prisoner Of War 88 books