I grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a backwoods wilderness area. My parents believed in education and immersed us in the fantastic and multifarious world of books. At age ten I decided I would become a novelist. In my thirties I wrote my first novel—Mother Earth Father Sky, a tapestry of history, legends, and fantasy based on the ancient Aleut culture of Alaska. Mother Earth Father Sky, and several of its sequels, became international bestsellers. I still live in the Upper Peninsula, and I still write books that celebrate the surreptitious and exuberant ties between history and fantasy.
The Missouri Ozarks: Born in 1852 and named for a broken china plate, China Creed grows up in a poverty-stricken family torn apart by her curse—she has inherited the ability to grant wishes. China and her widowed mother do all they can to keep her “gift” a secret, but its unpredictability makes it difficult to hide. When her mother apprentices her to a Cherokee midwife, China earns a respected place in their community. However, accusations of witchcraft force her to flee from her small town. A romantic relationship eventually draws her into the exotic world of New York’s Gilded Age where, betrayed by the people she loves, China must rely on her gift of wishes to escape those who would enslave her.
Library of Legends pulled me into the history and tragedy of the 1937 Japanese bombing of Nanking, China. Janie Chang’s novel relates the true and heroic narrative of a group of Minghua University students and faculty who embark upon a thousand-mile journey, mostly on foot, carrying the priceless 500-year-old Library of Legends. As a bibliophile, I couldn’t help but love how Chang eloquently braids this true story into the fascinating legends and mythology of ancient China. I livedthis novel!
"The Library of Legends is a gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with mist and magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937 - only to discover that danger stalks them from within. Janie Chang pens pure enchantment!" -Kate Quinn, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress
From the author of Three Souls and Dragon Springs Road comes a captivating historical novel-the third in a loosely-connected trilogy-in which a young woman travels across China with a convoy of student refugees, fleeing the…
Set in the Antebellum South, The Water Dancer is a richly imagined novel founded on meticulous historical research bonded to luscious fantasy. Hiram Walker, a black slave who endures all the worst slavery can impart—loss of family, loss of his own identity, cruelty, and hopelessness—receives an unusual power that allows him to defy death. I am a connoisseur of history and a believer in hope. The Water Dancer gives the reader both, beautifully presented through eloquence of word and brilliance of mind. It flies me away!
'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey
Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully today
Hiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom.
Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a…
Richard Adams wrote The Plague Dogs in the 1970s, which plops it into “historical” for me. Set in England, it’s the story of two dogs—Rowf, a mutt, and Snitter, a fox terrier—who escape an animal testing facility. They are believed (incorrectly) to carry the Bubonic Plague and, thus, are the subjects of a frantic and vicious search. I couldn’t help but see the story through the eyes of my childhood friend, Sniffer, a mutt like Rowf, and my mother’s dog, Peter Pup, a rat terrier. The Tod, a red fox who helps the plague dogs escape, reminded me of the hours I spent in the woods as our father taught us how to survive in the wilderness. Anger, tears, and joy accompanied me through the reality and fantasy of this incredible novel.
Two dogs, Snitter and Rowf, escape from a research laboratory in the Lake District where it is wrongly supposed they have been purposely infected with a deadly virus and now pose a dangerous threat to the human population. As the authorities give chase, the two friends make their way through the hills and across the moors, along the way learning to survive on their wits and finding friendship and help from a fox they encounter. They dream of finding their original owners and a safe haven - but the hunt is on.
Juliet Grames used her grandmother’s life in early twentieth-century Italy as a foundation for this novel about two sisters—Stella and Tina. Everyday things in their Italian village erupt into life-threatening situations that Stella somehow survives until even her mother believes she must be a source of curses. Stella’s father, Antonio, continually denigrates the women in his life, but still, Stella thrives and does all she can to protect her sister. Through personal experience, I understand how misogyny can destroy a woman’s self-worth. The beauty of fantasy and Stella’s unwavering determination combine to make Grames’s novel a beacon of hope for abused women.
'You don't read this book, you live it' Erin Kelly
'Holds the reader under a spell from start to finish' O, the Oprah Magazine
'If you're going through Elena Ferrante withdrawals, this is the book for you' Harper's Bazaar
If Stella Fortuna means 'lucky star,' then life must have a funny sense of humour.
Everybody in the Fortuna family knows the story of how the beautiful, fiercely independent Stella, who refused to learn to cook and who swore she would never marry, has escaped death time and time again.
From her childhood in Italy, to her adulthood in America, death…
Each time I read Water for Elephants, a novel set in the early twentieth century, I am carried into the strange and amazing life of the American circus. The ribbon of fantasy that weaves its way through Gruen’s novel—the elephant Rosie as a main character—wraps up my heart and pulls me deep into the story. Water for Elephants is an uplifting novel, filled with hope.
THE INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NOW A FILM STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON AND ROBERT PATTINSON
'Great story, loads of fun; hard to put down.' STEPHEN KING
The Great Depression, 1929. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and utterly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits in the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth: a second-rate travelling circus struggling to survive by making one-night stands in town after endless town. Jacob, a veterinary student now unable to finish his degree, is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. He…
I am a fiction writer and currently live in Cairo, where I have lived for over twenty years. I noticed that the way I started telling stories was influenced by learning Arabic and by listening to the stories of the people in the city. My interest in Arabic also led me to read Arabic literature, like A Thousand and One Nights.
Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo — magical, absurd, and humorous.
The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of a Knight Errant, before their escapades in that story.
These stories are told in the tradition of A Thousand and One Nights.
Shahrazad's Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo-magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of a Knight…
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