Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a British writer but I have lived in Norway for over twenty years. My yearning for history goes back as long as I can remember and I often feel trapped in the wrong time. Writing historical fiction is my way of delving into the past and bringing it back to life. I’ve always been creative and enjoyed arts and crafts and, as well as being a writer, I am also a creativity coach and have my own podcast, The Creatively You Show, which helps writers and artists deal with the emotional challenges of the creative process. My book choices reflect these interests and the broader themes of history and art.  


I wrote

The Strawberry Girl

By Lisa Stromme,

Book cover of The Strawberry Girl

What is my book about?

Summer 1893. Johanne Lien is a strawberry picker in the Norwegian town of Åsgårdstrand. Attracted to the artists that flock…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Four Letters of Love

Lisa Stromme Why did I love this book?

This beautiful book is possibly the most important book of my writing career. I found it in a second-hand bookstore in Dublin on a rainy afternoon and, like the plot, I felt that my finding it was a stroke of providence. I was so moved by the story that I immediately signed up for a writing workshop with the author. That workshop was a defining moment in my life – after it, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Although this story is not directly about art, it shows how a man’s calling, his compulsion to paint, plays a key role in the lives and the destinies of others. The novel has a fairytale-like quality to it, a poetic timelessness that captures the essence of spirituality and love.

By Niall Williams,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A classic love story and a seminal work of Irish literature that is a testament to romance, magic and the power of true love. With an introduction by actor John Hurt.

In love everything changes, and continues changing all the time. There is no stillness, no stopped clock of the heart in which the moment of happiness holds forever, but only the constant whirring forward motion of desire and need. . .

Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore are meant for each other - they just don't know it yet. Though each has found both heartache and joy in the wild…


Book cover of Girl Reading

Lisa Stromme Why did I love this book?

Girl Reading is a highly creative and imaginative book. Superbly written, it takes the reader on a journey through time, and the vehicle for that journey is art. There are seven scenes from seven different time periods, each depicting an artist and a portrait of a girl or woman reading. It is such an original concept and it’s thoroughly absorbing. Given my fascination with history and art, I absolutely devoured it. Girl Reading went on to play an important role in my own writing life. I was so impressed with it that when it came to sending my own book out to agents, I sent my manuscript to Katie Ward’s agent, who is now my own.   

By Katie Ward,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure.


Book cover of The Lady and the Unicorn

Lisa Stromme Why did I love this book?

Although the obvious choice when considering a Tracy Chevalier novel about art would be Girl With a Pearl Earring, I found The Lady and The Unicorn to be equally as engaging. The story of how a tapestry comes to life is different to the story behind a painting. I enjoyed the way the novel is woven together like a tapestry itself through a number of different narratives, and that it has a common thread running through it in the character of Nicolas des Innocents, a womanizing artist. I also liked the way it provides a wonderful blend of fact and fiction that gives the reader a glimpse into 15th-century art and craftsmanship.

By Tracy Chevalier,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Lady and the Unicorn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier’s answer to the mystery behind one of the art world’s great masterpieces—a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown—until now.

Paris, 1490.  A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the house—mother and daughter,…


Book cover of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lisa Stromme Why did I love this book?

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde sits on my bookshelf like a literary Goliath and I dip into it from time to time for inspiration. Wilde is a master of prose and writes with incredible wit and agility. Replete with famous aphorisms, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a dark tale of art and life, of meaning and superficiality, of soul and conscience. What I love the most about this book is the constant references to art imitating life and vice-versa. This is a classic masterpiece, at times chilling, at times philosophical, and yet, as you can only expect from Oscar Wilde, consistently humorous.

By Oscar Wilde,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked The Picture of Dorian Gray as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd

Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of…


Book cover of The Noise of Time

Lisa Stromme Why did I love this book?

"Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it….art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time". 

This powerful novel, charting the life and career of the Russian composer Shostakovich (albeit a fictional account) reveals how artistic freedoms are stripped away under totalitarianism and what that does to an artist’s soul. It gives a chilling insight into the relationship between art and power, and the way a creative life is utterly compromised by the workings of a Communist regime. I found it a fascinating book as it showed me how creativity can still find a way to flourish even in the absence of artistic freedom.  

By Julian Barnes,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Noise of Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** The Sunday Times Number One bestseller **

A Daily Telegraph / Financial Times / Guardian / Sunday Times / The Times / New Statesman / Observer Book of the Year

'BARNES'S MASTERPIECE.' - OBSERVER

In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.

So begins Julian Barnes's first novel…


Explore my book 😀

The Strawberry Girl

By Lisa Stromme,

Book cover of The Strawberry Girl

What is my book about?

Summer 1893. Johanne Lien is a strawberry picker in the Norwegian town of Åsgårdstrand. Attracted to the artists that flock to Åsgårdstrand every summer, Johanne is especially drawn to the recluse Edvard Munch, rumoured to be a madman and a drunk. When Johanne becomes a maid for the wealthy Ihlen family, their wayward daughter Tullik recruits her as a go-between in her pursuit of the controversial painter. A secret romance develops, one that Johanne must help to conceal.

But Munch is a complex man who has a disturbing influence on Tullik and what begins as a flirtatious summer romance gradually descends into a darker struggle between two tortured souls, culminating in the agonising cry of The Scream, a painting that would change the world forever.

Book cover of Four Letters of Love
Book cover of Girl Reading
Book cover of The Lady and the Unicorn

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By Lisa Redfern,

Book cover of Crossing: A Chinese Family Railroad Novel

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Lisa Redfern Author Of Crossing: A Chinese Family Railroad Novel

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author DNA genealogy researcher California history storyteller & media maker Cartophile Close-call kefir exploder A philomath with too many books

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad. 

Crossing: A Chinese Family Railroad Novel

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What is this book about?

Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and history that laid tracks for the North America of today.

Leaving behind ancestral Chinese homelands and their family, brothers Yang and Lee face harrowing challenges as they join countless immigrants seeking a better life in the 1860s.

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